NeoOffice Development Plans and Support Levels for 2007

[pluby]

Every so often, Ed and I go through the process of identifying what we think are the critical development and fundraising tasks that will need to done during the coming year to ensure that NeoOffice remains stable and most importantly, available for free download to anyone. We then look at the cost, both in time and money, and prioritize the tasks to fit within our limited resources.

Based on the above, here is the list of the big tasks that Ed and I plan to devote our time to during 2007:

Office 2007 file format and Excel macro support - While Novell and the odf-converter project have done a great job in developing support for Office 2007 Word files and Excel macros, Office 2007 is very new so we expect that lots of bugs will be found when, over the next few months, Office 2007 users start generating lots of docx files. So, Ed and I expect that we are going to need to invest significant amounts of time to work with Novell and the odf-converter project to fix these issues.

Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" - Based on our past experience with new Mac OS X releases as well as our very small amount of testing of NeoOffice on the Leopard developer seeds, the upcoming Mac OS X release will likely cause very critical bugs in NeoOffice that will need to solved. Many of these bugs are likely to be difficult to solve and, as a result, will require significant amounts of our time.

Fundraising - For the past four years, Ed and I have handled all aspects of running NeoOffice. Not only have we done all of the development work, but we have handled all of "back office" tasks like accounting, tax and other governmental filings, business insurance, IT, and Bugzilla support. Each of these are expensive and/or time consuming. Given our development tasks and the fact that donation and Early Access revenues are not adequate for us to pay someone else to do these back office tasks, we need to spend some time either developing products or plugins that can generate revenue or soliciting sponsorships for the NeoOffice site.

In order for us to be able to do the above tasks, we need to reallocate our time. Since many of NeoOffice's back office tasks are not optional (we cannot stop doing required tax filings or put our families at risk by cancelling our business insurance), we will be making the following changes to free up time to devote to the above tasks:

Bugzilla support levels will drop significantly - Over the last year or so, Bugzilla has been increasingly used as a customer support system. We have tried to meet the demands that our Bugzilla users have requested from us. However, in doing so we have found that, in effect, we have been providing premium user support levels for free. Corporations charge huge sums of money for this level of support and we cannot afford to fund that out of existing revenues. So, we have reduced our Bugzilla support levels to the levels used by other large open source projects. In other words, we will promptly handle critical bugs, such as crashing and hanging, that are easily reproducible. However, other bugs will not get immediate responses and general customer support requests may languish for a long time before Ed or I look at them. Of course, if any volunteers can help eliminate the many invalid bugs and support requests that get filed, it will help speed up our identification and fixing of the critical bugs. But with our current number of volunteer bug evaluators, I expect that the number of bugs stuck in the "unconfirmed" state will increase significantly once NeoOffice 2.1 is avaiable for free download.

CD sales will be discontinued - During 2006, we sold less than 25 CDs. While this adds up to a little bit of revenue, printing, burning, packaging, and mailing them takes valuable time that we no longer have. NeoOffice is a mature enough application that, if there is really a need for this service, a volunteer or business should eventually step forward and provide this service.

Only NeoOffice 2.1 will be available for download - Since we have not supported NeoOffice 1.2.2 for more than a year now and NeoOffice 2.1 uses a more stable version of OpenOffice.org than 2.0 Aqua Beta 3, only NeoOffice 2.1 will be available on our website when it is released for free download on 27 March 2007.

Patrick

[jgd]

Thanks a lot to Ed and you for all the work you have done and do for the Neo community.

To reduce the "false" bugs, maybe it would be good to put an advice in the NeoOffice Bugzilla page telling the user: "Before filing a bug, post a request in NeoOffice Support Forum". So the support requests could be eliminated (at least some of them).

Jacqueline

[OPENSTEP]

Here's a different perspective that may offer some insight...

NeoOffice has grown significantly.

Since the release of AB3, the number of users of NeoOffice has grown by
an order of magnitude. A while back we had very few users; it was easy
and feasible for a handful of people to provide top tier personalized
support for our community. We have too many users; we cannot sustain
the same level for everyone especially given the number of new
inexperienced users.

This is just a natural circumstance. Demands are growing linearly,
resources are not.

Creative solutions welcome And I feel compelled to mention that all
the effort people have been putting into the wiki and directing various
topics in the fora to it have been amazing. Without that I'd feel much
more stressed than I already do!

Funding has not grown proportionally to the user base.

OK, so this may put certain people into a tizzy, but really...free
software doesn't come for free. For me, the ideal of F/OSS is that
people who are in need get subsidized by those who can give; those who
can give through support, editing, translation, or programming (whatever
the talent they may have may be) donate that to help the others who
either do not have those abilities to donate or do not have the means to
give back.

I count ourselves lucky that many who have helped us out have this
altruism in their nature. For me this project has been and always will
be an amazing example of how service to others and volunteerism has been
successfully extended into the world of technology. I believe everyone
here knows of all of those of whom I speak (rays, sardisson, jakeosx,
yoxi, pluby, lemonaid, dan, kevin, and all of everyone else whom I
forgot)

Although I do not wish to be pessimistic, these people are the exception
and not the norm.

Fortunately, it's possible to reduce this to sheer numbers to prove this
point.

Given our estimated number of downloads per month when combined with the
total amount of donations we've had from altruism plus the Early Access
Program...

The average donation per NeoOffice user is only about 1 cent.

I can only conclude that altruism has unfortunately lost out to the
freeloader.

If every user donated even just 25 cents it would be enough to hire
another full time developer; a full dollar could even result in a full
staff. But there's no need for issuing that kind of call for donation since the
majority of people aren't even willing to give a single penny.

I almost wish those people would do us a favor and go pirate MS Office
instead of freeloading off of the altruism of others.

We are creaking under the load.

We've gained in popularity for one reason or another, whether it be
quality of service and volunteerism or quality of product or what have
you. We speculate whether it's due to stress or due to DoS attacks, but
frankly, I think we're all just creaking under the load.

Support requests have more then doubled, bandwidth requirements have
increased the same. BZ filings are up, demand for patch downloads is
ridiculous.

We are creaking under the load, both personally as well as in terms of
infrastructure as recent events have shown.

We need to consider sustainability and long term stability.

Our user base has grown by an order of magnitude, and our infrastructure, both
in terms of equipment and personnel, is being stretched. Although I
wish it would be true, it does not appear altrusim alone will fill the
gap between supply and demand. We continue to be attacked personally
and politically by other projects whose own motives are still unclear.

We're trying to find new ways to fulfill the needs that we do not have
the resources to fill at this current time. Unfortunately, we live in a
capitalist world. In order to fill our needs we need to start exploring
establishing sustainable revenue streams in order to assure long term
viability.

Long term viability does not matter for the individual or for the
altruistic. It is something that matters only for those who are afraid
to forsake the monetary committment to a corporate entity to enter into a
contract to offer support value in return.

Those are the users who are now entering our "circle".

To them I say, it is your choice whether you invest that time and money either
to a corporation or in the service of others. But if you expect a "cost
savings", "free as in beer software", you are nothing but an opportunist
preying on the good nature of others and karma will pay you back in kind.

ed

[ovvldc]

Hi Ed and Patrick,

Given the massive increase of traffic and the complaints about the website, perhaps a call to the userbase to help redesign the website. In such a way that you can add some Google Ads to more than the download page?

Putting some of those financial calculation on the download page may be good. Some clarification that features can be added if you are willing to provide funding, possibly. I would just be careful in wording it so that the whole thing seems positive rather than a whiny begging story.

Just a thought.. Raising money is not my specialty. Myself, I have donated money twice and more hours than I can count, but I never figured out how to inspire this kind of behaviour in large crowds.

Best wishes,
Oscar

[rays]

Is there a way by which we can allow read-only access to all the good stuff in the fora and on the wiki but charge an entry fee or an annual maintenance charge if you want to create a new thread, post to an existing one or post a bug report?

My reasoning is that there are inevitably occasions when new users post questions without a) reading the built-in help, b) searching the existing forum questions & answers, c) searching the wiki and d) considering where the knowledge in the answers to their questions is really going to come from.

I certainly don't want that the scale of fee will be of the order that it would curtail the dissemination of knowledge but there are a number of values to be considered in arriving at an equitable and sustainable solution.

It may save a lot of time for someone if s/he can ask a question and get an answer - all at no charge - but what value does that put on the time spent by those who provide their solution? The contributions I make here depends to a very large extent on my organization's understanding of and the value it places on volunteerism. It is in our nature.

If the knowledge already exists in a forum or a wiki page, they can still find it for free. But if they think their question is worth paying to get an answer for, they would have that choice too.

Should the knowledge I have gained and choose to share in the name of World Scouting be subsidising commercial enterprises better able than us to afford the costs? I think not but recognise and accept that is today's reality. I too have gained a tremendous amount of insight and knowledge through my personal engagement here - and my organization benefits from that increased knowledge. The time I spend on this project is often, but not always, time my organization is paying for so they had better be getting value for money from my involvement.

Let's say USD 10.- per annum subscription. 30,000 (nearly) registered users. Only a small percentage might take it up. Will it bring in more or less than current CD sales? How could subscription services be easily administered - without that falling on Patrick and Ed?

Tied in with early access to the patches? You can read the solution to your bug is available but the patch isn't available unless you are a subscriber. You'll just have to wait for the next 'point update release' in six months time, if you're not prepared to pony-up before then.

Lots of choices then. Anyone any experience that might make sense of my ramblings or simply sink them without trace?

[OPENSTEP]

There's definiteliy a lot of interesting thoughts there...

The thoughts on trying to figure out how to deal with ongoing support are interesting as well. While I haven't seen it happen thus far, there definitely is the potential for the forum, BZ, etc. to be misused as a corporate helpdesk, and that's something that I want to prevent and don't know of any good way to answer. I'll need to think about that one...perhpas on a similar note some kind of a "point" system (e.g. people start off with a certain number of points, post a question lose points, help answer someone else's question gain points, etc.)?

We should also think about finding a better way to make the wiki more visible, especially in the support forum. It's not that the knowledge isn't there already, it's that either people don't find it readily enough or just don't want to take the time to find it. There are many more things now that I'm answering with links to the wiki

Yeah, any kind of website reorg is something that neither Patrick nor I have the time to do, plus it'll take time to implement as well (the website is dynamic) and also retranslated...so it's not a small job

ed

[bigmudcake]

I think you need to recognise that NeoOffice is growing now to the point that you have to think along the lines of Redhat etc.

That is, there is a group of people who expect premium support and are willing to pay for it.

Redhat recognised that in order to increase up take by businesses, they needed to provide the type of support they demand, thus they have the RHEL versions of Linux, then the Fedora vesion as the cutting edge limited supported version.

So I think its critical that a new premium subscription model is adopted for those people willing to pay for it, and even expect it as an option if they look at migrating to NeoOffice for their business.

There is a window of opportunity, especially in the Intel Mac's, where there is no native version of MSOffice, and no Mac wordprocessing program able to open Office2007 xml formats.

Then I think you need to package a 1 year support subscription and boxed set to Mac Retailers as an option to bundle with their new computer sales as an alternative to MSOffice.

Just my 2 cents worth

[Lorinda]

If I remember correctly, that is something that was mentioned in one of the video "interviews" at one of the events Ed and Patrick did in Europe last summer. I'm not sure how it would be implemented, but I can certainly see the logic of providing some sort of "premium service."

I am less comfortable with having folks pay for "write" access to trinity. In part because I am worried that it would backfire. But I can certainly see the concerns about time, and the fact that some people ask questions before consulting the help that is already out there. (And I will admit that I probably did so in my early days of posting here).

I don't remember how the trinity registration process works. Is there an automatically generated e-mail sent to those who join? If so, could we add a couple of paragraphs on "what to do before posting to trinity"? I would be willing to write a draft for it.

It is also possible that some of us who frequent the forums could be polite but firm with "newbies" and "abusers" about searching the online help, wiki, etc. (Philip already does a good job of this).

Of course neither of these suggestions are going to generate more revenue for the Neo project, and some folks will ignore the e-mail or postings and just keep asking questions here without looking elsewhere first.

I also think there are two kinds of people who post such "obvious" questions. Those who are just too lazy to look it up themselves, and those who don't know how to successfully search for the answers they need.

I still have a terrible time searching the online help in Neo, because the terminology OOo/Neo uses is so different that what I learned in MS Word (5.1!), AW, etc. It's taken some time for me to both learn how and remember to search the other sources before resorting to the forums for my questions.

[OPENSTEP]

[bigmudcake]

I think maybe a 3 tiered approach, in which all active support is charged - since all active support costs money to provide .

People pay nothing, but have access to forums etc as a passive user (maybe limited to 4 messages a year), but are able to look at all the info thats available.

Small Annual subscription (maybe US$10 per year) for unlimited write access to forums. As write access is a form of active support. This will also help having more genuine and valuable info in the forums, (no bogus entries)

Premium support (not sure what cost could be) for telephone, and 12 hour response times to emails etc, with direct access to developers/support personel.

Also, see if you can get a volunteer base to maintain/administer the forums, would then free you up .

Have a look at the model they use at www.zimbra.com where they have a paid version and a community version of their product.

my 2 cents worth

[bigmudcake]

[OPENSTEP]

[pluby]

[sardisson]

[jakeOSX]

i would not support a paid version of the forum.

i don't want to sound confrontational, intention is often hard to show on the internet. however, if users had to pay to get support, that support will come without my help.

one of the reasons that neo is such an improvement over openoffice.org has nothing to do with the program. it is purely this community. we support neooffice users. (some of us support openoffice.org users too, but that is just because someone has to)

i've been thinking about this, as the money part comes up every six months or so. i did think about putting google ads on the wiki. but as i know nothing of the adsense payout, i didn't know if their intrusion would be worth it or not.

the problem with most of the ideas i think of is that they are nickle and diming the users. three bucks for this! or ten for that! i'm not so sure that they are the best approaches, especially in terms of things that the user would buy.

some ideas, nevertheless.

a 'network installer'. basically an admin tool to put neo on a large number of machines all preconfigured. this could be a charge per use, or per seat, or however. yes it adds something more to maintain, but it is a time saving device worth using for some organizations.

bug bounty. no idea how to set this up, but basically someone puts a dollar amount on a bugzilla bug. when it is solved, the money goes to neo. the problem with that is, what if smokey solves it? anyway, most of those types of 'bug's or even features will be grander than say "i crahsez when i downlozsd it on your intrawebs!"

external features. here is the grand one, the neooffice/star office comparison. make the 'enterprise' version of neooffice. have certain features only availible through purchase. what features? i dunno, i can survive with old stuff, so that would be up to someone to research. but with this you can charge for a liscence.

sell naked pictures of ed on ebay. yes, i know we all have some already, but new ones could bring in a hefty amount.

write a book. no i am serious. write a book on neooffice/openoffice. ed, you can write one on the who start of the effort, why neo was made, etc. patrick, perhaps a guidebook to either oo.o coding, or an overview of working with a large opensource program. you got a lot of knowledge up there, putting it on paper would benifit us all. so you write these books, we can use Lulu, or even just PDF it and sell it.

hell, if the community was up for it, a user guide for neo would be great. you could pull most of it from the wiki i suppose. we could sell it for $10 and people would buy it. (oh yes! they would!) have $0.50 go to ed and patrick, the rest come to me and smokey.

bake sales, neo-cookies and topless car washes are also recommended.

again i think my point was ninjas are better than pirates.