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LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#21

Post by p-e-w »

tosti wrote: post #6
vntok wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a non-intrusive banner that appears monthly on a transition screen and asks users who save hundreds of euros or dollars a year to consider making a voluntary contribution is not scandalous Showing that actually pretty intrusive banner would undermine their argument.

Oh come on. If you can create a better program without ever asking for donations, feel free to do so.

This is a bad argument. Established things are established. “If you don’t like what the president of your country is doing, just run for the office yourself.”

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#23

Post by armchairhacker »

Reminds me of the core-js debacle.

I don’t like donation banners. I don’t like more that they’re necessary and actually work.

A small problem is they degrade the software even when I’ve already donated. The bigger problem is they’re a downward spiral: people get desensitized, so you have to add more aggressive banners, until you’re like the 33MB news sites where 90% of the screen is intrusive noise. Our society, offline and online, is already crammed with ugly boards asking us to give money.

There are ad-free spaces, and it’s at least theoretically possible to make money without ads yourself. I hope eventually ads will become less effective and people will become more inclined to donate (or something like UBI), so it will be more possible.

Until then, I don’t really fault LibreOffice for this. Especially because it’s FOSS, so people who really care can just remove it.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#24

Post by accountofthaha »

tosti wrote: post #6
vntok wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a non-intrusive banner that appears monthly on a transition screen and asks users who save hundreds of euros or dollars a year to consider making a voluntary contribution is not scandalous Showing that actually pretty intrusive banner would undermine their argument.

Oh come on. If you can create a better program without ever asking for donations, feel free to do so.

Okay cool, I don't ask for donations. Instead I just sell my product, something like a Office 2024 license. 120 Eur a year, but feel free to use it as long as you like. That's what I bought recently. I don't want Microsoft 365 with the cloud storage, I pay Dropbox for that and use some other client to use it basically as a extra storage device for backups. I just need an Office suite, Excel, Word, Powerpoint. Yes: LibreOffice is nice and all, but doesn't work for MY needs.

But I get your point: having a succesful Open Source (FLOSS) app without dono's isn't possible, you need to have some to make it work anyhow.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#26

Post by carlosjobim »

VadimPR wrote: post #10

I agree with them, nothing wrong to ask for a donation to keep the lights on. At the same time, it needs to be possible to disable this banner for enterprise deployments

If there's anybody who should pay for their software, it's enterprise. They should be able to disable the banner by paying a fair price for their office suite.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#27

Post by accountofthaha »

p-e-w wrote: post #21
tosti wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. If you can create a better program without ever asking for donations, feel free to do so.

This is a bad argument. Established things are established. “If you don’t like what the president of your country is doing, just run for the office yourself.”

"Established things are established" BUT "established things don't always stay there." Things can change, if many people will support said change. The power of many is really something.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#28

Post by AlienRobot »

fluoridation wrote: post #14
j16sdiz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same applies to Mozilla. Not Thunderbird. It is just a poor abandoned child. Mozilla, maybe.

What ongoing work does an email client need, though, besides fixing bugs and very occasionally adding new login protocols?

Their RSS could use some improvements, but the same could be said about all of them.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#30

Post by ForHackernews »

fluoridation wrote: post #14
j16sdiz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same applies to Mozilla. Not Thunderbird. It is just a poor abandoned child. Mozilla, maybe.

What ongoing work does an email client need, though, besides fixing bugs and very occasionally adding new login protocols?

Adding a mobile version, MS Exchange integration, supporting OAuth2 login, refreshing the UI periodically because otherwise everyone whines about how "dated" it looks.
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