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Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:59:57 -0400
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Subject: Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
From: Rob Weir <robweir@apache.org>
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
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On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat <imacat@mail.imacat.idv.tw> wrote:
> On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said:
>> Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
>> the network.  The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
>> skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
>> skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc.  These business
>> interests all become more valuable the more users we have.  Although
>> nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
>> project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
>> project helps their business as well.  So aside from the "volunteer
>> pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
>
>     Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative.
> In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the
> project.  I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project.  Why
> some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated
> further.
>

Been there; done that.   You didn't see IBM very active in
OpenOffice.org years ago, did you?  There is a huge difference between
a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one.  A community-led
one is much more welcoming to other large companies..  If a company
wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all
the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's
priorities would dominate over everything else.  Look at the constant
battles Novell and Sun had, for example.  This changes with the move
to Apache.  So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies,
small and large.  We shouldn't let past failures in this area
discourage us too much.  It is a new situation now.

Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or
whatever, and have zero interest in participating.  However, those
companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies
that are participate. There is a level of information, skill,
expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside,
rather than watching from the outside.

>     I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support,
> but I cannot reach them.  They just don't respond to us, and have no
> interests to connect to the open source community.  (Afraid of us
> stealing their business?  Afraid of us sharing their profit?  Just
> afraid of communication trouble?  Being conservative for Asian culture?)
>

A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or
Microsoft Office, if they need to.  So they are not as dependent on
the success of our project.

-Rob

>     This inference is basically great, but there are some potential
> holes in it.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> imacat ^_*' <imacat@mail.imacat.idv.tw>
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>
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