FYI: Re: Please revise your strategy for LibreOffice

[Max]

FYI The rest of my side of my email conversation with info at documentfoundation.org:

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Friday, April 30, 2021 3:10 PM, Max <mleonov at protonmail.ch> wrote:

> Once again, I appreciate your openness with publicly sharing access to this mailing list, but I have to stop sending you such ranting emails to get a life and avoid getting on your nerves. Just two last rant points to add to my previous emails:
>
> 1.  Please consider reaching out to AbiWord's developer community as a whole with an invitation to join your LibreWriter developers: https://www.abisource.com/developers/ (Incidentally, AbiWord is no longer supported on Windows.)
> 2.  You'd better think twice before committing to supporting the next major iterations of Windows like Windows 10X (https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10x) and instead focus on supporting SUSE and Red Hat in providing an enterprise-grade office productivity suite for Linux that they can successfully market as part of their OS to their enterprise customers like the IBM and various larger multinational corporations in various industrial sectors. And if LibreOffice becomes successfully adopted by SUSE's and Red Hat's enterprise customers at the level of the corporate/internal software list for use by all employees, then SUSE and Red Hat will have even more serious, vested interests in supporting further LibreOffice development.
>
>     Please note that all the opinions I have expressed in all of my emails are strictly my own.
>
>     Thank you for your attention and Goodbye
>     Max
>
>     ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
>     On Monday, April 26, 2021 11:41 AM, Max mleonov at protonmail.ch wrote:
>
>
> > PS
> > In a nutshell - if you limit LibreOffice to Linux, here is what you will be able to do:
> >
> > 1.  Set up an e-shop (using an open-source e-shop solution) on your website to sell computer hardware that has various Linux distros with LibreOffice included in them - ranging from Raspberry Pi models to laptops with a preinstalled Linux operating system. So your individual customers can also buy favorably-priced LibreOffice ready hardware to go out of the box. Such e-shop can fund your operations, while you can ensure that your finances are handled with maximum transparency for your community.
> >
> > 2.  Actively promote to your potential users on your website all Linux distros that contain LibreOffice in them, with emphasis on community (non-corporate) distros like Debian and Linux Mint, so that your potential users will consider getting a community Linux distro as a means of easily getting LibreOffice.
> >
> > 3.  Focus on cooperating with commercial enterprise-market Linux - SUSE and Red Hat - to get their business customers adopt LibreOffice at enterprise level as part of SUSE's and Red Hat's business, and also let SUSE and Red Hat and their business customers make financial donations to your operations, but please at manifesto level resist all of their attempts to get on your board.
> >     Thank you for your time reading this and considering these ideas
> >     Max
> >     ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> >     On Sunday, April 25, 2021 10:02 PM, Max mleonov at protonmail.ch wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Hi Michael
> > > Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my email.
> > > I value your time and dedication to this community and the project.
> > > I.
> > > I am aware of a number of incredible, cross-platform, free open-source applications. But I cannot put LibreOffice in that list, because (as I believe) almost (if not all) community-sourced open-source applications are intended for individual end users. There are also some other free open-source applications that have some corporation build an enterprise-grade application on top of for business customers. And LibreOffice does not fit either of the two just mentioned categories. This is the most important self-definition exercise that the Document Foundation has to perform - is LibreOffice a suite for individual users or is it an enterprise-grade productivity suite for business customers (with the bulletproof expectation that all individual users will use it both to perform their work for business customers and to use it at home or for private business and whatever personal individual use they wish). LibreOffice CANNOT be a productivity suite without corporate users. Individual users using MS Office do so, because they have a job at some corporation or organization. If corporate users are not your number one priority, then it's fine, but then starting every Monday morning and ending every Friday evening ALL the individuals out there in the world will have to go on using MS Office. You cannot liberate individual users unless you get the corporate customers that employ those individual users. Microsoft got this point and MS Office is everywhere now.
> > > II.
> > > Tradeoffs in how the community is contributing hours are inevitable (just some tradeoffs will be less visible than others), because the community is NEVER infinite in size. Obviously, you should not run a community project like a corporation, but to compete with corporations like Microsoft that are ruthless about prioritizing how they spend manhours, you invariably face having to compete with them in application development's efficiency, planning, and strategy for your community (which isn't really getting paid).
> > > III.
> > > I am writing this although I am an outsider, and since I don't want to cause any PR risks I'd like to ask your board of directors to answer the following questions to yourselves (no need to send this information to me):
> > >
> > > 1.  Are corporate users (aka business customers, aka enterprises, aka corporations) the number one priority for LibreOffice (in order to give TOTAL freedom to ALL individual users of LibreOffice)?
> > >
> > > 2.  What are you going to do about the perpetuated Catch-22 situation that I outlined in my previous email - the loop of MS Windows perpetuating MS Office perpetuating MS Windows perpetuating MS Office?
> > >
> > > 3.  What is the percentage of LibreOffice community's developer hours spent on Windows and macOS in relation to the total hours spent on development overall?
> > >
> > > 4.  What is the percentage of LibreOffice community's QA engineer hours spent on Windows and macOS in relation to the total hours spent on QA/validation?
> > >     IV.
> > >     Please be cautious about the percentage of Windows downloads of LibreOffice, since that really should be interpreted as a symptom of the current state of affairs, which should be altered.
> > >     Also please be cautious about the percentage of bugs raised in Windows, since all the people who try LibreOffice on Windows and then quickly give it up and uninstall due to the bugs and crashes will never report one single bug to your community, so with exaggeration that's a gigantic black hole of missing data.
> > >     V.
> > >     Finally, I believe that the Document Foundation could minimize its losses of contributors due to dropping Windows and macOS - with clear presentation of the benefits of adopting a Linux-only strategy and inclusive discussions. Some Windows users will get the point (if it is clearly explained for their consideration) while others will have to ponder the evils of OpenOffice and forking.
> > >     PS I'll be happy to join the LibreOffice community when I have time for it.
> > >     Kind Regards
> > >     Max