Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#81

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

buovjaga wrote: post #77
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why isnt TDF hiring actual programmers? why are you looking for outside volunteer help when you can do programming in house? its not like TDF is cash strapped or anything? or does leadership at TDF have that mozilla ceo style BS mindset (paying herself millions of dollars salary while laying off actual developers because of cash issues)

TDF board works without compensation. TDF was set up as a German charity in a way that it can not operate like a full-blown software company. It has a staff of 11 (some part time like me). TDF is funding development constantly by contracting out work. Budget item proposals for this year: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2021 TDF ledgers are public: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers…

why? why was this set up in this particular way that >that it can not operate like a full-blown software company

why?

isnt mozilla working just fine as a software company run on donations? why is libreoffice dependent on 70% development commits by collabora?

this model has clearly not worked in the interest of community so why is TDF even pretending to be someone they are not?

contract work is not same as full time employees.

why this pretence?

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#82

Post by empressplay »

indymike wrote: post #80
ksec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apache Foundation I can understand Oracle, but why Apache?

The fear was the product would not advance.

Is this really a problem for businesses though? My experience is they're generally pretty conservative when it comes to upgrades.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#83

Post by jodrellblank »

howfoss wrote: post #19
hirundo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No employee hardware is payed for by the business. We all use our own machines, and all three major operating systems are well represented. So in your opinion we're all ethically in the clear?

Ethically who knows but you're definitely legally in the clear

"definitely"? you don't even know what country they're in

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#84

Post by hakfoo »

cs702 wrote: post #14

> ...according to TDF [The Document Foundation], there's growing trend among enterprises to choose the Community version, rather than one of the paid-for versions provided by TDF's partners, such as Collabora, and support partners, such as Red Hat. The foundation is concerned a lack of enterprise support is threatening the sustainability of the LibreOffice project because it's slowing down development. Linux has been…

LibreOffice has incidentally asked the question of how much and what kind of support people actually need from an office suite. This information was always hidden in the past-- how much were people paying for MS Office because they wanted to be able to call someone when it crashes, and how much to avoid the BSA Goon Squad knocking in their door?

If anything, I'd think there's less enterprise support needed and more direct-to-consumer.

Your big organization doesn't need to call Microsoft with every question because they have someone who has been living inside Excel since 1992, knows every nuance, and can untangle you from whatever you've done. But most home/SMB users don't have that, and would pay $10 or $20 every few months for a-la-carte hand-holding and support sessions, buy a $49 streaming video course or book, etc.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#85

Post by buovjaga »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #81
buovjaga wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TDF board works without compensation. TDF was set up as a German charity in a way that it can not operate like a full-blown software company. It has a staff of 11 (some part time like me). TDF is funding development constantly by contracting out work. Budget item proposals for this year: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Budget2021 TDF ledgers are public: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers…

why? why was this set up in this particular way that >that it can not operate like a full-blown software company why? isnt mozilla working just fine as a software company run on donations? why is libreoffice dependent on 70% development commits by collabora? this model has clearly not worked in the interest of community so why is TDF even pretending to be someone they are not? contract work is not same as full time e…

I think the reasoning becomes apparent when considering the environment and situation that TDF was created in. Refer to the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Document_Foundation#Histor...

In a delicate situation like that, don't you think it would have been rather brazen to go for a Mozilla Corporation type of model?

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#86

Post by chiefalchemist »

renewiltord wrote: post #72
chiefalchemist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because...Security? That's not an issue? Imagine one unintend breach and poof! customer data splattered across the (dark) web. I can't imagine how security and privacy are of no concern. Has that been cleared by legal? Or is it laziness and/or negligence?

Because they trust you to do it right. At a certain stage of organization, if you put a lot of barriers in people's way your company will fail.

So you're a WFH developer AND a sec expert? If you had those skills you wouldn't be writing code. For example, would you use SMS for 2FA? (Hint: Many trust it, but shouldn't, right?)

This isn't about trust or not. It's about liability. It's about accountability. It's about reasonable expectations. It's about making sure you're not putting your team in a compromising position. It's about not assuming.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#87

Post by eitland »

pacamara619 wrote: post #65
SloopJon wrote: post #24

I looked for ZDNet's source to see where it was getting such tone-deaf and counter-productive messaging. It's from the actual release announcement discussed earlier this week! https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/02/03/libreoff... Open source sustainability is a real problem, but spending the first seven paragraphs of a release announcement berating a bunch of your users as freeloaders is a really bad look.

From their blog: > For enterprise-class deployments, TDF has strongly recommended the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with long-term support options, professional assistance, custom features and other benefits, including SLA (Service Level Agreements). My company doesn't need this. We just need a program do open documents and spreadsheets. We don…

It might be tone deaf they way they did it but it is a real problem.

I've nothing against small groups doing a bit of guerrilla marketing, like one that showed up in a post share earlier this weekend along the lines of: "this program is shared under thr MIT and the GPL license but with the social expectation ".

If we want to release out main product as open source we cannot expect to become wildly profitable, but at the same time we as developers should get better at advocating for such projects with our managers and our customers.

I often do that when there is something the company I work for need and depend on: I look for support contracts etc. Usually this works great, once devs ignored me and changed the rules after we signed up (handsontable I think), which is of course annoying.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#88

Post by phatfish »

pacamara619 wrote: post #65
SloopJon wrote: post #24

I looked for ZDNet's source to see where it was getting such tone-deaf and counter-productive messaging. It's from the actual release announcement discussed earlier this week! https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/02/03/libreoff... Open source sustainability is a real problem, but spending the first seven paragraphs of a release announcement berating a bunch of your users as freeloaders is a really bad look.

From their blog: > For enterprise-class deployments, TDF has strongly recommended the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with long-term support options, professional assistance, custom features and other benefits, including SLA (Service Level Agreements). My company doesn't need this. We just need a program do open documents and spreadsheets. We don…

If your company is not clogging up their community support forums then you are not the intended audience for this.

The project provides an open source MS Office replacement for free, not an IT department.

Their community support forums are for home users, not the accounts department stuck trying to balance the end of year spreadsheet. Pay for their "enterprise" support if it is business critical, or buy MS Office and see how much end user support you get with that.

Re: LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs

#89

Post by mathfailure »

empressplay wrote: post #82
indymike wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear was the product would not advance.

Is this really a problem for businesses though? My experience is they're generally pretty conservative when it comes to upgrades.

Yes, in cases like this (no foss office is on-par by quality and functionality w/ Microsoft Office).
Post reply on HN