The answer is of course much simpler than the conspiracy theorists would like. Since taking early retirement last November I have – ironically – had even less time than before to spend on OpenOffice.org business. I missed the last Community Council meeting, and I’m going to miss the next two, and I don’t really see things improving in the near future. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it seemed only right to make way for someone who has sufficient bandwidth to do the job properly.

And for the conspiracy theorists: any merger / acquisition process makes life difficult for the employees of the target company. The Sun Microsystems team in Hamburg were and are major contributors to OpenOffice.org. It’s very hard to participate fully in an open-source community when there are severe regulatory pressures to prevent ‘leaks’ of information. There’s also a natural human tendency to keep your head down and your mouth shut when you’re not sure what’s going to happen to your job.

Am I disillusioned? The Community Council is where the Sunnies and the volunteers come together from a governance perspective, so it’s not surprising that it’s been tough going there recently. I’m optimistic that with the right people on board, the Community Council can serve the community well. A steady influx of new blood is essential for that to happen – serving successive terms should be an exception rather than a rule.

What about Oracle? IMHO IT vendors – especially software vendors – are a bunch of shysters, hucksters, pimps, and pushers earning ridiculous fees peddling the impossible to the ignorant. Among this slough of mendacity, Sun Microsystems in my experience stood out as a beacon of comparative probity. Let’s hope the ex-Sunnies keep their core values as they are absorbed into their new corporate structures.

And no, I haven’t been offered a job by Microsoft.

Today’s graph (saved on this blog – click on the thumbnail for a bigger version) shows a couple of interesting ‘spikes’. On 11th February we announced OpenOffice.org 3.2, and the downloads jumped as a result. This publicity is aimed at the general media and people who haven’t yet discovered OpenOffice.org.

On 26th February we switched on the online update notification for a number of language groups. This tells existing users directly that OpenOffice.org 3.2 is available. The result has been a much bigger and more sustained increase in downloads. So, well done developers – the new features added in this release are attracting old and new users alike.

The recent launch of OpenOffice.org 3.2 ahead of MS-Office has scored a marketing point in the race to be “the 2010 Office Suite”. This regular flow of free upgrades from OpenOffice.org contrasts with the disruptive “let’s rearrange all the tables on the Titanic” upgrades every few years from its pricey rival. With their own surveys showing that OpenOffice.org has broken the key 20% market share figure in several key markets, Microsoft Europe are under particular pressure. Maybe they need to translate their Why pages into German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc as soon as possible

Accordingly, it is Ordered that the <openoffice2009.com>, <openoffice-gratuit.com>, <openoffice09fr.com>, <openoffice-fr.com>, <openoffice-pt.com>, <openoffice-pl.com>, and <openoffice-nl.com> domain names be TRANSFERRED from Respondent to Complainant..

With this ruling, Sun Microsystems has scored a victory against one operator of para-sites – sites which extract money from naive people searching for OpenOffice.org – a free download.

Unfortunately, it is only a small part of the solution. Most people are mis-directed to these para-sites via search engines. There is nothing to stop this operator setting up new domain names and buying keywords on search engines to direct people to the new sites.

As long as search engine operators turn a blind eye to these activities – and indeed generate advertising revenue from them – the problem will not go away. Search engines are big business, and with big business should come big responsibilities to act ethically, and not condone making money out of ignorance.

So, search engine operators – are you “evil” or not?

The minutes of the f2f meeting can be found on the Community Council pages in the wiki. I’d recommend them to anyone interested in OpenOffice.org activities, as the discussions covered a wide range of topics: from the recent Oracle announcements, to important changes to the OpenOffice.org infrastructure, to a new logo for OpenOffice.org.

And the new version? download it of course for all these reasons. I’d like to congratulate Florian for the way he handled all the Marketing tasks around the release. I was delighted when he agreed to take over the Marketing Project lead from me at the start of the year, and he’s doing a great job.

So today I find myself in a hotel in Hamburg enjoying free wifi access, after a day in a real (not just virtual) Community Council meeting. More on that tomorrow (it’s past my bedtime now ) but I would just like to pay tribute to the large number of OpenOffice.org volunteers who do not have broadband access at all, but who pay such a vital part in the Community. How they manage to do localisations, QA new releases, man support forums etc without broadband – I just can’t imagine it. You are amazing – I salute you!

Internet cafe business is important for Microsoft – one open-source cafe can demonstrate to thousands of customers every year that there is a viable alternative to Microsoft’s products. The freedom from licence fees means the cafes can offer better value to customers, flex their business in response to customer demand, and don’t live in constant dread of a visit from a licence enforcement team.

• maybe all that blogging helped Microsoft find their perfect candidate overnight? or
• maybe they decided that the plan of “engaging with Open Source communities and organizations” to “CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE think about Microsoft, specifically those with a ‘hostile’ or negative perception of the Microsoft platform” was now fatally flawed as it had been so widely exposed?

Open source thrives on doing things in the open; secret source would prefer people didn’t know what was going on.
p.s. the advert is of course still visible in Google cache

“it’s a rate of more than 40,000 downloads per day. That’s approximately twice the number of people who run the Boston Marathon each year, or the entire population of Olympia, WA, or Annapolis, MD, downloading the Office 2010 beta every day!”

It’s also less than 20% of the number of people who download OpenOffice.org every day, based on the most conservative measure. Rachel, if that’s the best you can do for Microsoft in the 2010 office software stakes, I’d suggest you should get your CV up to date. I’d encourage your colleagues in Microsoft HR to get their skates on and recruit that Linux and Open Office Compete Lead – looks like they are badly needed.

What do you do if you have a product that’s as good as anything on the market, but you want to give it away?

And what if your major competitor already has a virtual monopoly in the market, and spends between $5,000-$10,000 million per annum on advertising?

With cento milioni downloads this year, OpenOffice.org hasn’t done too badly against Microsoft Office, and with new releases of both products due in 2010 the battle will continue. Microsoft are clearly gearing up for the contest. One of our marketing volunteers spotted an interesting Microsoft job advert – I’ll quote from it below in case they pull the ad:

Job Category: Marketing
Location: United States, WA, Bellevue
Job ID: 700901 9914
Division: Marketing
Linux and Open Office Compete Lead, US Subsidiary (CSI Lead)

If you’re looking for a new role where you’ll focus on one of the biggest issues that is top of mind for KT and Steve B in “Compete”, build a complete left to right understanding of the subsidiary, have a large amount of executive exposure, build and manage the activities of a v-team of 13 district Linux & Open Office Compete Leads, and develop a broad set of marketing skills and report to a management team committed to development and recognized for high WHI this is the position for you!
The Commercial Software Initiative (CSI) Lead plays a pivotal role for the Subsidiary GM, the BG leads and the BMO by building a discipline within the US that is focused on competing against. The core mission of CSI is to win share against Linux and OpenOffice.org by designing and driving marketing programs, changing perceptions, engaging with Open Source communities and organizations, and drive internal readiness on how to compete with Commercial Linux and participate with Open Source Communities.

(my emphasis)

If you share our belief that several hundred marketing volunteers around the world can be more than a match for 14 hired hands in the US (and how many more worldwide?) and want to join in the fray, please join the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project and have a great 2010!