Difference between revisions of "Mission Statement"

Latest revision as of 18:01, 8 December 2007

Category:Draft marketing ideas and materials

OOo Mission Statement

This page has been created so that community members can help develop a new mission statement for OOo for 2008 and beyond.

What we have now

As a reminder, this is what we have now:

To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

What the Mission Statement should include

What should/could the Statement include?

• Technological
  • openness (source and standards)
  • against bloat and for extensions using a componentized architecture that can be enhanced by users as they like
  • a UNO architecture enabling infinite extensibility by users
  • core technology in C++ with Java and other languages
  • occupying both mobile and fixed environments
  • tablet like devices as well as thin clients and of course desktops
• Social: it declares that OOo is to be the productivity platform for all users, everywhere
  • breaking down the digital divide with productivity tools for all
  • preservation of digitally endangered languages
  • fostering an ecosystem where end users, professional support people, and developers can interact

Who do we want to read (be able to understand) the Mission Statement ?

• ...

Proposals for a Mission Statement

Please volunteer your ideas here:

One

OpenOffice.org enables participation on a worldwide basis by providing a high-quality Free Software productivity suite and a platform on which anybody can develop applications that suits its needs. By allowing the creation and integration of extensions, the features of OpenOffice.org can be easily expanded and enriched according to everyone's desire and needs.

Moreover, OpenOffice.org uses the OpenDocument Format by default and a comprehensive toolkit centered around the use of open standards the ODF toolkit. In doing so, OpenOffice.org does not just free everyobody's documents, it also empowers people to participate in a global and multicultural conversation, the OpenOffice.org project.

comment: I like ODF included here. (cornouws)

Two

The OpenOffice.org project is a global community of people who design, develop, support, and promote world class open source office software. Our software will be built from accessible components, founded in open standards, be easily extensible, and freely available to all mother-language communities and on all leading computing platforms.

Three

(I like John's proposal, because it is actually quite short and summarize it all. Here's my amended proposal then.)

The OpenOffice.org project is a global community of people who design, develop, support, and promote world class FLOSS productivity suite. Our software will be built from accessible components, founded in open standards, be easily extensible, and freely available to all mother-language communities and on all leading computing platforms, thus changing the state of the art in office suites to full participation enablers.

comment:

"FLOSS" is jargon; how about just "free software"? Also, the phrase "all mother-languages" sounds a little awkward to me. Finally, the trailing "thus ..." should either be dropped, or set apart as a separate sentence and rewritten to be more clear (change from what? enabling who, and how?). Otherwise, I like this direction. Does it need something about user-experience? -- bruce

"FLOSS" is but an EU approved term but I agree it's quite EU centric. I'd go for Free Software, but some others would put Open Source there, and FLOSS or FOSS puts it all together. As for the rest: Bruce, I'm not a native English speaker, would you mind rephrasing the sentence according to what you pointed out? -- Charles

Notes from KR

We are in need of a strategy and therefore a vision (or may be vice versa :-)!

As OOo is a bazaar, basically everybody is free to implement and to contribute what he/she wants, making it hard to define a common goal. What at least for most participants, users and contributors seems to be important, is to address the masses. If, and only if, OOo is attractive to many, we are able to extend the ecosystem and to promote it further. What we basically want to achieve is a "network effect", as the WWW had some years ago (or MS Office). E.g. the moment many start creating and sending around ODF documents, others go and get OOo as well, to create and send ODF documents themselves. We already have a good position with our install base, and our hit and download rates.

We need to understand, what made us successful by now, and also what we would like to be. Obviously ODF was a got shot and helped entering especially the governmental markets. Other interesting point was the "free of charge" thing, which made OOo interesting for the 3rd world markets and communities. Also the general Open Source approach was good, and allowed OOo to be used on any platform somebody helped with a port, as well as enabled contributors in general. I even think, that OOo had some coolness factor, e.g. as Firefox or Mozilla.

To get more to the ground, we may want to list what we see or feel to be obstacles wrt the previous factors of success, e.g. a somewhat outdated look&feel :-). On the other hand, we may want to develop a "vision" which focuses on OOos universality, e.g. OOo to become a hub for creating and manipulating documents.

Just some thoughts -- KR 13:31, 3 December 2007 (CET)