An interesting article published on humanOS , where its author, our friend Jacobo Hidalgo, translates another article called LibreOffice 4.0 And The Power of Brands by Keith Curtis.
LibreOffice 4.0 and the Power of Brands
Translation by Jacobo Hidalgo . Original article by Keith Curtis
LibreOffice 4.0 was released last week, and the news reports and social media activity were massive, more so than any previous LibreOffice or OpenOffice release , with better coverage than many of Microsoft's well-funded presentations. Numerous links were posted around the usual sites like LinuxToday.com , but also TechCrunch , VentureBeat , TimeMagazine , and others. A good number of the comments were from people asking about the differences between the two versions. Some asked basic questions, such as whether or not OpenOffice documents can be imported into LibreOffice.
LibreOffice is introducing its new name and community to the world. All the major Linux distributions have already been notified, but many Windows and Mac users don't understand what's happening. People even become attached to names for emotional reasons. Brands are powerful . If you were in a remote village in India on a sunny day, you'd probably reach for a Coca-Cola to quench your thirst if it was the only one with letters you recognized. Even people who enjoy traveling and trying new things might not want to risk something that looks burnt, accustomed as they are to taking baths with funny characters when they're tired, hot, and thirsty.
In the software realm, the considerations are different but related. Many are afraid to try new things because technologies often come and go. People have been burned with Farmville, Zune, Tweetdeck, iTunes, Nvidia, Comcast, AT&T, Sprint, Sun, Adobe, Gnome 2.x, Microsoft, IBM, etc.
Some people dismiss the LibreOffice/OpenOffice codebase because its user interface is less user-friendly than Microsoft Office, but many who have spent time with it have seen how well it handles files, its many features , and how it is generally stable, fast, portable, and free. People became drawn to "OpenOffice" during the hours they dedicated to expressing their creative ideas. Many associate greatness more with the name than with the people who developed it. This makes it difficult for people to try LibreOffice.
If you had to explain to OpenOffice users that Oracle laid off all the programmers before handing the brand over to Apache, and that its new team is legally prohibited from accepting changes from LibreOffice , they might realize they should try the newcomer. This legal restriction isn't currently listed on the Apache website. It would also be a helpful warning if they listed all the features it lacks compared to LibreOffice. The current list is already staggering ( 4.0 , 3.6 , 3.5 , 3.4 , 3.3 ), and they're just getting started (Easy hacks, Gsoc).
The biggest problem to consider is the opportunity cost. Instead of improving the existing OpenOffice brand, the community is being forced to build a new one. This is especially unfortunate because many people in LibreOffice contributed to OpenOffice and made it the valuable brand it is today. Since Apache OpenOffice is unable to accept changes from LibreOffice, the brand is being misused. And instead of incorporating resources, Apache is playing catch-up , demanding a lesser license for this code and inferior tools.
Because Apache OpenOffice has the brand, and a handful of employees working full-time on its code, they can always find ways to report good news and give the illusion of progress :
"There have been 35M downloads, which saves the world $ 21M per day" "Who wants to help with the wiki?" "We now have 6 new workitems labeled Easy Bugs" "Can someone dig up the documentation for our format SDF? " "It would be great to find someone to package OpenOffice into Fedora and give users a choice" "We found 50 new volunteers to help with Q&A in our recent call for help." Etc.
This was an exchange that took place during Michael Meeks' interesting talk at Fosdem 2013
Question: I don't know if I'm the only one, but I'd like to see peace between LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice. Is there any progress?
Michael Meeks: Okay, well, I think there are a lot of opportunities to share code. We offer the code under a license that Apache can incorporate, at least in its released binaries, so I think there's room for that. And, I think you'd have to go and ask them. I'm not really interested in talking much about it. I might say something rude.
People in the Linux community are aware of the situation, but many don't realize that LibreOffice can do very little to improve things. LibreOffice can't prevent new forks from being created, and no one from within was threatening to create a fork. LibreOffice couldn't prevent Oracle from handing over the trademark to just anyone. LibreOffice couldn't prevent Apache from creating a project that doesn't accept its code. LibreOffice can't prevent newcomers from being confused when they see Apache, OpenOffice, and a nice-looking website, not realizing that it's basically the "project mascot" of an IBM employee.
It seems the people within Apache could do something, but many of them enjoyed the idea of having two cores . They see themselves as the ones above with the most open license, and LibreOffice is free to take any code they find useful. Unfortunately, they don't see that as these codebases diverge, things get more difficult. LibreOffice no longer uses the SDF localization format. So, between the confusion and the illusion of progress fueled by a flow of money, we could be here for a while. IBM has endured for about 100 years. Perhaps they're happy to wait until everyone is dead and hope that the next generation of LibreOffice representatives will be more aligned with their plans.
[...]You find comments stating that they would like to end the fork . If only they had had the wisdom before creating one. However, it seems they have no idea what to do next. More wisdom is still needed.
LibreOffice is doing very well for such a young team. The free software community is taking leaps and bounds and improving code in many ways. However, the community could easily use the billions of dollars to hire more people to work full time and to train volunteers. Perhaps the biggest concern is the lack of people who understand the code for the Writer layout, which is the most complicated piece in the entire suite. The code and the people are valuable, but the people who understand the code are even more so.
Note: I write about LibreOffice/OpenOffice because I don't like seeing brands and volunteers go to waste.