Re: Formats & failed marketing, was: Fwd: Cost of MS Office relative to LO, was: Fwd: [libreoffice-users] Re: moving to new version of MS Office

Hello Marco,

Le Sun, 1 Dec 2013 11:54:27 +0100,
"M. Fioretti" <mfioretti@nexaima.net> a écrit :

> On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 11:38:12 AM +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
>
> > > So Marco's personal beef with "continuing to promote the software
> > > ahead of the format" kinda misses the point that we never really
> > > put any effort into promoting the program.  Any such effort used
> > > to be severely hampered by Sun.  Promoting the program does seem
> > > to have worked a LOT better in the last 3 years than it worked in
> > > the preceding decade.  We seem to be getting somewhere at last!
> >
> > Marco's points are in my own opinion not to be discarded as such.
> > However I believe that Marco mixes marketing and the strategy of an
> > ecosystem.
>
> Hi Charles-H,
>
> after a statement like this, hordes of people from all sectors of the
> economy that at this point would stop and just ask you "so what? I
> mean, what's the difference between marketing and strategy???"

Oh there is a difference of focus, concern, and thinking. If I sell
sausages, I'd better be good at selling them by talking about their
price, their taste and the great hot dogs I  can make with them. But if
I'm growing the sausage manufacturers'ecosystem, I can pitch very much
the same points, but that does not do anything to address the concerns
of the ecosystem's partners. I'd rather explain, for instance, what
rebates system we can benefit from, or how we can pool our suppliers,
etc. The two are not mutuallly exclusive, they just work on different
levels. 

> But yours IS a fair point, because I too, in this specific thread,
> have mixed different "we" in my previous message. Sometimes "we"
> should have been "we advocates of LO", other times it meant in my mind
> "we all supporters of open standards", and I didn't make it clear
> enough.
>
> Of course,
>
> - no group can "save the world" alone 
> - members of each group (have to) have different priorities and goals
>
> - people who choose to work specifically on LO/AOO/Calligra...  (even
>   if work is "only" providing volunteer support here or elsewhere)
>   have to talk of that **software** more than file formats in general,
>   digital divides and so on
>
> I have NO PROBLEM with all that. My only point is that the typical
> LO/AOO advocate should in almost all context to something like (making
> numbers up now just to outline the general concept!!!)
>
> FIRST, talk 20% of the time of formats
> THEN,  talk 80% of how cool LO/AOO etc is
>
> otherwise we won't get anywhere quickly enough (see the "twelve years"
> post I already mentioned here)

Marco, I remember you've been a strong advocate of open standards for
quite a long time, and both of us, among many others, have pitched and
expressed ourselves about the fundamental importance of a standard
format like ODF. We went all the way to the ISO and we know the good
and the bad that came out of this. My position remains unchanged about
open standards. But as you know there was a time when the ecosystem was
much stronger and unified to promote ODF. 

Today, things are very different:
- the ODF ecosystem is not so unified (and to explain why probably
  needs a whitepaper)
- Microsoft implements ODF... in a serious and very efficient way. 

These two factors have changed the battlefield, but one thing they
haven't changed is that  despite the calculations and hopes that were
formed several years ago, the adoption of ODF has not really picked up
and is even not directly related to the migrations to LibreOffice. 

On the other hand, people still don't make the difference between their
documents and the office suite they use. I like your ratio above, but
only if we have implementations that offer something else than an
office suite, meaning that people will see the value of ODF not just
for the  freedoms they can benefit from, but as well if they see the
value in all the different possibilities they can have by choosing the
format. Today, this is not happening, even though the ODF ecosystem is
alive and growing (albeit slowly). FWIW, the Document Foundation puts
emphasis on open standards and has done so since day one in its
manifesto: https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/

Best,

Charles.


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