[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 134486] UI: Branding: LibreOffice Personal edition

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134486

--- Comment #60 from Martin Srebotnjak <miles at filmsi.net> ---
Hello,
I am trying to look into future, so can someone please explain to me how this
will work (let's say there are the "community" (or whatever it might be called)
and a vendor version ("professional" or whatever it might be called):

Who decides what features will get into the "community" version? Will this be a
board/developers decision where also vendors will participate and could block
the community developers changes of core code?

I think that if vendors have a say what will be exclusively in their versions
(which I think is great), they should not block features that community
developers are introducing into the "community" version, even if they are
counter-productive for their commercial offerings.

And this could lead to actually three versions:
- core LibreOffice code that is developed by the community and vendors alike
(and tested by both, bugs squashed by both, translated and documented by the
community - as the vendors do not spend many dimes on it etc.).
- community LibreOffice (additional features developed, tested, localized,
documented, promoted - by the community) - probably some community features are
useless or even overhead for the vendors;
- professional LibreOffice (additional/paid features developed, tested,
localized, documented, promoted by the vendors themselves).
This could lead to a point where the added features either by community or
vendors would require changes in the core LO and where the other party would
not agree with such core changes (a rewrite or use of another open source
library that would make some features obsolete etc.) - so there should be a
veto possibility for both the vendors or community representatives in the TDF
bodies.
regarding the changes in the core ...
This could lead also to double implementations of same functionality (one
offered by vendors and the other for free by the community - surely the
community would have the right to develop and include its own versions of
vendor features? Or not? Would they be blocked?

Also, the role of TDF changes with this and as such should probably the
structure of its bodies. TDF becomes a promoter of the LibreOffice brand and
tje free version (and not the promoter of professional versions by vendors, as
is now in every public statement of the TDF). Or will keep being promoter of
paid versions of vendors, funded by donations as donations to an open-source,
free project? This becomes kind of fuzzy to me.

If the community will not have absolute freedom of what of its
ideas/code/content gets into the community version, this could probably lead to
a general schism. 

On the other hand, this development is not so bad. The new version system will
free many community resources - a lot of developers now working on testing and
patching vendor-proposed/developed features will be free to code and test their
own, community features and this could lead to a rise in brand new
functionality of community LibreOffice.

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