I have lurked at the mailing list over the last four days, as I was away
on a short break. Using a smartphone has not made my life easier, but I
have been able to read most of the relevant messages.
I am a founding member of TDF, and a member of the SC, but first and
foremost I am an end user. I am not a developer, I do not write docs, I
am not able to do QA tests (to me, a bug is a feature, although in the
wrong direction), I am not able to localize SW, and so on. To make it
short, I am basically useless for a SW project.
So, after having read hundreds of emails discussing the merits of
different licenses and processes, concentrating on the geography where
the code should live (basically, US vs EU, or Delaware vs Germany), I am
asking a very simple question: what about end users?
OOo has over 100 million of end users, who use the SW for their basic
needs (write a letter, produce an expense note, build slides, manage
their address book, and so on).
What is going to happen to these guys, apart from the fact that if they
prefer to use OOo over LibreOffice - which is perfectly acceptable - it
is still not clear (but here I might just have missed some bit of info)
if and when they will be able to install a new version of the SW?
I understand - but I might be wrong - that ASF is not used to deal with
such a huge end user base (actually, the third in terms of absolute size
after MS Windows and MS Office).
In the past, not even IBM with Lotus SmartSuite has been able to reach
that size of user base, while the OOo community - not Sun, not Oracle -
has been able to grow and nurture it.
Just a heads up, not to forget the end users.
--
Italo Vignoli - The Document Foundation
email italo.vign...@documentfoundation.org
phone +39.348.5653829 - VoIP +39.02.320621813
skype italovignoli - italo.vign...@gmail.com
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