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Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com> on 2011/12/20 17:55:44 UTC
About Team OpenOffice.org
Hi all,
May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg and I spent the last
16+ years working on OpenOffice.org and it's commercial derivatives like
StarOffice or Oracle Open Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and
Stefan from Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with full-time
developers to join the Apache OpenOffice podling. My focus is to create
value for customers and to build a successful commercial business.
I have not read all of the posting here and I'm not a native English
speaker. So I might have missed some topics or discussions. But my
impression is that there is a major disconnect between the ASF and Team
OpenOffice.org. I guess it's time to be more direct and blunt about our
situation. Please let me try to explain what our ideas are with Team
OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and what our next steps are.
First off, we are not evil! We don't want to mislead consumers (although
I admit we did)! We are not collecting donations for our own coffers! We
don't have a business model that is just based on donations! What we
plan to do can be summarized in the following three goals:
1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that they continue to use
OpenOffice.org
2. We want to make money with support and service for OpenOffice.org
and Apache OpenOffice
3. We want to be able to sponsor developers working full-time on
OpenOffice.org and save as much developer know-how as possible from
the primary contributor Sun/Oracle
To 1:
I'm in contact with a number of customers and I can assure you, that
they are desperately looking for a sign of life and new releases for
OpenOffice.org. Keep in mind that we released products every 3 month.
Customers haven't seen an OOo release since nearly a year now. I
understand that AOO 3.4 is in preparation and on the horizon, but how
reliable is this? The ASF does not have a track record yet for AOO.
Customers and consumers are also asking for support for their current
version -- and this is OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 and earlier. That's the
reason why we strongly believe, AOO 3.4 is important, but OOo 3.3.1 is
also important. We think that a maintenance releases for OOo 3.3.0 can
help to create trust in the project and help customers to wait for AOO 3.4.
To 2:
Important part of our business model is to sell support and service
contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the future -- Apache OpenOffice
customers. With the withdrawal of the main sponsor Oracle there are not
many companies on this planet doing so. We believe that this is quite a
cool unique selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making in the
Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally takes around 6 to 9
month. We don't have that reach. So we need to close this gap until we
see service revenue coming in.
To 3:
Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us to make our
case. I think this is a pretty good explanation of our situation:
"Oracle used to pay our salaries to work on OpenOffice,org, but since
Oracle turned OpenOffice.org over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer
pays us. We were primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and
we want to be able to work on it full-time. Unless a large company or
government hires us to do this (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), we are trying
to support ourselves via donations -- until we are ready to sell service
contracts. Donations to the Apache Foundation, while a nice thing to do,
can not be used for this purpose, so you will need to donate to Team
OpenOffice.org as a separate entity."
And collecting donations is something -- as you know -- Team
OpenOffice.org always did! Donations are very important for us in this
phase to close the gap until we see service revenue coming in. And there
are also very successful companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that
are based on donations. Therefore I authorized the donation campaign
"Save OpenOffice.org" - and I want to apologize for that! It was a
mistake because I didn't realize that at the same time this implies that
OpenOffice.org is not doing well at the ASF. Believe me or not, it was
not my intend to bring discredit upon the Apache OpenOffice project.
What are our next steps though? We are of course accepting the ASF
ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark. As we worked since 2003
smoothly together with Sun and Oracle, we were surprised to see that
non-commercial Apache is seeing us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team
OpenOffice.org is also non-commercial.
We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor developers! Please take
your time to understand what we are asking for. We are asking for money
to help developing OOo! We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo!
If our communication on this topic is not clear enough, we'll fix it! Do
you see the difference? Again, we want full-time developers working on
the project and contributing their work to the Apache OpenOffice podling
-- something the ASF can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time
developers our business model won't fly.
We will not stop telling the world that we were the primary contributors
and inventors of OpenOffice.org. The development team in Hamburg created
it -- with the help of the OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to
continue developing it. I don't think that this is confusing users. It's
the truth. The ASF should use this as a weapon not as a threat. We will
also defend ourselves against malicious gossip or suspicion -- same like
the ASF does. So please stop the own-coffers-thing.
As service and support is part of our business model, we are listening
to OpenOffice.org Enterprise users and customers. They asked us for a
maintenance release for OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues
-- and we will deliver! This release will carry a name that does not
conflict with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using another name is
clearly not the best solution for all of us: users and customers, the
ASF and Team OpenOffice.org. This should be motivation enough to work on
a better solution.
Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts: We recognized our
mistakes! Reason for the mistake was to get donations to hire full-time
developers. We are also working hard on other ideas to get funding but
we are not there yet! We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice
podling and we basically share the same goals. We inserted a very
prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the box "Home of the
Development Project" on teamopenoffice.org). I hope that this email does
not have a negative impact on our chance to establish a cooperative
relationship between Team OpenOffice.org and the Apache OpenOffice
project. Does it? We are not evil!
Thanks,
Goetz
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by eric b <er...@free.fr>.
Hi Donald,
Le 20 déc. 11 à 19:39, Donald Harbison a écrit :
> Götz,
>
> Thank you very much for this information. We wish we had heard from
> you much sooner.
>
> Some additional comments and questions inline.
>
>> To 3:
>> Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us to make
>> our case. I think this is a pretty good explanation of our
>> situation: "Oracle used to pay our salaries to work on
>> OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned OpenOffice.org over to the
>> Apache Foundation, it no longer pays us. We were primary
>> contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and we want to be able
>> to work on it full-time. Unless a large company or government
>> hires us to do this (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), we are trying to
>> support ourselves via donations -- until we are ready to sell
>> service contracts. Donations to the Apache Foundation, while a
>> nice thing to do, can not be used for this purpose, so you will
>> need to donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate entity."
>> And collecting donations is something -- as you know -- Team
>> OpenOffice.org always did!
>
>
> Yes, but in the past the donations were disbursed for a different
> purpose,
>
Must be my english: could you explain "disbursed" please ?
> AFAIK; e.g. support to individuals to travel and attend
> OpenOffice.org conferences, education, etc.,
Do you travel for free ? Reading you, looks like volunteers will
have to pay for attending events ...
To my knowledge, this money has been spent honestly, and IT was a
VERY GOOD thing. Ask to the students who received such help to attend
OOoCon, or any other event ...
Please confirm that I wrongly understood you :-)
Thanks in advance,
Eric Bachard
--
qɔᴉɹə
Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org
Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com>.
Donald,
Am 20.12.11 19:39, schrieb Donald Harbison:
> Götz,
>
> Thank you very much for this information. We wish we had heard from you
> much sooner.
Thank you! I hope it's not too late!
> Some additional comments and questions inline.
>
> 2011/12/20 Götz Wohlberg<go...@googlemail.com>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg and I spent the last 16+
>> years working on OpenOffice.org and it's commercial derivatives like
>> StarOffice or Oracle Open Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and
>> Stefan from Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with full-time
>> developers to join the Apache
> OpenOffice podling. My focus is to create value for customers and to build a
>> successful commercial business.
>>
>> Pleased to meet you.
> I have not read all of the posting here and I'm not a native English
>> speaker. So I might have missed some topics or discussions. But my
>> impression is that there is a major disconnect between the ASF and Team
>> OpenOffice.org. I guess it's time to be more direct and blunt about our
>> situation. Please let me try to explain what our ideas are with Team
>> OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and what our next steps are.
>>
>> First off, we are not evil! We don't want to mislead consumers (although I
>> admit we did)! We are not collecting donations for our own coffers! We
>> don't have a business model that is just based on donations! What we plan
>> to do can be summarized in the following three goals:
>>
>> 1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that they continue to use
>> OpenOffice.org
>>
> Great!
>
>> 2. We want to make money with support and service for OpenOffice.org
>> and Apache OpenOffice
>>
> Go for it!
>
>> 3. We want to be able to sponsor developers working full-time on
>> OpenOffice.org and save as much developer know-how as possible from
>> the primary contributor Sun/Oracle
>>
> Do you mean full-time on Apache OpenOffice?
Yes, that's the plan but we are not there yet.
>> To 1:
>> I'm in contact with a number of customers and I can assure you, that they
>> are desperately looking for a sign of life and new releases for
>> OpenOffice.org.
> Would you like to help us communicate directly to these customers from the
> Apache OpenOffice project team as well?
Sure! Let me know, what you have in mind.
>
>> Keep in mind that we released products every 3 month. Customers haven't
>> seen an OOo release since nearly a year now. I understand that AOO 3.4 is
>> in preparation and on the horizon, but how reliable is this? The ASF does
>> not have a track record yet for AOO. Customers and consumers are also
>> asking for support for their current version -- and this is OpenOffice.org
>> 3.3.0 and earlier. That's the reason why we strongly believe, AOO 3.4 is
>> important, but OOo 3.3.1 is also important. We think that a maintenance
>> releases for OOo 3.3.0 can help to create trust in the project and help
>> customers to wait for AOO 3.4.
>>
> We encourage you to follow our progress on AOO 3.4 and beyond. You may be
> surprised to see how things are coming along.
I'm seeing some good things from your team!
>> To 2:
>> Important part of our business model is to sell support and service
>> contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the future -- Apache OpenOffice
>> customers. With the withdrawal of the main sponsor Oracle there are not
>> many companies on this planet doing so. We believe that this is quite a
>> cool unique selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making in the
>> Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally takes around 6 to 9 month.
>> We don't have that reach. So we need to close this gap until we see service
>> revenue coming in.
>>
>> To 3:
>> Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us to make our
>> case. I think this is a pretty good explanation of our situation: "Oracle
>> used to pay our salaries to work on OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned
>> OpenOffice.org over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer pays us. We were
>> primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and we want to be able
>> to work on it full-time. Unless a large company or government hires us to
>> do this (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), we are trying to support ourselves via
>> donations -- until we are ready to sell service contracts. Donations to the
>> Apache Foundation, while a nice thing to do, can not be used for this
>> purpose, so you will need to donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate
>> entity."
>>
>> And collecting donations is something -- as you know -- Team
>> OpenOffice.org always did!
>
> Yes, but in the past the donations were disbursed for a different purpose,
> AFAIK; e.g. support to individuals to travel and attend OpenOffice.org
> conferences, education, etc., but not salaries for development purposes.
Other things were the summer of code, advertisement, give aways,
exhibition stand, conference fees and a lot more. The purpose was always
the same: the development and dissemination of OpenOffice.org.
>> Donations are very important for us in this phase to close the gap until
>> we see service revenue coming in. And there are also very successful
>> companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that are based on donations.
>> Therefore I authorized the donation campaign "Save OpenOffice.org" - and I
>> want to apologize for that! It was a mistake because I didn't realize that
>> at the same time this implies that OpenOffice.org is not doing well at the
>> ASF. Believe me or not, it was not my intend to bring discredit upon the
>> Apache OpenOffice project.
>>
> OK, let's move on. We have too much work to do than worry about this.
Thank you!
>> What are our next steps though? We are of course accepting the ASF
>> ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark. As we worked since 2003 smoothly
>> together with Sun and Oracle, we were surprised to see that non-commercial
>> Apache is seeing us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team OpenOffice.org is also
>> non-commercial.
>>
>> We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor developers! Please take
>> your time to understand what we are asking for. We are asking for money to
>> help developing OOo! We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo! If our
>> communication on this topic is not clear enough, we'll fix it! Do you see
>> the difference? Again, we want full-time developers working on the project
>> and contributing their work to the Apache OpenOffice podling -- something
>> the ASF can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time developers our
>> business model won't fly.
>>
> So long as your campaign for fund raising does not mislead donors through a
> misappropriation of the OpenOffice.org trademark there is no problem here.
We reviewed our material very carefully from this perspective. If we
missed something, let me know. It's not an easy task to talk about what
we want to do and at the same time avoid mentioning OpenOffice.org
wherever this could cause confusion.
>> We will not stop telling the world that we were the primary contributors
>> and inventors of OpenOffice.org.
>
> Yes, but there are other primary contributors working for SuSE. Canonical,
> Red Hat, and IBM, so you have good company.
Yes, you are right and I don't see this as a "but". We are trying to
make this point. Sponsors and companies have changed over the course of
time but there is a team that has remained the same since the beginning.
I guess you will make the point, that the project will benefit from the
new situation under the ASF - and I agree with this as well. I'm not
living in the past.
>> The development team in Hamburg created it -- with the help of the
>> OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to continue developing it. I don't
>> think that this is confusing users. It's the truth. The ASF should use this
>> as a weapon not as a threat. We will also defend ourselves against
>> malicious gossip or suspicion -- same like the ASF does. So please stop the
>> own-coffers-thing.
>>
> Perhaps you might consider creating something like a 'Hamburg Hanse
> Association of OpenOffice Developers' to bring your 'primary contributor
> team members. I don't know if this makes sense, but it may be useful to
> represent the talent base accordingly to everyone's user communities
> whether or not they are consuming LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org 3.x or Apache
> OpenOffice....just a thought.
>
>> As service and support is part of our business model, we are listening to
>> OpenOffice.org Enterprise users and customers. They asked us for a
>> maintenance release for OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues --
>> and we will deliver! This release will carry a name that does not conflict
>> with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using another name is clearly not the
>> best solution for all of us: users and customers, the ASF and Team
>> OpenOffice.org. This should be motivation enough to work on a better
>> solution.
>>
>> Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts: We recognized our
>> mistakes! Reason for the mistake was to get donations to hire full-time
>> developers. We are also working hard on other ideas to get funding but we
>> are not there yet! We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice
>> podling and we basically share the same goals.
> Great! Jump right in. Martin and Stefan joined as Initial Committers. We
> are hoping they begin to become more active in the community here. You are
> also most welcome to help out on the marketing side. I think that would be
> win-win for you and your goals with Team OpenOffice.org.
I'm happy to do that!
>
> We inserted a very prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the box
>> "Home of the Development Project" on teamopenoffice.org). I hope that
>> this email does not have a negative impact on our chance to establish a
>> cooperative relationship between Team OpenOffice.org and the Apache
>> OpenOffice project. Does it? We are not evil!
>>
> This is a very constructive email. Thank you very much.
Thanks again!
Goetz
>
>> Thanks,
>> Goetz
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Donald Harbison <dp...@gmail.com>.
Götz,
Thank you very much for this information. We wish we had heard from you
much sooner.
Some additional comments and questions inline.
2011/12/20 Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com>
> Hi all,
>
> May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg and I spent the last 16+
> years working on OpenOffice.org and it's commercial derivatives like
> StarOffice or Oracle Open Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and
> Stefan from Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with full-time
> developers to join the Apache
penOffice podling. My focus is to create value for customers and to build a
> successful commercial business.
>
> Pleased to meet you.
I have not read all of the posting here and I'm not a native English
> speaker. So I might have missed some topics or discussions. But my
> impression is that there is a major disconnect between the ASF and Team
> OpenOffice.org. I guess it's time to be more direct and blunt about our
> situation. Please let me try to explain what our ideas are with Team
> OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and what our next steps are.
>
> First off, we are not evil! We don't want to mislead consumers (although I
> admit we did)! We are not collecting donations for our own coffers! We
> don't have a business model that is just based on donations! What we plan
> to do can be summarized in the following three goals:
>
> 1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that they continue to use
> OpenOffice.org
>
Great!
> 2. We want to make money with support and service for OpenOffice.org
> and Apache OpenOffice
>
Go for it!
> 3. We want to be able to sponsor developers working full-time on
> OpenOffice.org and save as much developer know-how as possible from
> the primary contributor Sun/Oracle
>
Do you mean full-time on Apache OpenOffice?
>
>
> To 1:
> I'm in contact with a number of customers and I can assure you, that they
> are desperately looking for a sign of life and new releases for
> OpenOffice.org.
Would you like to help us communicate directly to these customers from the
Apache OpenOffice project team as well?
> Keep in mind that we released products every 3 month. Customers haven't
> seen an OOo release since nearly a year now. I understand that AOO 3.4 is
> in preparation and on the horizon, but how reliable is this? The ASF does
> not have a track record yet for AOO. Customers and consumers are also
> asking for support for their current version -- and this is OpenOffice.org
> 3.3.0 and earlier. That's the reason why we strongly believe, AOO 3.4 is
> important, but OOo 3.3.1 is also important. We think that a maintenance
> releases for OOo 3.3.0 can help to create trust in the project and help
> customers to wait for AOO 3.4.
>
We encourage you to follow our progress on AOO 3.4 and beyond. You may be
surprised to see how things are coming along.
>
> To 2:
> Important part of our business model is to sell support and service
> contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the future -- Apache OpenOffice
> customers. With the withdrawal of the main sponsor Oracle there are not
> many companies on this planet doing so. We believe that this is quite a
> cool unique selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making in the
> Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally takes around 6 to 9 month.
> We don't have that reach. So we need to close this gap until we see service
> revenue coming in.
>
> To 3:
> Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us to make our
> case. I think this is a pretty good explanation of our situation: "Oracle
> used to pay our salaries to work on OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned
> OpenOffice.org over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer pays us. We were
> primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and we want to be able
> to work on it full-time. Unless a large company or government hires us to
> do this (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), we are trying to support ourselves via
> donations -- until we are ready to sell service contracts. Donations to the
> Apache Foundation, while a nice thing to do, can not be used for this
> purpose, so you will need to donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate
> entity."
>
> And collecting donations is something -- as you know -- Team
> OpenOffice.org always did!
Yes, but in the past the donations were disbursed for a different purpose,
AFAIK; e.g. support to individuals to travel and attend OpenOffice.org
conferences, education, etc., but not salaries for development purposes.
> Donations are very important for us in this phase to close the gap until
> we see service revenue coming in. And there are also very successful
> companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that are based on donations.
> Therefore I authorized the donation campaign "Save OpenOffice.org" - and I
> want to apologize for that! It was a mistake because I didn't realize that
> at the same time this implies that OpenOffice.org is not doing well at the
> ASF. Believe me or not, it was not my intend to bring discredit upon the
> Apache OpenOffice project.
>
OK, let's move on. We have too much work to do than worry about this.
>
> What are our next steps though? We are of course accepting the ASF
> ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark. As we worked since 2003 smoothly
> together with Sun and Oracle, we were surprised to see that non-commercial
> Apache is seeing us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team OpenOffice.org is also
> non-commercial.
>
> We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor developers! Please take
> your time to understand what we are asking for. We are asking for money to
> help developing OOo! We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo! If our
> communication on this topic is not clear enough, we'll fix it! Do you see
> the difference? Again, we want full-time developers working on the project
> and contributing their work to the Apache OpenOffice podling -- something
> the ASF can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time developers our
> business model won't fly.
>
So long as your campaign for fund raising does not mislead donors through a
misappropriation of the OpenOffice.org trademark there is no problem here.
>
> We will not stop telling the world that we were the primary contributors
> and inventors of OpenOffice.org.
Yes, but there are other primary contributors working for SuSE. Canonical,
Red Hat, and IBM, so you have good company.
> The development team in Hamburg created it -- with the help of the
> OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to continue developing it. I don't
> think that this is confusing users. It's the truth. The ASF should use this
> as a weapon not as a threat. We will also defend ourselves against
> malicious gossip or suspicion -- same like the ASF does. So please stop the
> own-coffers-thing.
>
Perhaps you might consider creating something like a 'Hamburg Hanse
Association of OpenOffice Developers' to bring your 'primary contributor
team members. I don't know if this makes sense, but it may be useful to
represent the talent base accordingly to everyone's user communities
whether or not they are consuming LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org 3.x or Apache
OpenOffice....just a thought.
>
> As service and support is part of our business model, we are listening to
> OpenOffice.org Enterprise users and customers. They asked us for a
> maintenance release for OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues --
> and we will deliver! This release will carry a name that does not conflict
> with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using another name is clearly not the
> best solution for all of us: users and customers, the ASF and Team
> OpenOffice.org. This should be motivation enough to work on a better
> solution.
>
> Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts: We recognized our
> mistakes! Reason for the mistake was to get donations to hire full-time
> developers. We are also working hard on other ideas to get funding but we
> are not there yet! We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice
> podling and we basically share the same goals.
Great! Jump right in. Martin and Stefan joined as Initial Committers. We
are hoping they begin to become more active in the community here. You are
also most welcome to help out on the marketing side. I think that would be
win-win for you and your goals with Team OpenOffice.org.
We inserted a very prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the box
> "Home of the Development Project" on teamopenoffice.org). I hope that
> this email does not have a negative impact on our chance to establish a
> cooperative relationship between Team OpenOffice.org and the Apache
> OpenOffice project. Does it? We are not evil!
>
This is a very constructive email. Thank you very much.
>
> Thanks,
> Goetz
>
>
>
>
>
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Armin Le Grand <Ar...@me.com>.
Hi Götz,
On 23.12.2011 20:23, Götz Wohlberg wrote:
> Hi Armin,
>
> Am 23.12.11 20:00, schrieb Armin Le Grand:
>> Hi Götz,
>>
>> On 23.12.2011 19:37, Götz Wohlberg wrote:
>>> Hi Pedro,
>>>
>> [..]
>>>
>>> (2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also not
>>> promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet.
>>
>> Why don't you just help doing that? Waiting for it will not make it
>> happen earlier. It would show the world that you have an active roll
>> in OpenOffice development, also to your possible customers. It's also
>> a goal of your organization, isn't it?
> All good points but I'm not relaxed as you are because you have a
> sponsor and a salary - I don't.
I know that and I did not want to offense You. I'm happy that I can
continue to support AOO, in the name of a new sponsor. This fits well
with my goals to make the office better for everyone (esp. Drawinglayer
:-)). I hope the best to you and that it may help you too (hopefully not
too late) when we are able to bring out AOO3.4.
> If we can't convince customers, get
> donations or find sponsors, I just can't afford to be here any longer!
> It's as easy as that. Just help doing AOO 3.4 would be nice, but won't
> bring any funding for us. We won't be here when AOO 3.4 comes out. We
> need funding now!
I had hoped that you already got some donations, at least to have some
more time. I also know that we were not simply thrown out (there are
some rights for employees in this country). Of course you are free to
decide how to spend your efforts.
I'm just dreaming of working closer together with you and other former
colleagues. Maybe I'm too egoistic with that, but it's just a wish.
I could just not suppress my thoughts that we could be closer to a
release candidate when we would have joined forces early. I also think
it could have avoided some headaches on all sides. I'm sure you have
taken into account this possibility early and it's chances for showing
active development on 3.4 and to find sponsors evtl. by the possible
public effect of this, but decided not for it. I can imagine requests
for donations on your side accompanied with statements like 'Support us
supporting AOO3.4, see here what we have done so far:
<links>...<links>'. This would be appealing to everyone, hopefully
leading to more
support.
Just my 2ct...
>
> Best wishes!
> Goetz
Goetz, all the best to you and the others.
>
>>
>> [..]
>>> My best wishes to you and a happy Xmas!
>>> Goetz
>>
>> Same from me. Have a good time!
>>
>> [..]
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Armin
>> --
>> ALG
>>
>
Sincerely,
Armin
--
ALG
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com>.
Hi Armin,
Am 23.12.11 20:00, schrieb Armin Le Grand:
> Hi Götz,
>
> On 23.12.2011 19:37, Götz Wohlberg wrote:
>> Hi Pedro,
>>
> [..]
>>
>> (2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also not
>> promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet.
>
> Why don't you just help doing that? Waiting for it will not make it
> happen earlier. It would show the world that you have an active roll
> in OpenOffice development, also to your possible customers. It's also
> a goal of your organization, isn't it?
All good points but I'm not relaxed as you are because you have a
sponsor and a salary - I don't. If we can't convince customers, get
donations or find sponsors, I just can't afford to be here any longer!
It's as easy as that. Just help doing AOO 3.4 would be nice, but won't
bring any funding for us. We won't be here when AOO 3.4 comes out. We
need funding now!
Best wishes!
Goetz
>
> [..]
>> My best wishes to you and a happy Xmas!
>> Goetz
>
> Same from me. Have a good time!
>
> [..]
>
> Sincerely,
> Armin
> --
> ALG
>
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Armin Le Grand <Ar...@me.com>.
Hi Raphael,
On 23.12.2011 20:13, Raphael Bircher wrote:
> Am 23.12.11 20:00, schrieb Armin Le Grand:
>> Hi Götz,
>>
>> On 23.12.2011 19:37, Götz Wohlberg wrote:
>>> Hi Pedro,
>>>
>> [..]
>>>
>>> (2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also not
>>> promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet.
>>
>> Why don't you just help doing that? Waiting for it will not make it
>> happen earlier. It would show the world that you have an active roll
>> in OpenOffice development, also to your possible customers. It's also
>> a goal of your organization, isn't it?
> I think you can easy say that, if you get your Money from IBM. I think,
> Team OOo has to focus there work on that, wath the money come from. And
> if costumers request a 3.3.1 then they request a 3.3.1, Then they won't
> hear: "But we working on 3.4." So that's probabily a different
> situation. End doing Business with the Core development of OOo is maybe
> one of the hardest jobs you can do. SUN fail, Oracle fail, so this guys
> has a load of courage.
You are right and I see their courage. I wish them all the best and I
hope it all leads to possibilities to work together with them in the
future. I press thumbs that they will be able to create chances for some
of my former colleagues, this would help everyone.
> Greetings Raphael
>
>
Happy Christmas Raphael!
Armin
--
ALG
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Raphael Bircher <r....@gmx.ch>.
Am 23.12.11 20:00, schrieb Armin Le Grand:
> Hi Götz,
>
> On 23.12.2011 19:37, Götz Wohlberg wrote:
>> Hi Pedro,
>>
> [..]
>>
>> (2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also not
>> promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet.
>
> Why don't you just help doing that? Waiting for it will not make it
> happen earlier. It would show the world that you have an active roll
> in OpenOffice development, also to your possible customers. It's also
> a goal of your organization, isn't it?
I think you can easy say that, if you get your Money from IBM. I think,
Team OOo has to focus there work on that, wath the money come from. And
if costumers request a 3.3.1 then they request a 3.3.1, Then they won't
hear: "But we working on 3.4." So that's probabily a different
situation. End doing Business with the Core development of OOo is maybe
one of the hardest jobs you can do. SUN fail, Oracle fail, so this guys
has a load of courage.
Greetings Raphael
--
My private Homepage: http://www.raphaelbircher.ch/
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Armin Le Grand <Ar...@me.com>.
Hi Götz,
On 23.12.2011 19:37, Götz Wohlberg wrote:
> Hi Pedro,
>
[..]
>
> (2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also not
> promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet.
Why don't you just help doing that? Waiting for it will not make it
happen earlier. It would show the world that you have an active roll in
OpenOffice development, also to your possible customers. It's also a
goal of your organization, isn't it?
[..]
> My best wishes to you and a happy Xmas!
> Goetz
Same from me. Have a good time!
[..]
Sincerely,
Armin
--
ALG
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>.
Hello Götz;
Being new in AOO, and to OpenOffice.org in general, I was not
very aware of the long history Team OpenOffice.org has
supporting this great product.
Right now I have to admit I have mixed feelings about us
not giving you permission to use the OpenOffice.org brand
and I think that happened mainly due to mis-communication.
On the other hand, the majority of the community has voted
to basically deprecate the Openoffice.org brand in favor
of Apache OpenOffice and this is an opportunity to underline
the new license and the great organization behind it. This a
good reason to reject further uses of the old brand.
With respect to the business, using a copyleft license usually
limited the options to selling support or otherwise asking for
contributions. Both options are still possible (with proper
care of the trademarks when asking for contributions of
course), but now it's also possible to add value in many
different ways to make a product more attractive.
In AOO, as we distribute it, we even have some limitations that can
be covered by third party distributors: we don't carry GPL'd
icons or fonts and we disabled functions like importing documents
from WordPerfect. If you do your own distribution with extra
features we could link to it from our servers and recommend it
officially.
I personally wouldn't see any problem if your distribution
eventually becomes more popular for specific markets than the
one the ASF will make.
Just something to think about after the holidays :).
cheers,
Pedro.
--- Ven 23/12/11, Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com> ha scritto:
...
> Hi Pedro,
>
> Am 20.12.11 22:56, schrieb Pedro Giffuni:
> > Hello Götz;
> >
> > First of all welcome! Part of the confusion was indeed
> that we
> > had not really hear from TOO and it's goals and future
> plans.
> >
> > I am relatively new to both OpenOffice and Apache but
> one of
> > the things that motivated me to join is that the
> Apache
> > License is very open to business. If you can make some
> profit
> > or even live out of developing your own product based
> on Apache
> > OpenOffice (as we will call it from now on), we are
> all very
> > happy about it. As you said there were some mistakes
> made by
> > TOO and we appreciate that you have been working on
> them.
> >
> > Our development is very open here: we use subversion,
> the
> > builds are pretty stable and we have finished the
> major
> > changes required to license IP review. We still have
> > work to do, especially related to rebranding (icons,
> logos,
> > etc), dictionary distributions, and perhaps adding
> some
> > features that were disabled but things are going
> pretty
> > well.
> >
> > Keep us informed on what you are working and do let us
> know
> > if you see opportunities for collaboration as we
> would
> > like to avoid duplicated efforts.
> Thanks for your welcome and your explanation! My priorities
> are no secret: Find (1) funding, (2) customers or (3)
> sponsors. Unfortunately collaboration on these topics is
> tricky: (1) Funding through donations was planned to give us
> a starting point, but our donation campaign caused serious
> hiccups. I would love to work on a model that is in the best
> of interest for the ASF and our plans.
>
> (2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also
> not promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet. So we need to focus
> on OpenOffice.org 3.x.x customers. What all customers want
> is a guarantee that OpenOffice.org has a bright future. We
> wanted to give the long-awaited sign of life and released
> the requested security update - unfortunately under a
> different name - which caused the next trouble. My hope was,
> we find an arrangement with the ASF and have a joined
> communication. This failed for the Release Candidate. Maybe
> there is a chance for the final version.
>
> But even without the approval to use "OpenOffice.org" for
> this one #3.3.1 release, it was no option for us not to do
> it. Customer first! We are aware of the fact that this
> caused again confusion but we are not getting a single
> dollar for doing nothing. If we don't listen to customers,
> we are not allowed to be here.
>
> (3) Finding a new sponsor to continue to work on OOo did
> work out just for some of us. I'm sure that the original
> developer team would still be pretty much intact if a new
> sponsor would have jumped in. This annoys and motivates me
> at the same time. OOo is such a relevant and important
> product, that more developers should work on it. I had other
> good job offerings but I strongly believe that OOo/AOO is a
> good place to be - with tons of new opportunities and
> challenges ;-)
>
> I can understand the criticism that we don't communicate
> enough. But we also have to focus and dedicate our time on
> (1), (2) and (3). All our goals have in common that they are
> based on OOo and AOO. Looks to me that there is not much
> what we can do without making trouble ;-). But doing nothing
> is not an option. So we are still trying to find our way.
> The good news is that I'm receiving a lot of encourage
> emails with "Don't give up!", "Keep going", etc. Let's give
> it a new start next year.
>
> My best wishes to you and a happy Xmas!
> Goetz
> >
> > Welcome again,
> >
> > Pedro.
> >
> > --- Mar 20/12/11, Götz Wohlberg<go...@googlemail.com>
> ha scritto:
> >
> >> Da: Götz Wohlberg<go...@googlemail.com>
> >> Oggetto: About Team OpenOffice.org
> >> A: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
> >> Data: Martedì 20 dicembre 2011, 11:55
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg
> and I
> >> spent the last 16+ years working on OpenOffice.org
> and it's
> >> commercial derivatives like StarOffice or Oracle
> Open
> >> Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and
> Stefan from
> >> Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with
> full-time
> >> developers to join the Apache OpenOffice podling.
> My focus
> >> is to create value for customers and to build a
> successful
> >> commercial business.
> >>
> >> I have not read all of the posting here and I'm
> not a
> >> native English speaker. So I might have missed
> some topics
> >> or discussions. But my impression is that there is
> a major
> >> disconnect between the ASF and Team
> OpenOffice.org. I guess
> >> it's time to be more direct and blunt about our
> situation.
> >> Please let me try to explain what our ideas are
> with Team
> >> OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and
> what our
> >> next steps are.
> >>
> >> First off, we are not evil! We don't want to
> mislead
> >> consumers (although I admit we did)! We are not
> collecting
> >> donations for our own coffers! We don't have a
> business
> >> model that is just based on donations! What we
> plan to do
> >> can be summarized in the following three goals:
> >>
> >> 1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that
> they
> >> continue to use
> >> OpenOffice.org
> >> 2. We want to make money with support and service
> for
> >> OpenOffice.org
> >> and Apache OpenOffice
> >> 3. We want to be able to sponsor developers
> working
> >> full-time on
> >> OpenOffice.org and save as
> much developer
> >> know-how as possible from
> >> the primary contributor
> Sun/Oracle
> >>
> >>
> >> To 1:
> >> I'm in contact with a number of customers and I
> can assure
> >> you, that they are desperately looking for a sign
> of life
> >> and new releases for OpenOffice.org. Keep in mind
> that we
> >> released products every 3 month. Customers haven't
> seen an
> >> OOo release since nearly a year now. I understand
> that AOO
> >> 3.4 is in preparation and on the horizon, but how
> reliable
> >> is this? The ASF does not have a track record yet
> for AOO.
> >> Customers and consumers are also asking for
> support for
> >> their current version -- and this is
> OpenOffice.org 3.3.0
> >> and earlier. That's the reason why we strongly
> believe, AOO
> >> 3.4 is important, but OOo 3.3.1 is also important.
> We think
> >> that a maintenance releases for OOo 3.3.0 can help
> to create
> >> trust in the project and help customers to wait
> for AOO
> >> 3.4.
> >>
> >> To 2:
> >> Important part of our business model is to sell
> support and
> >> service contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the
> future --
> >> Apache OpenOffice customers. With the withdrawal
> of the main
> >> sponsor Oracle there are not many companies on
> this planet
> >> doing so. We believe that this is quite a cool
> unique
> >> selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making
> in the
> >> Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally
> takes around
> >> 6 to 9 month. We don't have that reach. So we need
> to close
> >> this gap until we see service revenue coming in.
> >>
> >> To 3:
> >> Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to
> help us
> >> to make our case. I think this is a pretty good
> explanation
> >> of our situation: "Oracle used to pay our salaries
> to work
> >> on OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned
> OpenOffice.org
> >> over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer pays
> us. We were
> >> primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love
> it, and we
> >> want to be able to work on it full-time. Unless a
> large
> >> company or government hires us to do this (wink,
> wink,
> >> nudge, nudge), we are trying to support ourselves
> via
> >> donations -- until we are ready to sell service
> contracts.
> >> Donations to the Apache Foundation, while a nice
> thing to
> >> do, can not be used for this purpose, so you will
> need to
> >> donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate
> entity."
> >>
> >> And collecting donations is something -- as you
> know --
> >> Team OpenOffice.org always did! Donations are very
> important
> >> for us in this phase to close the gap until we see
> service
> >> revenue coming in. And there are also very
> successful
> >> companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that are
> based on
> >> donations. Therefore I authorized the donation
> campaign
> >> "Save OpenOffice.org" - and I want to apologize
> for that! It
> >> was a mistake because I didn't realize that at the
> same time
> >> this implies that OpenOffice.org is not doing well
> at the
> >> ASF. Believe me or not, it was not my intend to
> bring
> >> discredit upon the Apache OpenOffice project.
> >>
> >> What are our next steps though? We are of course
> accepting
> >> the ASF ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark.
> As we
> >> worked since 2003 smoothly together with Sun and
> Oracle, we
> >> were surprised to see that non-commercial Apache
> is seeing
> >> us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team OpenOffice.org is
> also
> >> non-commercial.
> >>
> >> We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor
> >> developers! Please take your time to understand
> what we are
> >> asking for. We are asking for money to help
> developing OOo!
> >> We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo! If
> our
> >> communication on this topic is not clear enough,
> we'll fix
> >> it! Do you see the difference? Again, we want
> full-time
> >> developers working on the project and contributing
> their
> >> work to the Apache OpenOffice podling -- something
> the ASF
> >> can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time
> developers our
> >> business model won't fly.
> >>
> >> We will not stop telling the world that we were
> the primary
> >> contributors and inventors of OpenOffice.org. The
> >> development team in Hamburg created it -- with the
> help of
> >> the OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to
> continue
> >> developing it. I don't think that this is
> confusing users.
> >> It's the truth. The ASF should use this as a
> weapon not as a
> >> threat. We will also defend ourselves against
> malicious
> >> gossip or suspicion -- same like the ASF does. So
> please
> >> stop the own-coffers-thing.
> >>
> >> As service and support is part of our business
> model, we
> >> are listening to OpenOffice.org Enterprise users
> and
> >> customers. They asked us for a maintenance release
> for
> >> OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues --
> and we
> >> will deliver! This release will carry a name that
> does not
> >> conflict with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using
> another
> >> name is clearly not the best solution for all of
> us: users
> >> and customers, the ASF and Team OpenOffice.org.
> This should
> >> be motivation enough to work on a better
> solution.
> >>
> >> Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts:
> We
> >> recognized our mistakes! Reason for the mistake
> was to get
> >> donations to hire full-time developers. We are
> also working
> >> hard on other ideas to get funding but we are not
> there yet!
> >> We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice
> podling
> >> and we basically share the same goals. We inserted
> a very
> >> prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the
> box "Home
> >> of the Development Project" on
> teamopenoffice.org). I hope
> >> that this email does not have a negative impact on
> our
> >> chance to establish a cooperative relationship
> between Team
> >> OpenOffice.org and the Apache OpenOffice project.
> Does it?
> >> We are not evil!
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Goetz
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com>.
Hi Pedro,
Am 20.12.11 22:56, schrieb Pedro Giffuni:
> Hello Götz;
>
> First of all welcome! Part of the confusion was indeed that we
> had not really hear from TOO and it's goals and future plans.
>
> I am relatively new to both OpenOffice and Apache but one of
> the things that motivated me to join is that the Apache
> License is very open to business. If you can make some profit
> or even live out of developing your own product based on Apache
> OpenOffice (as we will call it from now on), we are all very
> happy about it. As you said there were some mistakes made by
> TOO and we appreciate that you have been working on them.
>
> Our development is very open here: we use subversion, the
> builds are pretty stable and we have finished the major
> changes required to license IP review. We still have
> work to do, especially related to rebranding (icons, logos,
> etc), dictionary distributions, and perhaps adding some
> features that were disabled but things are going pretty
> well.
>
> Keep us informed on what you are working and do let us know
> if you see opportunities for collaboration as we would
> like to avoid duplicated efforts.
Thanks for your welcome and your explanation! My priorities are no
secret: Find (1) funding, (2) customers or (3) sponsors. Unfortunately
collaboration on these topics is tricky: (1) Funding through donations
was planned to give us a starting point, but our donation campaign
caused serious hiccups. I would love to work on a model that is in the
best of interest for the ASF and our plans.
(2) Finding service customers at this point in time is also not
promising as AOO 3.4 is not out yet. So we need to focus on
OpenOffice.org 3.x.x customers. What all customers want is a guarantee
that OpenOffice.org has a bright future. We wanted to give the
long-awaited sign of life and released the requested security update -
unfortunately under a different name - which caused the next trouble. My
hope was, we find an arrangement with the ASF and have a joined
communication. This failed for the Release Candidate. Maybe there is a
chance for the final version.
But even without the approval to use "OpenOffice.org" for this one
#3.3.1 release, it was no option for us not to do it. Customer first! We
are aware of the fact that this caused again confusion but we are not
getting a single dollar for doing nothing. If we don't listen to
customers, we are not allowed to be here.
(3) Finding a new sponsor to continue to work on OOo did work out just
for some of us. I'm sure that the original developer team would still be
pretty much intact if a new sponsor would have jumped in. This annoys
and motivates me at the same time. OOo is such a relevant and important
product, that more developers should work on it. I had other good job
offerings but I strongly believe that OOo/AOO is a good place to be -
with tons of new opportunities and challenges ;-)
I can understand the criticism that we don't communicate enough. But we
also have to focus and dedicate our time on (1), (2) and (3). All our
goals have in common that they are based on OOo and AOO. Looks to me
that there is not much what we can do without making trouble ;-). But
doing nothing is not an option. So we are still trying to find our way.
The good news is that I'm receiving a lot of encourage emails with
"Don't give up!", "Keep going", etc. Let's give it a new start next year.
My best wishes to you and a happy Xmas!
Goetz
>
> Welcome again,
>
> Pedro.
>
> --- Mar 20/12/11, Götz Wohlberg<go...@googlemail.com> ha scritto:
>
>> Da: Götz Wohlberg<go...@googlemail.com>
>> Oggetto: About Team OpenOffice.org
>> A: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
>> Data: Martedì 20 dicembre 2011, 11:55
>> Hi all,
>>
>> May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg and I
>> spent the last 16+ years working on OpenOffice.org and it's
>> commercial derivatives like StarOffice or Oracle Open
>> Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and Stefan from
>> Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with full-time
>> developers to join the Apache OpenOffice podling. My focus
>> is to create value for customers and to build a successful
>> commercial business.
>>
>> I have not read all of the posting here and I'm not a
>> native English speaker. So I might have missed some topics
>> or discussions. But my impression is that there is a major
>> disconnect between the ASF and Team OpenOffice.org. I guess
>> it's time to be more direct and blunt about our situation.
>> Please let me try to explain what our ideas are with Team
>> OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and what our
>> next steps are.
>>
>> First off, we are not evil! We don't want to mislead
>> consumers (although I admit we did)! We are not collecting
>> donations for our own coffers! We don't have a business
>> model that is just based on donations! What we plan to do
>> can be summarized in the following three goals:
>>
>> 1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that they
>> continue to use
>> OpenOffice.org
>> 2. We want to make money with support and service for
>> OpenOffice.org
>> and Apache OpenOffice
>> 3. We want to be able to sponsor developers working
>> full-time on
>> OpenOffice.org and save as much developer
>> know-how as possible from
>> the primary contributor Sun/Oracle
>>
>>
>> To 1:
>> I'm in contact with a number of customers and I can assure
>> you, that they are desperately looking for a sign of life
>> and new releases for OpenOffice.org. Keep in mind that we
>> released products every 3 month. Customers haven't seen an
>> OOo release since nearly a year now. I understand that AOO
>> 3.4 is in preparation and on the horizon, but how reliable
>> is this? The ASF does not have a track record yet for AOO.
>> Customers and consumers are also asking for support for
>> their current version -- and this is OpenOffice.org 3.3.0
>> and earlier. That's the reason why we strongly believe, AOO
>> 3.4 is important, but OOo 3.3.1 is also important. We think
>> that a maintenance releases for OOo 3.3.0 can help to create
>> trust in the project and help customers to wait for AOO
>> 3.4.
>>
>> To 2:
>> Important part of our business model is to sell support and
>> service contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the future --
>> Apache OpenOffice customers. With the withdrawal of the main
>> sponsor Oracle there are not many companies on this planet
>> doing so. We believe that this is quite a cool unique
>> selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making in the
>> Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally takes around
>> 6 to 9 month. We don't have that reach. So we need to close
>> this gap until we see service revenue coming in.
>>
>> To 3:
>> Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us
>> to make our case. I think this is a pretty good explanation
>> of our situation: "Oracle used to pay our salaries to work
>> on OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned OpenOffice.org
>> over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer pays us. We were
>> primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and we
>> want to be able to work on it full-time. Unless a large
>> company or government hires us to do this (wink, wink,
>> nudge, nudge), we are trying to support ourselves via
>> donations -- until we are ready to sell service contracts.
>> Donations to the Apache Foundation, while a nice thing to
>> do, can not be used for this purpose, so you will need to
>> donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate entity."
>>
>> And collecting donations is something -- as you know --
>> Team OpenOffice.org always did! Donations are very important
>> for us in this phase to close the gap until we see service
>> revenue coming in. And there are also very successful
>> companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that are based on
>> donations. Therefore I authorized the donation campaign
>> "Save OpenOffice.org" - and I want to apologize for that! It
>> was a mistake because I didn't realize that at the same time
>> this implies that OpenOffice.org is not doing well at the
>> ASF. Believe me or not, it was not my intend to bring
>> discredit upon the Apache OpenOffice project.
>>
>> What are our next steps though? We are of course accepting
>> the ASF ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark. As we
>> worked since 2003 smoothly together with Sun and Oracle, we
>> were surprised to see that non-commercial Apache is seeing
>> us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team OpenOffice.org is also
>> non-commercial.
>>
>> We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor
>> developers! Please take your time to understand what we are
>> asking for. We are asking for money to help developing OOo!
>> We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo! If our
>> communication on this topic is not clear enough, we'll fix
>> it! Do you see the difference? Again, we want full-time
>> developers working on the project and contributing their
>> work to the Apache OpenOffice podling -- something the ASF
>> can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time developers our
>> business model won't fly.
>>
>> We will not stop telling the world that we were the primary
>> contributors and inventors of OpenOffice.org. The
>> development team in Hamburg created it -- with the help of
>> the OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to continue
>> developing it. I don't think that this is confusing users.
>> It's the truth. The ASF should use this as a weapon not as a
>> threat. We will also defend ourselves against malicious
>> gossip or suspicion -- same like the ASF does. So please
>> stop the own-coffers-thing.
>>
>> As service and support is part of our business model, we
>> are listening to OpenOffice.org Enterprise users and
>> customers. They asked us for a maintenance release for
>> OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues -- and we
>> will deliver! This release will carry a name that does not
>> conflict with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using another
>> name is clearly not the best solution for all of us: users
>> and customers, the ASF and Team OpenOffice.org. This should
>> be motivation enough to work on a better solution.
>>
>> Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts: We
>> recognized our mistakes! Reason for the mistake was to get
>> donations to hire full-time developers. We are also working
>> hard on other ideas to get funding but we are not there yet!
>> We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice podling
>> and we basically share the same goals. We inserted a very
>> prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the box "Home
>> of the Development Project" on teamopenoffice.org). I hope
>> that this email does not have a negative impact on our
>> chance to establish a cooperative relationship between Team
>> OpenOffice.org and the Apache OpenOffice project. Does it?
>> We are not evil!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Goetz
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
Re: About Team OpenOffice.org
Posted by Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>.
Hello Götz;
First of all welcome! Part of the confusion was indeed that we
had not really hear from TOO and it's goals and future plans.
I am relatively new to both OpenOffice and Apache but one of
the things that motivated me to join is that the Apache
License is very open to business. If you can make some profit
or even live out of developing your own product based on Apache
OpenOffice (as we will call it from now on), we are all very
happy about it. As you said there were some mistakes made by
TOO and we appreciate that you have been working on them.
Our development is very open here: we use subversion, the
builds are pretty stable and we have finished the major
changes required to license IP review. We still have
work to do, especially related to rebranding (icons, logos,
etc), dictionary distributions, and perhaps adding some
features that were disabled but things are going pretty
well.
Keep us informed on what you are working and do let us know
if you see opportunities for collaboration as we would
like to avoid duplicated efforts.
Welcome again,
Pedro.
--- Mar 20/12/11, Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com> ha scritto:
> Da: Götz Wohlberg <go...@googlemail.com>
> Oggetto: About Team OpenOffice.org
> A: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
> Data: Martedì 20 dicembre 2011, 11:55
> Hi all,
>
> May I introduce myself? My name is Goetz Wohlberg and I
> spent the last 16+ years working on OpenOffice.org and it's
> commercial derivatives like StarOffice or Oracle Open
> Office. At the moment I'm helping Martin and Stefan from
> Team OpenOffice.org e.V. to setup a team with full-time
> developers to join the Apache OpenOffice podling. My focus
> is to create value for customers and to build a successful
> commercial business.
>
> I have not read all of the posting here and I'm not a
> native English speaker. So I might have missed some topics
> or discussions. But my impression is that there is a major
> disconnect between the ASF and Team OpenOffice.org. I guess
> it's time to be more direct and blunt about our situation.
> Please let me try to explain what our ideas are with Team
> OpenOffice.org, what we did, what we learned and what our
> next steps are.
>
> First off, we are not evil! We don't want to mislead
> consumers (although I admit we did)! We are not collecting
> donations for our own coffers! We don't have a business
> model that is just based on donations! What we plan to do
> can be summarized in the following three goals:
>
> 1. We want to help existing Oracle customers that they
> continue to use
> OpenOffice.org
> 2. We want to make money with support and service for
> OpenOffice.org
> and Apache OpenOffice
> 3. We want to be able to sponsor developers working
> full-time on
> OpenOffice.org and save as much developer
> know-how as possible from
> the primary contributor Sun/Oracle
>
>
> To 1:
> I'm in contact with a number of customers and I can assure
> you, that they are desperately looking for a sign of life
> and new releases for OpenOffice.org. Keep in mind that we
> released products every 3 month. Customers haven't seen an
> OOo release since nearly a year now. I understand that AOO
> 3.4 is in preparation and on the horizon, but how reliable
> is this? The ASF does not have a track record yet for AOO.
> Customers and consumers are also asking for support for
> their current version -- and this is OpenOffice.org 3.3.0
> and earlier. That's the reason why we strongly believe, AOO
> 3.4 is important, but OOo 3.3.1 is also important. We think
> that a maintenance releases for OOo 3.3.0 can help to create
> trust in the project and help customers to wait for AOO
> 3.4.
>
> To 2:
> Important part of our business model is to sell support and
> service contracts to OpenOffice.org and -- in the future --
> Apache OpenOffice customers. With the withdrawal of the main
> sponsor Oracle there are not many companies on this planet
> doing so. We believe that this is quite a cool unique
> selling point (USP). Unfortunately decision-making in the
> Enterprise about OOo support contracts normally takes around
> 6 to 9 month. We don't have that reach. So we need to close
> this gap until we see service revenue coming in.
>
> To 3:
> Here is a quote from a kind user who is trying to help us
> to make our case. I think this is a pretty good explanation
> of our situation: "Oracle used to pay our salaries to work
> on OpenOffice,org, but since Oracle turned OpenOffice.org
> over to the Apache Foundation, it no longer pays us. We were
> primary contributors to OpenOffice.org, we love it, and we
> want to be able to work on it full-time. Unless a large
> company or government hires us to do this (wink, wink,
> nudge, nudge), we are trying to support ourselves via
> donations -- until we are ready to sell service contracts.
> Donations to the Apache Foundation, while a nice thing to
> do, can not be used for this purpose, so you will need to
> donate to Team OpenOffice.org as a separate entity."
>
> And collecting donations is something -- as you know --
> Team OpenOffice.org always did! Donations are very important
> for us in this phase to close the gap until we see service
> revenue coming in. And there are also very successful
> companies like the Wikimedia Foundation that are based on
> donations. Therefore I authorized the donation campaign
> "Save OpenOffice.org" - and I want to apologize for that! It
> was a mistake because I didn't realize that at the same time
> this implies that OpenOffice.org is not doing well at the
> ASF. Believe me or not, it was not my intend to bring
> discredit upon the Apache OpenOffice project.
>
> What are our next steps though? We are of course accepting
> the ASF ownership of the OpenOffice.org trademark. As we
> worked since 2003 smoothly together with Sun and Oracle, we
> were surprised to see that non-commercial Apache is seeing
> us as a troublemaker. Btw, Team OpenOffice.org is also
> non-commercial.
>
> We will not stop asking for donations to sponsor
> developers! Please take your time to understand what we are
> asking for. We are asking for money to help developing OOo!
> We are not asking to donate for the ASF or OOo! If our
> communication on this topic is not clear enough, we'll fix
> it! Do you see the difference? Again, we want full-time
> developers working on the project and contributing their
> work to the Apache OpenOffice podling -- something the ASF
> can't do! How bad is this? Without full-time developers our
> business model won't fly.
>
> We will not stop telling the world that we were the primary
> contributors and inventors of OpenOffice.org. The
> development team in Hamburg created it -- with the help of
> the OpenOffice.org community -- and is happy to continue
> developing it. I don't think that this is confusing users.
> It's the truth. The ASF should use this as a weapon not as a
> threat. We will also defend ourselves against malicious
> gossip or suspicion -- same like the ASF does. So please
> stop the own-coffers-thing.
>
> As service and support is part of our business model, we
> are listening to OpenOffice.org Enterprise users and
> customers. They asked us for a maintenance release for
> OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 due to the security issues -- and we
> will deliver! This release will carry a name that does not
> conflict with the OpenOffice.org trademark. Using another
> name is clearly not the best solution for all of us: users
> and customers, the ASF and Team OpenOffice.org. This should
> be motivation enough to work on a better solution.
>
> Just one more paragraph with my personal thoughts: We
> recognized our mistakes! Reason for the mistake was to get
> donations to hire full-time developers. We are also working
> hard on other ideas to get funding but we are not there yet!
> We want to be a committer to the Apache OpenOffice podling
> and we basically share the same goals. We inserted a very
> prominent link to the ASF on our website (see the box "Home
> of the Development Project" on teamopenoffice.org). I hope
> that this email does not have a negative impact on our
> chance to establish a cooperative relationship between Team
> OpenOffice.org and the Apache OpenOffice project. Does it?
> We are not evil!
>
> Thanks,
> Goetz
>
>
>
>
>