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Subject: Re: AOO Downloads, false-positive and Beyond
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Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 22:25:07 -0400
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On 2012-05-15, at 14:49 , Roberto Galoppini wrote:

> Hi all,
>=20
> as you might now SourceForge is serving the vast majority of AOO =
binaries
> downloads, and we provide download stats by country, Operating System,
> Browser, and traffic source. Some of you are familiar with our stats =
pages,
> while others use our APIs.
>=20
> We do have spam detection enabled to identify false-positive traffic =
like
> bots, and I wish to share some insights of what happened recently on =
this
> front.
>=20
> We noticed that Russia was the highest download country, something =
that was
> hard to explain. The popularity was limited to /localized/ru/3.4.0/
> Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.0_Win_x86_install_ru.exe
>=20
> We looked at the raw download logs for that file, and saw a lot of
> downloads from user-agent "Download Master".  Apparently it is popular =
in
> Russia, and apparently it starts hundreds of simultaneous downloads at
> once.  Our download stats system does have some logic to prevent =
double
> counting this type of traffic, but it didn't exclude all of the =
duplicate
> downloads, so the result was still high.  We've updated our download =
stats
> logic to correct this, and then reprocessed the raw logs from =
2012-05-08 to
> present, to update the stats.
>=20
> Beyond bringing our ability to provide reliable stats, I wish to throw =
some
> new ideas about how we can help Apache OpenOffice to grow:
>=20
> a. We could provide intelligence on which projects were downloaded =
with
> Open Office within a week.
> b. We could cross-merch Apache OpenOffice project with other projects
> c. We have community management and Internet Marketing to support the
> community

I'm in favour, as you probably can guess--I strongly promoted OOo both =
as a binary for users and as a source project for developers =
(considerable overlap)--but do have simple procedural questions, =
starting with "we"? You mean, I'd hope, those who simply want to do it? =
As we encountered with the OOo Marketing Project, good ideas and =
intentions can quickly get lost in community cacophony: more noise than =
signal.=20

What we discovered was that focusing on particular drives and engaging =
those who would be able to carry them out, long term and without undue =
stress to their regular lives (this is all volunteer), helped. What I =
further discovered and tried as much as possible to arrange was the =
support & coordination of small, medium and even large businesses and =
public sector entities. For instance, a company may have an extension =
that adds value to AOO and which, by its use, adds huge marketing value =
to their company and product. I received *a lot* of such requests from =
companies, and I would like to reacquaint myself with them and they with =
us, but it takes time.

A preliminary list of organizations that were using OOo and probably are =
interested in AOO can be found at =
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments

The thing that I noted repeatedly was that many organizations, esp. =
public sector (and also not a small number of individuals coming from a =
Windows or Mac background) refused or were reluctant to download the =
product without professional support. The user forums worked great but =
in the case of public sectors and also companies, they wanted =
professional support, as they were used to getting (and paying for). =
This does not mean we must wait for the horse to be hitched to this =
wagon, not by any means. And I'm working on rekindling those who *were* =
providing that support. (Besides Sun/Oracle, there were actually quite a =
few. Some can still be found from http://support.openoffice.org/)


>=20
> We've already run a 250k impressions campaign through our media =
channels,
> and we plan to run more.
> Our community growth hacker and Apache member Rich Bowen has covered =
Apache
> OpenOffice both on feathercast and SourceForge blog, and also here we =
plan
> to do more videos and interviews.
>=20


> Roberto
All in all, thanks, Roberto! I would suggest an IRC meeting with an =
agenda to start coordinating activities. I also see some implicit =
milestones. These include drawing attention to what is here, what is =
coming and how people can use it and contribute to it--without thinking =
about the Cloud, or cost. And if they must, that there are options =
there, too.

As well, wouldn't it be great that over summer we do enough so that when =
school starts again here in the Northern Hemisphere, students and =
faculty can actually use something that is all about working together =
for a better place?

Ciao
Louis=