Hello Aqualung, 2011/4/17 aqualung <[email protected]>
> See, I learned about this "forum" (it isn't really a forum, it's something > concocted out of mailing lists to sort of resemble a real forum) by > accident > one month ago, from a > http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/03/17/flattr-us/ blog comment by > Florian Effenberger . My suggestion to advertise the existence of this > Nabble widely has gone unheeded. Honi soit qui mal y pense. > > A week ago I > > http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/I-am-downloading-LibreOffice-to-try-it-out-td2790818i20.html#a2802923 > suggested that talks be opened about collaboration with the > http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ premier volunteer OpenOffice > forum . There was only one unfavorable response, otherwise silence. > > So, how are the hundreds of thousands of LibreOffice users going to get > assistance for their urgent questions? Please don't tell me "mailing > lists", > that's a laugh. The numbers tell the story: 2629 topics in "Dev", 802 > topics > in "Users". > > But there are existing LibreOffice and OpenOffice forums. I still don't get the point. > I have been posting comments here for a month, engaging in some > discussions, > because I want to learn about open source in general, open-source office > software, efforts to combat anti-competitive practices, and who the people > deeply involved are and how they act. > > My impressions are decidedly mixed. It doesn't appear to be about the users > first and foremost. The few users who manage to find their way here aren't > always served well. I've seen answers that are "out in left field", i.e., > unconnected to the question, or no answers at all. > > http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Writer-Problem-with-modern-typefaces-having-more-than-the-standard-styles-td2794737.html > This person is still waiting for an answer to a question asked nearly two > weeks ago, already containing a detailed description of the problem and > links to bug reports etc. > > I keep hearing "freedom", but is it about the freedom of users from being > locked into a proprietary file format... or the freedom of unattached > software developers to get their patches committed? Do people here really > believe that a "community" of unpaid enthusiasts can take the place of a > major corporation, or several, putting dozens of experienced professional > developers to work Monday thru Friday, month after month? If so, it's a > pipe > dream! > I'm afraid that's what Free and Open Source Software is exactly about. It's not a pipe dream, it's not about whether people are paid and unpaid, and it's not about serving users as if they were customers either. It's more complex than that (see my take on it: http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2011/03/17/what-does-community-mean-part-2/) and it's not a pipe dream, because Free and Open Source Software is now an important part of IT, whether backed by corporations or not. Best, Charles. > > Coming back to the call for a forum, why not let the users decide how they > would prefer to ask for assistance? Put up a banner on all your websites > advertising a poll and give the options: > > (1) Create new forum from scratch > (2) Join forces with http://www.oooforum.org/ > (3) Join forces with http://user.services.openoffice.org/ > (4) Mailing lists > (5) ... > (6) ... > (7) ... > (8) ... > > Let the poll run for a month and then implement the top one or two > vote-getters. > > -- > View this message in context: > http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Forums-again-tp2830659p2831151.html > Sent from the Discuss mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > -- > Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > > -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
