OpenOffice at Apache: 2014 and Beyond
- 1. Budapest, Hungary, 18 November 2014 OpenOffice at Apache: 2014 and Beyond Andrea Pescetti VP, Apache OpenOffice [email protected]
- 3. Two years as Top Level Project Largely unchanged PMC group, with a few additions and removals Still with the initial PMC Chair
- 4. Growth Dozens of new committers and new volunteers Fully translated in 40 languages (up from 15), partially in 120
- 5. Maturity Much more constructive discussion More responsible usage of private list
- 6. Reputation Some historical volunteers are back OpenOffice is now a nice community to be part of
- 7. Outreach A million page views per week (download page) More accurate press coverage
- 9. Innovation Renewed user interface IAccessible2 integration Much, much more...
- 10. Stability Solid Quality Assurance Careful release cycle
- 11. Continued success 125 million downloads Increased adoption from institutions
- 12. Releases 4 releases as TLP (4.0, 4.01, 4.1, 4.1.1) All well-received by our user base
- 13. What Apache brought to OpenOffice
- 14. Culture Balance between innovation and stability Aim for the highest code quality
- 15. Legal framework Absolute clarity on licensing matters Competent advice when needed
- 16. Trademark management An important asset for the project Actively enforced to protect our users and our reputation
- 17. Mission Software for the public good OpenOffice is a solid basis for others to build upon
- 18. What OpenOffice brought to Apache
- 19. A different culture of volunteering Most committers hack on OpenOffice in their spare time Audience for a different kind of events
- 20. Audience Non-technical membership Can't expect technical skills from all committers
- 21. End users Forum and wiki are important End-users lists are fundamental too
- 22. An infrastructural challenge (solved) Buildbots, downloads, release signing Exceptional website traffic
- 23. Exceptions to rules Policy must be adapted to the situation Keep the principles, modernize their implementation
- 24. Our Community as of 2014
- 25. List audience 11,000 members on the announce list 600 on users list, 500 on dev list, 300 on qa list, 500 on others
- 26. Website audience 7 million visitors per month Few recurrent visitors, visits tend to be short and focused
- 27. Most common topics on the dev list 1. Project internal discussions 2. Can't download 3. New volunteer
- 28. Most common topics on the users list 1. Give me my money back (we must police our trademarks!) 2. Digital signature missing (being addressed soon) 3. Support requests
- 29. Most common topics on the marketing list 1. We should do some marketing 2. Why don't we do some marketing? 3. New marketing volunteer
- 30. A community survey Advertised on some lists (excluding user-focused lists) Meant to explore the potential we have
- 31. When volunteer joined: perfect balance 50% are active since before 2011 (incubation) The other 50% joined later, with 16% joining in 2014
- 32. How to reach volunteers Only 50% of people who answered are on the dev list Average person is following 2 lists
- 33. Time spent on the project 45% spend less than one hour per week Huge potential for small, targeted actions
- 34. Development 80% is unable to help 10% can be activated if we had better information
- 35. Localization 25% is active 10% can be activated with better tools
- 36. Quality assurance 25% is active 15% can be activated by giving them tasks
- 37. Blogging Only 7% is active 21% can be activated with better tools, tasks, information (+300%)
- 38. Overall: a huge potential In most mailing lists 50% of audience can be activated for that scope This would lead to 3 times the active volunteers we have now
- 39. The Future
- 40. A new phase The "settling at Apache" phase completed successfully It is time for new challenges
- 41. A big risk: obsolescence Desktop office suites will need to reinvent themselves Applies to OpenOffice and all derivatives
- 42. A bad situation: fragmentation Companies became skeptical on ODF and free office suites Work together rather than competing
- 43. A big challenge for the PMC Huge developments are needed to evolve from the desktop suite The PMC is currently not efficient enough to guarantee success
- 44. A new role for the PMC A good job so far: settling at Apache and activating the community But now we need to change to be on par with the challenges
- 45. Action 1: Restructure the OpenOffice PMC Now it is time for big changes: the PMC will need to set goals for the future and exploit the full potential we created so far
- 46. A new, additional, direction We focused inward until now It is now time to focus outward too
- 47. And since we are in Budapest... This is the place where a major fracture in OpenOffice started Can what was broken in Budapest start to be fixed in Budapest?
- 48. Action 2: A new ambition for OpenOffice Investigate all options for a better cooperation with others. Give an important signal to users. Gain back credibility for ODF.