Statement about OOoFf
By glazou on Tuesday 23 November 2004, 10:24 - Mozilla - Permalink
What happened yesterday night deserves an answer here. Yesterday, Linspire Inc. announced the release of OOoFf, their retail box package of Open Office and Mozilla Firefox sold on shelves and online for $30. In the two hours following the email announcement, I received extremely painful comments by email, noticed a few negative comments on my blog before I closed comments, and on a few other information channels. I had to face this sort of comments/questions, and sometimes from people who are not used to shout with the wolves:
- how can you still work for those people ?
- now you know who they are, and you are an asshole if you keep doing Nvu for them
- Linspire and you are morons, playing an unfair game with our work
- etc.
Of course, I am not, and never was, in the loop about this OOoFf. I learned about it through Linspire public marketing emails, and I was never involved in the discussions or work about it. It's then completely unfair to associate my company or my person to this product. I am very shocked by what happened yesterday, and I will not forget - nor forgive - the insults.
This story leaves me a very bad taste so here is what I think of this OOoFf :
- I think that a retail box on shelves is a good idea to propose an alternative to people who don't download software because they can't (slow bandwidth), because they don't dare (afraid of viruses), because they don't know, because, because, because...
- but I think it's overoptimistic to think it's going to really help the spread of Firefox and OpenOffice. Speaking of the browser, I think the impact will be insignificant compared to the ten million downloads of Firefox. I count much more on the magazines sold in airports and train stations bundled with a CD to spread the word, and the two pieces of software. That channel seems to me much more interesting to touch everyone than a retail box.
- This product is released by
Linspire Inc. in agreement and coooperation with both the Mozilla
Foundation and OpenOffice.org. I think there is a deep lack of
communication here:
- the OOoFf web site does not mention the agreement/cooperation with the two Open-Source organizations. There is not even a link to mozilla.org or openoffice.org.
- the OOoFf web site does not mention the fact the two products are free, open-source and all. If there is a link to the source or the downloadable binaries, I missed it.
- Mozilla.org and OpenOffice.org should have released a statement about this product at the same time Linspire Inc. was sending its mass-marketing email. That way, the community could have known immediately the product is released WITH them, not WITHOUT.
- nobody really knows if the Mozilla Foundation and OpenOffice.org will get some benefit out of this retail box
- the negative comments caused by the four points just above were predictable, 100% predictable. Predictable problems that remain unsolved are a mistake.
- I received a few emails about the name OOoFf itself. It seems that a GPL'd product named OOoFF, OpenOffice.org File Finder, pre-existed. If this is proved to be correct, it's is unfortunate that Linspire Inc. used the same name for its product. Even if they happen to have the legal right to do it, open-source and free software also imply a fair attitude. In our world, using someone else's name is not fair, even if it happens to be legal - remember "firebird".
In conclusion, I think Linspire Inc., the Mozilla Foundation and OpenOffice.org all three suffered from a serious lack of communication on this product release. I think it was highly predictable that this lack of communication towards the community in such a marketing campaign could only lead to the kind of strong reactions we saw yesterday. Open-source free software is not only about the licenses and what you are allowed to do or not. It's also a question of ethics, and of respect for the hundreds of people behind the tools. Not only the developers, but also the testers, the bug reporters, the people who spread the word, the one guy we never heard of, will never heard of, but who evangelized a friend and made him/her use Firefox. Or OpenOffice. Or Nvu. In that sense, and if a retail box for Firefox was needed, I don't understand why it does not come from the Mozilla Foundation itself. Last point, nothing can explain the insults and harsh comments; the authors do not deserve to be part of our community; my black-list has significantly grown yesterday.
UPDATE: points 3 (top line) and 3.3 are confirmed to me incorrect by Linspire Inc.'s CTO, Tom Welch, in a private conversation. Linspire had no agreement with the Mozilla Foundation and OpenOffice.org. MozFo and OOo only knew about it. Then a part of the conclusion, when I say that MozFo and OOo suffered from a lack of comm, falls.
Comments
People fail to realize that putting shrink-wrapped customer ready packages on
shelves costs a lot, usually far more than the content of the box. Look at the
price of a box of Corn Flakes in a super market, then at the price of the
ingredients used, manufacturing cost ain't high either, but you're mostly
paying for the brand, the box and the availability. It's the same for any
software solf on the shelves.
However this can't excuse the huge communication problem, but that one can
be solved, the apparent "rip-off" cost can't due to the way the consumer
market works.
Daniel
Daniel,
I feel what people say are okay. You feel offended because, you take things too personally. You just saw the slice of actually very good, ideal people who work for developing such products. They are very idealistic, and seem to have a short fuse when it comes to injustice (I don't necessarily think selling an open source product is injustice). If what Linspire does is a crime, then, RedHat have to be considered doing bad stuff, and all the companies who makes money on open source are bad companies. I think it is a good thing, that such a product came out. I think Linspire need to reflect on the comments and make changes accordingly.
And again, Daniel, I don't think you need to be offended by any comments at all, since they are all good people, just a little upset. I am 100% sure that if they see to face to face, they will never behave that way. It is an adrenalin rush to write harsh stuff, when you are by the computer, but in person, I am sure, most of them are very good people. So don't hold any grudge against them, like Jesus had said (remembering Gervase now) repeat this in your mind - 'Lord forgive them, they dont know what they are doing...". Cheers, Hem Ramachandran
I must confess what suprise me the most in this issue is the lack of understanding there still is, after all the effort spent in recent years, about the nature of OSS/Free Sw, i'm referring to the harsh comments here and in Mozillazine.
Gpl, Mpl and other similar licenses explicitly allow selling and economically benefitting from free sw, even if made by someone else. I agree with Glaz's perplexities about the way all involved parties managed communications towards the community; speaking of Mozilla, since i'm not really in OO and Linspire things, this is a well known problem that has not yet been addressed.
But this is not an excuse for users, devs, activists to not know the legal and philosophical basis of what they are dealing with every day.
ciao
Hey Daniel,
It's too bad that you've been getting all these hate emails. Their authors really have no place in our community.
For what it's worth, I'm kind of indifferent to the whole OOoFf thing. I really don't care that Linspire is doing this, and I think that it will probably have little or no effect on Gecko marketshare. If it does, more power to them. I just don't see the general public paying for software that they can download for free. All of the 'free' stuff I've bought is stuff that I'm already using, but whose development I want to support. I don't think I'd (or very many people I know) would buy something just because it would take a long time to download. It's not wrong that Linspire is doing this, but I just don't think it will do them (or Mozilla) any good. Besides, they've picked an absolutely ridiculous name!
-Ali
There are also increasing numbers of comments on MozillaZine front page and forums complaining about the crappy standard of postings - even if it's not actually abusive, it's pretty uninformed.
I think it's inevitable - as the size of the "community" increases, more of this stuff will happen, and MozillaZine will end up turning into slashdot. The MozillaZine front page interface isn't built for that kind of thing - they'll eventually have to move to a better solution.
Hem Ramachandran
--> "now you know who they are, and you are an asshole if you keep doing Nvu for them"
"Linspire and you are morons, playing an unfair game with our work"
Those ARE insults. Daniel's anger is justified. And telling him the words of Jesus, well... is probably not a good idea ! Maybe the worst. Christian values are far from being universal, especially here.
And well... how can someone insult a man without KNOWING he has been involved with unhonest people on unhonest business ?
Linspire produces a horrible distro, their business model inspires me absolutely no sympathy and I think the OOoFf initiative has been one of the worst in the community for years, giving arguments for the proprietary world, speaking about the Free Sowtware's "so high" real TCO's. Disruptive Innovations or Daniel Glazman seem to me to be transparently linked with those people for only one affair, one development (Nvu) that is only GOOD for the community. Maybe there's more, but before doing such an affirmation, I am waiting for clues, having no reason to doubt about Daniel Glazman's words. And there are people who DARE to insult this man, saying he has no place in the community ? Whooa ! Such STUPID persons are the shame of the community, such integrists are the face of the community that discredits it the most.
Microsoft, and a few others, are the enemy. Linspire is certainly, like Red Hat, Sun, IBM, a false friend. Daniel Glazman with his Disruptive Innovations is a friend of the community. A community that needs competent people, and has to keep them on its side. Let it not suicide itself when it begins to have some credit in the mainstream.
I wouldn't call commercial exploitations 'false friends'. Even for open source development, money is needed. Without RedHat, Fedora Core wouldn't exist. Without IBM and Novell (iirc), Mozilla would loose much of its funds and may not be able to hire 15 employees full-time. I'm sure you understand the importance of those employees, because they *are* the main Mozilla developers, simply because they work on it in a full-time job and are professionals. Without Linspire, NVU wouldn't exist (or at least not the way it does now), and Linspire has also done a lot to bring Linux in the news.
I think it's rediculous that some people deem all commercial activity 'despicable', and think of themselves as better than that. The truth is that for some things (e.g. funding of projects, a large-scale advertising campaign) commercial companies are needed. And they will for example also make requests for features which will give them the most customers, while 'free' development isn't always user-oriented.
~Grauw
p.s. ok, so 'wouldn't exist' is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but they do a lot to further developments.
I say "false friends" as in "they could change their minds for just *a few* more dollars". Let's say... they are circumstancial allies. I am absolutely conscious that free software's development would be much harder and much much slower, and probably of a much lesser quality without their money. The term "false friend" is probably not the best chosen here, but I have chosen to cite those enterprises because they make proprietary software too. That means, for me, that they are able to turn their back if the wind turns.
That does not mean I am against the idea of working for them, that just means I see other interests in free software. I am not some pure GNU-FSF-GPL-extremist, I just try to see people's interests, and mine, before some enterprises' ones. And I say they are... well, to the best circumstancial allies, and that we have to keep our vigilance. Nothing more, nothing less.
For what it's worth, M. Glazman, I completely agree that the OOoFf! release got a lot of unfairly bad feedback from the at-large community of developers. I feel really bad that you caught a lot of it too.
Terribly sorry to hear about the bad comments, glazman, I hope those people are feeling very bad about themselves now.
Keep up the great work and disregard the ignorant folks who are putting you down unfairly.
Re: "circumstancial allies"
One of the great things about Open Source is it's power to create circumstantial allies. That different people and companies can come together each with their own individual motives and still work collaboratively on a piece of software to make it better.
Circumstantial allies should not be feared. Furthermore we should realise we are _all_ circumstantial allies.
Whatever personal/political/financial/social reasons you personally have for contributing they are yours alone. You do the project a disservice if you foist your personal values on the project and call it "we".
What's next point?
for example: OOoNvuFf for 35 bucks ?
or : PpFfT for 2 cents ?
Oh no!
Daniel Glazman is very great and Good Man, programmer, writer, thinker etc.
How about Linspire...
No, After this point, I'm not trust them. (LinDows is first unfair attack and This is Second and also Third on The Road I see)
Good grief!
I'm sorry Daniel had to endure insults from some of the more clueless members of the open source community. There is a segment of the community that is totally hostile to any person or entity who tries to make a profit from open source software. Their attitude and behavior is an embarassment to everyone in the open source world.
What they don't realize is that *everyone* in the open source community is in it because of their own self interest. Companies do it to make money. Users do it to save money. Or because FOSS software offers them something they can't get in commercial software. Like more freedom or better security. Many of the developers who work on FOSS projects do so either because they get paid to do it or because they use the software and want to see it improved. Or maybe because of recognition for their work or just because they find programming enjoyable. If you take away the opportunity to satisfy our own self interests the open source community would cease to exist.
Regarding Linspire: I could see people being upset if they didn't contribute anything to the community. But they most certainly do contribute. Nvu is proof of that.
But even if they didn't, there wouldn't be anything wrong with that. Millions of FOSS users benefit from the software without contributing diddley squat to the community. They just download the software without so much as saying "thank you" to the people who have poored their time, hard work, and money into creating it. That is just how free software works.
Don't like it? Tough. Go complain to FSF or OSI and leave Daniel alone.
I have to agree with most of the sentiment here. I don't think that Daniel or Linspire has done anything wrong at all. In fact I applaud them for what they do. I LOVE Nvu and am grateful for both Linspire and Daniel for working on this project. This just shows how ignorant people can be about the facts. I did some poking around at the linspire site and found this (info.linspire.com/opensou... It appears to me they are very involved with the open source community.
Thanks for all you do Daniel!
-G-
Sorry to hear you were insulted by the more inflammable elements in the community. They are very clearly barking without any tree at all.
Other than a silly name, Linspire did nothing wrong. It is perfectly legal to sell both OOo and Ff. To do so in a shiney box with the silly name OOoFf for 30 bucks might not be a brilliant endeavour, but this does not warrant abuse to either Daniel, Disruptive Innovations or Linspire.
In my NSHO, nobody with a grain of common sense would spend $30 on something you can download without cost, for just the benefit of the box and the cd. But hey, if there are people willing to shell out?
Keep up the good work, Daniel. Your collaboration with Linspire really came to fruition beautifully in Nvu.
----Edulinux est notre version Québecoise de Mandrake. Je l'ai installé sur un de mes ordis car j'aimerai bien un jour faire la transition de MS vers Linux; je suis donc en apprentissage. Première des choses, j'ai voulu mettre mozilla à jour, et bien...j'ai passer 2 jours sur les sites, sur les forums à savoir comment faire pour finalement, au bout d'une semaine, réussir. Pour ce qui est de OOo, je ne sais même pas dans quel dossier l'installer (et en plus, j'ai un autre problème à savoir que j'ai le message que je n'ai pas assez de place dans le dossier x?> pour décompresser le programme). Pour résumer, c'est difficile et compliqué. Quand j'aurai du temps à y consacrer, je vais sûrement trouver réponse et réussir.
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L'invitation que je fais, est de respecter ceux qui ont le moyen et le désir de payer pour faire leurs mises à jour en utilisant que l'interface graphique (sans avoir à comprendre et à faire de ligne de commande). Dites-vous que si il y a une offre (Linspire), c'est parce qu'il y a une demande et au bout de la ligne, cela contribue à l'accroissement de l'univers de Linux.