Hi everyone,
After reading all the messages in this topic, and learning how experienced marketing experts are in the team, I have the following humble thoughts.
1.
I am a techie person who is far from being a marketing expert. Therefore, take my opinion with a grain of salt.
2.
For most of the users, simple
version numbers like X.x versus version Y.y don't say anything.
Nobody remembers what the difference was between LO 5.0 and 6.0,
but what other FOSS projects use, like Thunderbird 103 or
Firefox 111, is also totally meaningless to a normie.
A version number like MSOffice'97
or JetBrains IntelliJ 2023 tells much more. People may know such
a program has features we used 26 years ago or just recently.
Therefore, I think a year based version number would make more
sense.
I feel LibreOffice 2023 sounds
much more modern than LO 8.0. It has no sneaky marketing-bias,
it is a factual and meaningful information.
Again, this is just what _I_
think. If the decision will be different, I will be totally OK
with it, I leave the decision to experts but wanted to add my
two cents.
With regards,
Csongor
Hello,
On 06.04.23 22:12, Eyal Rozenberg wrote:
Great, what's the problem? Why should we be in a rush to get existing users to upgrade from 7.5 to 7.6?
Well, one argument is that we have very limited resources to support two branches. LibreOffice 7.5 won't be around forever, so at some point we'll need to push people to update to 7.6/8.0, as the previous version won't be maintained and could potentially have security issues.
On Reddit, social media etc. we see lots of posts from people using ancient versions of LibreOffice, and have no idea that there are newer major releases. There are various reasons for that, but IMO we need to keep people up-to-date. Not for quarterly sales targets as a CompuGlobalHyperMegaCorp, as you say, but because it's better for us all in the project when people are using maintained and supported versions.
So, we should be at least skeptical about copying MS behavior regarding MSO in which their marketing wing is calling the shots.
Agreed that we shouldn't copy problematic behaviour, but if our goal is to raise awareness of LibreOffice as much as possible, and get it into as many hands as possible (and I know not everyone agrees with that), then we have to be aware of the market in which we're operating, and competing.
IMO, it's a lot like the whole "using proprietary services to reach users" debate. Arguably, as a FOSS project, we should avoid closed platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But we make a compromise and are active on those platforms, because they are very effective for reaching new users and communicating with them.
So I think our marketing has to balance these things. If we only care about the technical side, we could use XTerm-style numbering (just keep bumping a single number with every release). But as if we want to reach Microsoft Office users and make a compelling argument to them, our marketing has to fit.
And I know that Italo has a ton of experience and knowledge in this field, so his perspective on this is very valuable IMO.
Cheers,
Mike
