
LibreOffice 2020/2025 Marketing Plan [pdf] - rsecora
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/jzryGw7XDkJadmo#pdfviewer
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grandinj
Executive summary - the LibreOffice ecosystem is trying to find a path that
ensures and improves the commercial viability of the various commercial
players (who account for >90% of the actual programming work that goes into
LO), whilst remaining vendor neutral and open-source.

Not an easy needle to thread.

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aneutron
I feel like this will create another OpenOffice forking into LibreOffice kind
of situation.

I can see myself not being able to pay for the Enterprise product, but wanting
it, and having the core part available to fork and extend.

It's a noble way to guarantee a good management and funding, but it's still
rings different to how Open source _feels_. I don't know how to explain it,
really. I'd say the one project that rings somewhat true to that spirit in my
mind would be PostgreSQL.

That being said, I will always use and support LibreOffice and their
descendants, should they exist in the future.

~~~
dtech
Did I miss the presentation saying there will be feature differentiation? As
far as I have seen it's all branding and support, so there isn't really a
reason to fork for individuals.

There is for enterprise, but at that point why not either purchase support
from the authorized companies or join them

~~~
aneutron
The whole ordeal with the Online part led me to believe there will be feature
differentiation. I might be wrong.

It is indeed blurry on this particular matter.

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chrisseaton
I thought that their own research had showed that people weren't buying
support that was already available

> It is routinely the case that I meet organizations that have deployed free
> LibreOffice without long term support

and that people didn't even buy support from Microsoft

> Microsoft gives poor to non-existent support to the majority of users so
> ~no-one expects to buy it

So why would they now suddenly pay for a product where (I think, not an
expert) the only proposed differentiation is support and calling it
'Enterprise'?

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greggman3
I'm sure this already exists but IMO they should switch to working on an
online version, by which I mean software you can install on a server that
gives you an online document editor like Google Drive, Office 365 etc...

I'm probably just not the target market. One way or another I bought and owned
MS Office from about 1993 through 2008-9 but I haven't touched it since really
have no need. Nearly everything I write is for online consumption. LibreOffice
nor MS Office do this well. Using either to generate PDFs is also horrible.
Unlike HTML, PDFs don't reflow for my phone, tablet, etc..

I'm sure others will disagree but it just feels like it's about time for these
products to die. Maybe the spreadsheet can say around for but me, if I can't
let other people edit together live what's the point? In fact I'd think all
the work from home from Covid should make this abundantly clear that both MS
Office and LibreOffice are like BBS software from the early 90s

~~~
cosmie
It does already exist[1]. Although I'm not particularly familiar with the
"core" LibreOffice Online, the Collabora Online[2] branded version is super
easy to get running on Nextcloud[3] (via Docker).

[1] [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-
online/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

[2] [https://www.collaboraoffice.com/libreoffice-from-
collabora/](https://www.collaboraoffice.com/libreoffice-from-collabora/)

[3]
[https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/](https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/)

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MoomerLoom
Read the post from a few days ago and some of the comments...open source
purists (looking at you, Stallman) might be freaking out but this might give
LO the much-needed boost in performance and formatting.

I'm sure it's not easy coming up with something like this with few devs, but I
hate to see it flounder when so many office tools are subscription-based now
without much of a choice (maybe you could pick up a coveted CD-ROM with a
license intact)

~~~
chrisseaton
> open source purists (looking at you, Stallman)

Lol I don't think Stallman would describe himself that way!

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mjw1007
The final slide identifies this as a proposal, and and anticipates that there
will be changes before the plan is finalised. Does anyone know if there's been
movement since? It proposes that the strategy should be announced on July
15th, so I'd expect there to be a newer version by now.

(It also suggests that the proposal has a single author, but doesn't say who
it is. Is it Michael Meeks?)

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fsflover
Some context:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23789659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23789659)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942)

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slezyr
> Create a LibreOffice Enterprise Ecosystem LinkedIn page where to push same
> stories, to connect LinkedIn profiles of all contacts

> Encourage project members to be on LinkedIn

Yes, this is how I imagine any enterprise would act. Also, they need an
ukulele music.

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loraa
Just make it so word documents don't look like garbage.

~~~
fsflover
Although it is a valid point, you are missing that it's Microsoft who prevents
everyone from doing it [0].

[0] [https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/case/complex-
sing...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/case/complex-singularity-
versus-openness)

~~~
pantalaimon
Unfortunately that very presentation in the OP looks very much like it was
done in LibreOffice :( Something about the formatting is just off.

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elcomet
How long until the libreoffice.biz domain from their presentation is taken?

Edit: it already is. Not sure it is by them, whois doesn't give any
information.

