Re: Ask OpenOffice #2 Top Questions: Now for the answers....

[Kay Schenk <ka...@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 10:02 AM, Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:

> Time to wrap this up.   I've gone through the 275 questions from 430
> users and picked out the top ones.  I dropped the ones that repeated
> questions we already answered in our last iteration of this.  I also
> combined questions where there were duplicates or repetitions.  In
> some cases I reworded questions for clarity.
>
> Here's the "top 10", with some partial responses on a few of them.
> I'll need your help to craft responses for all of them.
>
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 1) How can it be Microsoft is a platinum sponsor of Apache when
> OpenOffice is competing with MS Office?
>
>
> Rob:  This is an odd question to ask us, but I suppose we can explain
> how the ASF is a foundation that supports many (100+) open source
> projects and that a sponsor of AOO does not necessarily participate or
> endorse every project at Apache.  But again, this is an odd question
> for us.  Maybe we can pass it off to Ross Gardler for a better answer?
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 2)  A series of questions on proposed features and how we decide on
> new features, including:
>
> a) Is it possible to include a 'Track Change' feature in OpenOffice
> like the one in MS Word?
>
> b) When will OpenOffice be able to support saving in (.doc) for
> Microsoft Word 2012-2014?
>
> c) Does Open Office plan to add capability to print out marginal
> comments/notes on the document page where they appear instead of as a
> separate list at the end of the document?"
>
> d) Will OpenOffice users be able to import a "PDF" file, update it,
> and export the updated file?
>
>
> e) How does you decide what features to put into OpenOffice?
>
> f) What is the average time it takes you to fix a bug? add a new feature?
>
> Rob:  I thought we'd lump these all together and give an in-depth
> response about how features and bug fixes are prioritized in a
> volunteer-led open source project at Apache.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
>
> 3) What are the long term support and development plans for OpenOffice?
>
> Rob: This is an opportunity for us to state our practice of supporting
> version N and N-1 and point to the consultants page where users can
> find those who can offer longer term support.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 4) What are some of the most interesting features in OpenOffice that
> most users don't know even exist?
>
> Rob:  It seems most users don't know how to use word competition ;-)
> But maybe we can nominate 4 or 5 "hidden features" or "underused
> features" that users might not know about?
>
> -----------------------------------
>
>
> 5) What's being done to help realise the universal OpenDocument dream?
>
> Rob: We have some material here from our Document Freedom Day blog
> post, talking about project members who are also active in the OASIS
> ODF TC and the standardization effort.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
>
> 6) Are there backdoors or spyware in Apache OpenOffice?
>
> Rob:  Like we'd tell you if there were? ;-)    But seriously, this
> could be a topic of a standalone blog post, and maybe we should do
> that.  We could discuss open source security, how we handle
> vulnerability reports and the advantage of open source transparency
> for preventing back doors.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 7) How many volunteers work on OpenOffice?
>
> Rob:  We can discuss the various kinds of volunteers in different
> areas and get some stats.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
>
> 8) Does it cost anything to upload a template online?
>
> Rob: No.  Odd that this questions got so many votes.  Any ideas on why
> this is a question?
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> 9) What is being done to have openoffice return to be the default
> suite in linux distributions?
>
> Rob:  Anyone have an answer for this one?
>

Another item that probably deserves a much longer explanation/blog etc.
Currently, we have volunteers working on integration with *some* distros --
notably Fedora. So, the short answer would be to mention this. And, further
explain that with so many Linux distros, we've taken a more generic
approach to providing a Linux client for Apache OpenOffice.

We should provide information on how we build  the Linux clients now, and
include information on the "standard" freedesktop desktop interface. This
is used by ANY distro that uses gnome (including Unity) or kde.

 Additionally, we should  emphasize our standard .deb and .rpm packaging
approach.  I don't know how valuable this kind of explanation would be to
address the question of repositories, but, I think it would be worth the
effort to try to offer some explanations/insights into this umbrella
process.








> -----------------------------------
>
> 10) How can a new volunteer contribute to the OpenOffice project?
>
> Rob: Can point them to our "get involved" page.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
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-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK

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