Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: Our new website is progressing - have a look!

On 2021-09-09 17:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Am 09.09.21 um 01:04 schrieb Brett Cornwall:
> > (...)
> > I was hesitant to reply to this because I'm starting to think that
> > you're just a troll... but I'll bite: It's not LibreOffice's problem
> > that your distro packages software so old that even the brand new
> > release is already out of date. That's *your* problem to deal with.
>
> maybe it's always a good starter to know a bit about the people you are
> talking to:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Document_Foundation&oldid=478428168
>
> (see the picture on the right side and you get the 'trol'l for about 16
> years).

I respect your old contributions but that has no bearing on your current 
misdirection of arguments and previous shilling of Plone in the past 
months (which seems to be your favorite pet project - quite a conflict 
of interest in this discussion).

> And nice to read that the latest release of the free Linux distribution
> Debian (from this year) is only old software. The project and its
> maintainers will like you for this ;-)

It's not a secret; It's literally how the distro operates. The point 
remains that it's your problem to solve because Debian is an environment 
of your own choosing.

> > And yes, it *is* my opinion that tech-savvy people should contribute
> > to the public face of LibreOffice's web presence. *Industry
> > professional web developers* should be building it because that talent
> > is what makes a good website.
>
> And you are thinking of an excluding and not an including and open
> project. Thus we didn't share the same opinions on open source projects
> and LibreOffice in particular.
>
> Based on this vision and thinking LibreOffice and its ancestor wouldn't
> have had a website etc.

No, I'm saying that when there's actual website development work to be 
done, it should be done by people that build websites. As Ilmari has 
already stated a few times now, translations can be handled with weblate 
for the non-technical side of contributions.

Inclusivity is not about letting anybody change production stuff through 
means of CMS crutches; It is creating a welcoming atmosphere that 
provides opportunity for interested (and sometimes marginalized) 
individuals. If a contributor is unable to handle the technicalities of 
web development, they are more than welcome to pursue any of the myriad 
different opportunities to contribute. Or LibreOffice can mentor them. 
The same goes for the codebase: Programmers need to be committing the 
code. Inclusivity is a people management issue more than a technology 
issue.

> > It's asinine to believe that hosting a flimsy CMS for flinging digital
> > mud is a *good* idea in webdev.
> Such opinion about content contributions seemed a bit singular to me and
> could be seen as disrespect. But I respect your opinion, although I
> don't share it.

There's a place for CMSes like WordPress. LibreOffice decided in favor 
of Hugo because the product is a static website that will rarely change, 
requires less maintenance burden than the current CMS solution, and 
requires modern web development practices without the onerous natures of 
huge, complex frameworks. The blog remains an approachable secondary CMS 
to those that require easy editing. This is a relatively insubstantial 
part of the LibreOffice project and, once the replacement site is 
finished, will require little upkeep.

This is *reducing the technical barrier to entry* because there is now 
no need to write PHP, Python, or whichever lower-level language is 
necessary to build the CMS-based sites. There's no way around the fact 
that there is some technical expertise required when building a website. 
*Content* may not require the expertise, but the *content* is so rarely 
changing on libreoffice.org (The hero slideshow has had the same 
text/graphics since the inception of LibreOffice AFAICR).

The tooling only matters when the technology is so bad or onerous that 
it impedes any sort of forward momentum. It doesn't matter if LO chose 
Hugo, WordPress, or even your beloved Plone, it's all about providing a 
welcome environment for contributors with good documentation and a 
predictable change lifecycle.

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