Comments on: OpenOffice.org Conference 2007: some thoughts

By: Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:50:47 +0000

I just wrote a huge long answer and WP threw it away. Too upset to write it again, maybe next week.

By: Roberto Galoppini

Roberto Galoppini — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:08:37 +0000

You’re definitely right Tor, thank you!

By: Davide Dozza

Davide Dozza — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:36:56 +0000

Jim, first we have to define what kind of community we are talking about. Is it a free software community? Is it a software user community? Is it a community of software vendors? I think is very important because people can get puzzled about, as I’m becoming.
In this way people will consciously join and participate to the project.

By: Davide Dozza

Davide Dozza — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:22:50 +0000

Simon, I definitively agree with you about developers and end-users. But this is exactly the question a I’m reflecting on.
Why OOocon had a large proportion of people who were directly involved in co-development of OpenOffice.org and they come almost from Sun, IBM, etc and not from small and medium firms?
I think OOo could be a great horizontal framework for services and software delivery on which firms could develop their business and contribute back. And moreover OOo could also be a place where volunteers contribute or a gym for people who want to get trained in a large and challenging project.
But OOo doesn’t look like this. It seems that the major discussion topics are relating to keep satisfied the SUN requirements which are JCA, license, etc. instead to encourage external contributions and participation.
It’s maybe time to transform StarDivision people from great developers to project managers oriented to the Community and to open the project?

By: Tor Lillqvist

Tor Lillqvist — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:02:38 +0000

Aren’t you linking to the wrong Red Flag company? The one that joined the OOo community is called something like “Red Flag CH2000″ http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Beijing_Redflag_Chinese_2000_Software_Co.,_Ltd.(, while you link to Red Flag Linux, another entity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

By: JJS

JJS — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:47:47 +0000

A community is what it is. Those who are interested in the project will join and participate based on their level of interest. Those who do not participate can offer opinions. But if the opinion simply amounts to, “I don’t like your community,” then the project members are likewise free to offer constructive criticism on that opinion.

Later . . . Jim

By: Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:09:02 +0000

Has it been easier for Ximian Evolution, Michael?

By: Michael Meeks

Michael Meeks — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:24:20 +0000

Unfortunately, attracting and retaining corporate developers to work on OO.o is really rather a difficult problem, though easier than attracting volunteers Persuading Sun to change their community and ownership structures to improve things is also an almost impossible task.
Some day, I hope we’ll see a meritocratically elected board of core contributors rounding up an OO.o conference packed with developers

By: Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:31:26 +0000

I didn’t think much of that panel either, David, but I think you need to reflect more deeply. A key question to ask is how many of the people at the Drupal event were actually developers working on the core code, and how many were end users?

OOoCon had a large proportion of people who were directly involved in co-development of OpenOffice.org - the annual OOoCon provides them with a place to meet. OO.o is well sponsored, yes, which some people regard as a strength. Thus most of the individual developers who work on its code are employees of a sponsor company. End users of OpenOffice.org don’t really have to have special skills to use it so aren’t that motivated to attend. There are many end-user mini-conferences around the world during the year, arranged by the excellent OOo marketing community.

By contrast, Drupal users will be mainly programmers and/or SysAdmins. They will be interested in hints and tips on usage, on meeting each other for learning and support. Drupal is also relatively new and there are plenty of people encountering it for the first time. I’d expect a Drupal event to be larger and to have a larger number of users attending.

While I think the discussion of community building is a good think (indeed there was a session on that topic at OOoCon), I think your comparison is misplaced. Any technology whose main users are developers will produce the effect you describe when compared against OOo, regardless of the health of either community.