Marketing Message for Calligra

[Pierre Stirnweiss]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Inge Wallin <inge at lysator.liu.se> wrote:

> On Thursday, December 22, 2011 20:18:48 Cyrille Berger Skott wrote:
> > On Thursday 22 December 2011, Inge Wallin wrote:
> > > On Thursday, December 22, 2011 17:47:54 Cyrille Berger Skott wrote:
> > > > You can make all the fun you want of LibreOffice attempt to port to
> > > > Android, but if you go outside of the Calligra community, people
> > > > perceive us as the people who have been trying for 14 years to
> deliver
> > > > an office suite for the desktop. And now, we will start bragging to
> be
> > > > leading on the free office suite market for mobile, and if you
> scratch
> > > > under the surface, you will discover that we are positionned on a
> dead
> > > > tiny fraction of that market.
> > >
> > > I haven't exactly made fun of it. If you think so you have
> misunderstood.
> > > My point, instead, is that LibreOffice has issued a press release
> saying
> > > they will start porting to Android (note: 'will start'. Not 'have
> done').
> > > They have in fact *nothing* to show here and if anybody runs the risk
> of
> > > being known to not deliver on these platforms it's them.
> > >
> > > But still it worked for them insofar as that journalists and bloggers
> > > parrotted this press release. Some real buzz was created around
> > > LibreOffice on Android. If we don't tell people that we have done more
> > > already and will do more still then we can never push Calligra to the
> > > front.
> >
>

Why did it worked for them is the question. My answer to it is that they
are known as a key player in the Office Suite. They are known because they
are the ones identified as "having successfully challenged Microsoft
supremacy on Office Suites". They have delivered on the desktop something
few believed possible before: a realistic and usable alternative (and free)
to MS Office. Therefore they are taken seriously when they say they will
port Libreoffice to Android.
When we go on this route, the non informed journalists will say "who are
these guys? I won't believe what an unknown group is telling", some
informed will think "the ones who failed to deliver on the desktop for a
decade now is bragging about mobile",.... and so on.
When Intel is telling the world they will be at 20nm engraving next year,
people believe them. Would a small nearly unknown company say the same,
journalists would not take them seriously (no matter what the reality of
their claim is).

As for the N9 Harmattan Office, not matter how proud i am that we are at
the core of it, it is still a document viewer. It was evewn listed as a
weak point in one review i read, that you couldn't edit documents. So even
on the N9 it is arguable if we can call ourselves an Office Suite.

PierreSt
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