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LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

blog.documentfoundation.org

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#141

It's one thing for you to put a banner up on your web page, which I will see when I visit you. I can just choose not to visit, if I don't want to see your message. It's another thing for you to put a banner inside my computer , on the software I use to manage my own data : that ought to be a tool I use for my own purposes, and not a place for you to do what you want. A tool which starts acting as an agent for its dev…

If I create software I can do whatever the heck I want and that includes displaying a billion banners. And you got the right to not use my software.

If you trust the makers of LibreOffice enough to run their software on your machine, you might also want trust them on this decision. Unless of course you know better than them about what it needs to keep the software alive you run regularly.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#142

It's one thing for you to put a banner up on your web page, which I will see when I visit you. I can just choose not to visit, if I don't want to see your message. It's another thing for you to put a banner inside my computer , on the software I use to manage my own data : that ought to be a tool I use for my own purposes, and not a place for you to do what you want. A tool which starts acting as an agent for its dev…

If I create software I can do whatever the heck I want and that includes displaying a billion banners. And you got the right to not use my software.

If you trust the makers of LibreOffice enough to run their software on your machine, you might also consider trusting them on this decision. Unless of course you know better than them about what it needs to keep the software alive, in which case you might wanna give them a hint (e.g. by detailing how you would imagine it would work instead in terms of finances).

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#143
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with political donations in the US. I gave to one campaign 10 years ago and I've been getting consistent requests for donations since. So now they all get marked as spam. The first one came right after my donation. I guess it works for them but it's crazy to me that all these orgs basically make you regret ever donating in the first place. Ironically, though, I've donated to Wikipedia and they've never bothered…

Political donation spam is a plague. I ran a donation website in 2018 and 2020 that split up money among many candidates, and by far the biggest complaint was the flood of email that came after using my site. In 2018 there wasn't even an opt-out button on ActBlue. In 2020 they added one, but the default was still to share your info. But it doesn't even really matter, because campaigns continue to buy and sell donor l…

This is a great response. Thank you. :)

I'll check out oath.vote (maybe).

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#144
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this same feeling with donating blood (in most EU countries you don't get paid for this so it is completely charitable). If you have donated blood, every 2-3 months they will send you an e-mail for a new donation cycle. That's fine. But if you don't respond, they will send another reminder. Then a text. Then they will call you. Yes, you can just click the "Not this time" button, and click the reason for denyin…

I donated blood for 25 years in Italy (I can’t anymore due to health reasons). Here we have a semi-public organization (AVIS - Italian Blood Volunteers Association) that handles donation and distribution. Zero stress, no “pushy” reminders, everything is completely voluntary. The trick is that by donating blood you receive your blood test results (a very comprehensive panel). It’s a mutually beneficial “do ut des” arr…

We had the same system (Sanquin), they even have donation trucks that make the rounds through areas that don't have a donation clinic nearby. And they do give you a minor blood screening, and you get some good snacks after donating. But alas, they are also quite pushy with reminders :+)

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#145

While the donation banner doesn't seem like an issue to me, the WMF comparison is extremely inappropriate if they want to talk about appropriate means of fundraising. The WMF is notorious for its donation banners making wildly exaggerated claims about the state of the Foundation (it needs some money to be operational, it is however not by any real stretch of the imagination in financial trouble or losing its independ…

This comes up every year; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising/2025_ban... for instance.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#146

Just yesterday I used Jellyfin2Samsung to install Moonlight on my TV. After the installation, the app shown a popup to donate to the author ("buy me a beer"). And I figured why not? The software turned a tedious process into a one-click solution, letting me do what I wanted to do (stream games to my TV) rather than spending an evening messing with Tizen Studio. Absolutely worth a few dollars. KDE's Plasma will popup…

I believe Jellyfin recently made it onto the tizen app store, fwiw.

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#148
> Moving the request to the Start Centre is not an escalation, but a change in location and frequency.

I support LibreOffice and what they're trying to do here, but this statement that it's not an "escalation" out of one side of their mouth and then admitting it's a "change in location and frequency" out of the other tells me that they are being disingenuous about it. An unobtrusive notice on where to donate seems like a reasonable direction, but if they don't view this obvious escalation as such, then what else will they do that they don't view as an escalation?

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#149
post #19

I disagree with take on Wikipedia or Wikimedia there was a lot of trash talk because they were totally obnoxious with their fundraising. I donated once to Wikipedia and then I was getting Jimmy Wales in my mailbox basically like everyday. That actually drove me away from ever wanting to donate to them. Then there was a lot of talking if they really are so much in need of money but that's different topic. In contrast…

The salaries are a big turnoff for me to donate again: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

Re: LibreOffice and the art of overreacting

#150

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, offl…

I'm not sure people get desensitized. Personally, whenever I notice a really unintrusive donation banner, I have more chance to actually give money to this entity, because I've been shown so much crap all over, so I can respect someone who places a gentle nudge at the bottom of a screen I'll look at for a whole 5 seconds. I'm not sure how it degrades the experience, too.

Also, you might want to read the article. LibreOffice specifically points out the banner was moved, and not added or removed.

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