> On 10/06/2010 05:29 AM, Alex Fisher wrote: > > Secondly, "Libre Office"!? > > You might not understand the meaning.
I do, both in the OSS sense *and* in the sense conveyed by the original tongue... > You might not know how to pronounce it. I probably pronounce it better than you do. I speak French quite well, with less of an accent than most Anglophones. And because of that, I also read and comprehend at a reasonable level the other 3 major members of the Romance group (I've not so far found any need to try my hand at Romanian, the fifth member of the group). I also speak some German, which also enables me to read and make sense of most of the Germanic languages (I have not so far taken much notice of Icelandic). I even speak Finnish, and can read a some Hebrew and Greek. > But both of those are solvable issues. No, only the first is. > > Branding is a black art. And? > > When a new brand is created, most of the money spent on naming it, goes > to trademark searches, and determining if there are pre-existing > negative, or obscene connotations to the proposed name, in languages > that might be used where the new brand is to be marketed. I'm fully aware of all that. Your point is? > > > would apply to virtually all other non-Romance languages. > > Any name that is chosen is going to have issues with people not being > able to pronounce it, or not knowing what it means. > > Try this sentence: "Sebeqabele gqi thapha bathi nguqo ngqothwane". So? > > If you learned to speak that language prior to age six, there is a 25% > probability that you won't be able to pronounce that sentence correctly. > If you didn't learn to speak that language prior to age six, you won't > be able to pronounce it correctly. Maybe, maybe not. Some linguists suggest the age of 8 as the age at which pronunciations and stress patterns become set, actually. > > Could you spell "i-ofisi ekhululekileyo " correctly? > [I'm fairly confident that you couldn't pronounce it correctly.] You might be surprised. > > That is what LibO would be called, if that language were used, rather > than the Romance languages that are used. > > Ag, maybe somebody would give dem yankees a break, and use "vula > i-ofisi" instead. They still couldn't pronounce it, but they might be > able to spell it. > > > The choice of "Libre" immediately gives me the impression that the whole > > thing > > People can learn new words. If they want to. The "average" end user in most cases probably just couldn't care less (or, for the USAians, "could care less".) > People can learn new meanings to existing words. see above... > > Governments have used Orwellian NewSpeak for decades, to make their > crimes sound more palatable. > > > I have trouble believing the figures put forward. Bear in mind that the > > Community Council is *not* the entire community. The Developers are > > *not* the entire community. They are *part* of the community, and *only* > > part of it. > > The Community Council represents the users. That is how it is supposed to be. But that also implies some sort of consultation, which is completely lacking here > The Developers are the people that work on the product. > > Take a look at who registered the various LibreOffice domain names. And > look at how fast those domain names were registered. That (the hasty registration of domain names) only serves to increase my level of suspicion relating to the motivation. > > [One reason why the formation of Document Foundation, and LibreOffice > had to kept under wraps, was to minimize domain name cybersquatting.] There could (and should) still have been much more consultation outside the CC and devs than there was. Such could have been achieved without prematurely revealing the putative names favoured by the breakaways. > > >To the vast majority of people who comprise the community, this > > announcement would have come as a complete shock. > > It would have been a shock only to those people who don't pay any > attention to the Community Council list, or the developer list. Really? And what percentage of the community reads these lists? And which developer list(s) do you refer to? > > By July 2010, it was clear that OOo developers, community council, and > users would declare independence from Oracle. The only issue was when. No, it was *not* clear. I've been following these sagas through several different media.... > > Once OpenIndiana was announced, it should have been obvious to everybody > that OOo was the next community project that Oracle would lose. Not obvious. Several online sources reported the "birth" of that group. Those I read also speculated on the fate of other things within Oracle. OO.o was not mentioned by any of them. OTOH, Java was.... > > jonathon I still remain to be convinced that this is really what the majority of the community (which must include end-users and others who have any involvement with OO.o (the product), not just the developers and marketeers) truly wants to see happen. My personal concern is that this move has sounded the death knell for OO.o. IMO, it is the end of any real chance we had of seriously reducing the market share of Microsoft Office. -- Alex Fisher Co-Lead, CD-ROM Project OpenOffice.org Marketing Community Contact Australia/New Zealand http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
