[DISCUSS] Apache OpenOffice ODF in the Marketplace

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

I had not encountered the topic of "ODF in the market place" with regard to status of Apache OpenOffice.  Perhaps I have not been paying attention.

I am curious how we might characterize how support for ODF matters to Apache OpenOffice users and various institutions that value support for ODF in their reliance on Apache OpenOffice and related software.

How can we determine what the influence of ODF is with respect to Apache OpenOffice?

It strikes me there are two parts to this question.  

 1. Who are the users of Apache OpenOffice?

 2. What are the ways ODF is (comparatively) significant to those users?  

Is this something we can quantify or characterize to some degree, based on information available to the project?

If we can find something indicative that can be presented in concrete terms, that might be an useful contribution to the ODF Plugfest in mid-September.

What could we nail down?

 - Dennis

SOME THOUGHTS

It is not very easy to ask users questions about ODF, especially since understanding the format or much about it, technically, does not command the attention of the great majority who adopt Apache OpenOffice, whether individuals or organizations.

WHO ARE THE USERS?

Although there are now over 150 million downloads of Apache OpenOffice, that does not tell us how many individual users are involved.

Perhaps the download counts just for AOO 4.1.1 would be a representable sample of a particularly-active segment of the user base, even though that would be underestimated a couple of ways.  But that, and the average weekly rate would be useful as "at least" figures.

The mix of platforms for those downloads is also important, reflecting the context in which those installed downloads are used by new users and those who are keeping their configurations current.


WHAT DO THEY DEPEND ON CONCERNING ODF SUPPORT?

I assume an obvious case may be some assurance that there documents will be preserved and can be used with different products if needed.  I think we have to assume that.

Another case would be being able to interchange documents with other users of ODF-supporting software, or even match the software that might be used in a workplace or governmental agency.

They may also be interested in other features of Apache OpenOffice and its direct support of ODF may simply be a by-product.

There is probably not much that we have access to will tell us about these cases?  Are there others?

HOW DO WE TELL WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO THEM ABOUT APACHE OPENOFFICE?

For that, there are some indicators.

There are bug reports, user requests for assistance, and forum posts, access to the wiki, etc.  For that, we have crude indicators of what users look for and what users have problems/complaints/requests about.

Some of these are related to support of document formats.  

Others are about general usability and other factors not directly related to the underlying format.

Sometimes feature issues can be tied directly to how they are supported in ODF by Apache OpenOffice.

We could mine some of the data we have for a profile of these categories.  It is not clear how indicative it is until we gather it.

Where would be a good start for a short term trial investigation?




-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:orcmid@apache.org] 
Sent: Friday, September 4, 2015 10:10
To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
Subject: RE: [DISCUSSION] ODF Plugfest, September 2015

[ ... ]

 2.  ... [It] appears that any status presentation is likely part of an agenda item to be led by Gijs Hillenius of OSOR.  See <http://plugtest.opendocsociety.org/doku.php?id=plugfests:201509_thehague:info>.  The topic is "ODF in the market place."  That is an interesting topic if it remains the focus.  I'm not certain what we know about in that respect.  I definitely think it would be useful to have concrete information about that specific topic with respect to Apache OpenOffice.  If we figured it out, we could offer a slide or two without having to be there.  Would that suffice?

[ ... ]


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