Marketing FLOSS

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.6

italovignoli — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:03:00 +0000

Berlin, April 11, 2013 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.6, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, targeted to enterprises and individual end users who prefer stability to more advanced features. This new release is suited to the increasing number of organizations migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation. There is a donation page – with many options including PayPal and credit cards – at http://donate.libreoffice.org, to support the growth of the project in areas such as infrastructure, marketing and development of native language communities.

LibreOffice 3.6.6 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

The change log – with over 50 bugs solved – is available at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC1 (fixed in 3.6.6.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.6.6/RC2 (fixed in 3.6.6.2).

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.6

italovignoli — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:03:00 +0000

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.6

italovignoli — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:03:00 +0000

Impress Remote for Android: video and how-to instructions

italovignoli — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:27:00 +0000

Impress Remote for Android is one of the coolest features introduced by LibreOffice 4.0. With version 4.0.1, it is available on every platform – Linux, MacOS and Windows – and works like a charm.

In order to install and operate the Impress Remote you must follow a simple procedure, which is described in this wiki page and also in this video:

If you like the IMpress Remote for Android, please remember that The Document Foundation is a not for profit entity which lives thanks to the work of many volunteers, but also thanks to donations, which support infrastructure, marketing and community development.

Linux Journal Best Office Suite 2012

italovignoli — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:42:33 +0000

I don’t think that the screenshots need additional comments: LibreOffice is THE free office suite of reference for the Linux environment, surpassing every other software by a factor of six, and LibreOffice Writer is THE best single office program (sharing the spot with OOo Writer, hopefully for the last time, as LibreOffice is the de facto standard for all Linux distributions since 2011).

Best Office Suite

Best Single Office Product

Independence, democracy and meritocracy pay off (could anyone have doubts about this, after 10 years under the corporate umbrella?).

Windows 8 pervasive promotion

italovignoli — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:35:54 +0000

I am on the high speed train between Bologna and Milano and I have just assisted to a product demonstration of Windows 8, from a Microsoft promoter.

Apart from the considerations about the size of the budget for such a granular promotion, is it a sign of weak sales?

Community Development and Marketing @ FOSDEM 2013

italovignoli — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:56:39 +0000

This is an official call for sessions for a “Community Development and
Marketing” devroom, hosted at FOSDEM 2013 on Saturday, February 2nd, 2013.

In this devroom, developers with different profiles and backgrounds
are invited to brainstorm about aspects related to software projects
which are beyond the code itself, but nevertheless crucial for keeping
the project alive, such as marketing strategies useful for attracting
users and contributors, processes for managing the dynamics of the
community, and open source solutions for project lifecycle management.

While Marketing and FLOSS have long been considered incompatible
concepts, recent history has shown that marketing strategies properly
tailored for the FLOSS world can be of real help for open source
projects without tainting their ideology. Good marketing can be an
essential instrument for reaching out and expanding the community of
users and contributors. You are invited to showcase best practices and
successful collaborations between marketers and developers, to discuss
marketing in a typical hacker environment, and to participate in
establishing a link between communities and in creating opportunities
for collaboration.

Furthermore, you are invited to exchange ideas about what works for
keeping a community in shape: how to encourage contributions from new
members, how to keep people motivated, how to work across time zones
and cultures, how to handle conflicts, what are the processes for
naming new committers or for accepting patches. Presenters can talk
about their favorite combination of tools for version control, code
review, continuous integration, issue tracking, documentation, as well
as full infrastructure setup scenarios. It will be a great environment
for learning from individual success stories about new ways of working
better inside an open source community.

If you are interested in holding a session, please submit your talk
proposal no later than 23-12-2012 (UTC) by sending an email message to
cdm-devroom@lists.fosdem.org, and providing the following information:

About the speaker:
- Name
- Affiliation (if any)
- Short bio

About the proposed session:
- Title
- Abstract (no more than 300 words)
- Preferred duration (5, 15 or 30 minutes) and time slot (optional)

You can also subscribe to the mailing list to discuss the devroom
topics with the two organizers, by sending an empty email message to
cdm-devroom-subscribe@lists.fosdem.org.

Looking forward to your contributions,

Italo Vignoli (italo@italovignoli.com)
Sergiu Dumitriu (sergiu@xwiki.org)

Really, Mr Weir ?

italovignoli — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:25:08 +0000

Do you really think that journalists would listen to someone bashing another company, organization, project or product? Really? I suppose that journalists are going to be sincerely flabbergasted by your words, as they show the utmost consideration you have of their wits and independence.

Your message is a testament of your attitude. In fact, only someone who has spent the last 24 months bashing with rabid language and spreading FUD over The Document Foundation and LibreOffice could coinceive such an ill concept about the media.

Anyway, thanks again, Mr Weir. When I asked for the second chapter of the saga I was not expecting such a quick turnaround.

Thanks, Mr Weir

italovignoli — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:51:00 +0000

I must admit that my first reaction to Mr Weir’s post has been typically Italian, and I have replied without even reading what I was writing. I was unfortunately wrong in doing this, but it is difficult for an Italian – even for an old and supposedly wise one – to refrain from this kind of attitude, when there is such a seemingly virulent attack.

Once the temper has settled down, I have decided to look at Mr Weir’s post in a different way, using the tools of my profession. I have then applied some NLP filters to the text, to realize – to my astonishment – that Mr Weir’s post was a formidable endorsement of TDF and LibreOffice success.

Let’s look at the facts.

During LibreOffice Conference we have released several figures, including the estimated number of LibreOffice users. The word “estimated” was associated with the 60 million figure both in the presentation and in the press release, and during my speech I have reiterated the concept that it is an “estimated” figure. For any English native speaker but Mr Weir, the word “estimated” as a rather clear meaning.

We have not even mentioned Mr Weir’s pet project, as we have always avoided to do since the very first day when we were representing The Document Foundation at events or speaking on behalf of the project. As an organization, we have never commented or questioned any number, from any project.

We perfectly know that there are other office suites which have been around for over a decade, and therefore have a better brand recognition than LibreOffice. For one of these suites, we – I mean, the members of The Document Foundation – have been instrumental in creating this brand recognition, which is a key factor for the actual number of downloads.

These are the facts.

According to Mr Weir, the project he cares for is extremely successful, both in terms of downloads (which is undoubtedly true) and in terms of community size and diversity. I am happy for him, of course, although I do not understand why such a large and diverse community is able to provide a software in just 20 native languages, while the supposedly smaller LibreOffice community is able to deliver a similar software in 109 native languages.

Anyway, given the success of his pet project, it is difficult to understand why Mr Weir has spent quite a lot of his personal time to dig into LibreOffice figures, in order to show how much they are inflated or inconsistent (according to him). He could probably spend his time in a better way, attending the ODF PlugFest in Berlin to contribute to the progress of a standard he is supposed to care for.

Unfortunately for Mr Weir, all this attention for the supposedly small LibreOffice user number is a demonstration of the success of The Document Foundation and LibreOffice, as much as his refusal to attend Berlin PlugFest and his usually acrimonious comments to each and every article that covers LibreOffice in a positive way. You do not bash a project and a software if you are not scared by their success.

Maybe, if the French Government, the City of Munich in Germany, the Hospitals of Copenhagen in Denmark, Regione Umbria, Provincia di Milano and Consorzio dei Comuni della Provincia di Bolzano in Italy, the City of Limerick in Ireland, the Câmara Municipal de Vieira do Minho in Portugal, the City of Grygov in the Czeck Republic, the City of Las Palmas in Spain, the City of Largo in Florida, the municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis in Greece and the Public Library System of Chicago – amongst the others – had not chosen to migrate to LibreOffice, then Mr Weir would have ignored The Document Foundation.

Several friends and free software advocates, who have read Mr Weir’s post after I have shared the link with them (as otherwise they would have completely ignored it), have had the very same perception: the post is the backlash of a scared man.

Thanks for the endorsement, Mr Weir. We, and all the people who have decided to migrate to LibreOffice, are looking forward to the second chapter of the saga.

NAIF Metrics

italovignoli — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:59:49 +0000

NAIF Metrics is a new and creative measurement, which stands for Native Americans Inflated Figures. It is being used by free software projects pretending to be successful, to artificially inflate numbers which are simply not there.

The new measurement was created the very day that a Boston based (not even) native American decided that it was time to pretend that the project’s developers were more than the real dozen they are, and added to the code repository also the web and the wiki ones.

If The Document Foundation used NAIF Metrics instead of real figures from independent third parties, LibreOffice whould have over 1,600 developers, or more than three times as many than in the reality (544).

You can then imagine how many developers might have in the reality a projects that has less than 80 developers (based on NAIF Metrics).

Funny enough, there are several people that do believe in NAIF Metrics, and have embraced them to the point that today – in order to pretend that the software is popular in more countries than in the reality – they are faking the number of world countries.

According to a recent native americans press release, the free office suite – which is available in a mere 20 languages [1] (against 109 for LibreOffice) – is available in 228 countries, or 22 more than the highest number available from any source, which is 206 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states) including all territories claiming their indipendence but not always recognized, such as Abkhazia, Cook Islands, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Niue, Nothern Cyprus, Palestine, Sahrawi, Somaliland, South Ossetia, Taiwan and Transnistria.

It looks like analysts are not interested in implementing NAIF Metrics, so I do not think they will start to be used outside the native americans territory (which is probably one of the 22 additional countries mentioned in the press release…).

[1] Arabic, Chinese (Simplified + Traditional), Czech, Dutch, English (UK + US), Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Slovak, Slovenian and Spanish.