Why should I donate to NeoOffice?

[snowshed]

I'm sure this post will either be pulled or moved by the folks responsible for NeoOffice. Yes, they have the right to do that, they legally own everything posted here. But at least they will have read it, which is my goal even if no other users read it.

I would post this in Ranting, but since I'm not good enough for NeoOffice, I can't post there. "Not good enough" means I haven't donated $100 on a yearly basis. This is the first time I've ever had to pay to post problems, bugs, ask for support from other users, etc.

I would love to support the development of NeoOffice to get the look and feel of OS X. But not at $100/year when:

I can buy MS Office 2011 for Mac, Home user, 3 licenses, delivered to my home for $103. So, for however long MS has 2011, no further costs.
Their forums are free.

Office for Mac 2011 does not have a database component, but I doubt most users would have the knowledge to use a database program as sophisticated as MS Access, or Open Office/NeoOffice Base.

There are errors in the help file for NeoOffice writer, but I'm not going to pay to provide NeoOffice with a list of errors. Either they are willing to do what is needed to find problems and eliminate them, or they are not.

I certainly can't recommend this program to members of my Mac User Group. But, I would recommend Open Office.

And that's what I will be using from now on.

EDIT: Moved to ranting, seems to be the only suitable location for this kind of thing. (djpimley)

[djpimley]

Hi snowshed,

I'm sure Patrick can address your points in more detail if he wishes to, but I'll just point out that you are not expected to pay $100 per year to post bugs and ask for support, you are paying to have those bugs fixed and timely support delivered by NeoOffice's tirelessly dedicated and professional team of developers. If you don't want to pay $100 per year for that service, then you are still quite welcome to download and use the application as-is, browse the forum and the wiki and benefit from the wealth of technical knowledge posted in each. If you think MS office represents better value for money to you then I sincerely suggest, without vitriol, that you should buy MS Office.

Just my tuppence.

[pluby]

I will add onto Daniel's explanation with the following: NeoOffice is supported solely by donations. Those donations fund basically one part-time engineer (me) so when I spend time answering support questions like yours, it is time that cannot be spent fixing critical crashing and hanging bugs in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code or for fixing new bugs that appear when a new version of Mac OS X is released.

This is exactly why direct support from the one NeoOffice engineer requires $100 in donations: to encourage users to search for the answer to common questions themselves so that I can plow the maximum amount of time fixing severe bugs and preparing for Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release.

I understand that many users wish we had unlimited time and engineers to provide free support, but let's be realistic: Microsoft, OpenOffice.org, and LibreOffice rarely staff their free forums with their product engineers. Instead, you are conversing with other users of the product. In contrast, our forums are for users that feel they need to talk directly with the NeoOffice engineers so comparing us to a free forum is really, IMHO, comparing two very different levels of service.

Patrick