On Mon, 24 May 1999, Andreas Pour wrote:
[snip]
> 
>     *  Abiword has made too many releases to count (freshmeat index for it is
> currently broken so I cannot tell for sure, but the web site
> (http://www.abisource.com/free.phtml) says "[AbiWord]  is a fully-functional word
> processor with all the features intact").

That's a lie. It can't even compare to wordpad which itself is far from being a 
fully-functional word processor. Right now, Abiword is a glorified rich text
widget with drawing errors. 


>     *  Gnumeric has 9 announcements of releases on freshmeat
> (http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/09/30/907192372.html), none of which AFAIK was
> dubbed a development release.  The web site admits lots of work is left to do on
> it, but the freshmeat announcements say "Gnumeric is a powerful and easy to use
> spreadsheet program from the GNOME project. The goal for this spreadsheet is to
> compete with the commercial offerings. Users of Excel should be already familiar
> with Gnumeric advanced features."

Well, that's Miguel's self-marketing. No reasonable thinking person takes him
seriously anymore anway. The "powerful and easy to use" version announced on
freshmeat didn't even have working scrollbars or the slightest idea how to draw
a diagram.

[snip]

> NOTE:  This is *not* meant to criticize koffice developers.  They are of course
> free to choose whatever development model they wish.  I am just trying to clarify
> the source of the observed phenomenon that the inferior projects get more
> attention, is all :-).  On the other hand, I don't want to discount the value of
> "mindshare".

I see your point. But do we really have to start lying just because it seems to
be common in (U.S.?) marketing?  Yes, that's how other big companies with
inferior software won and that's what Miguel and Co. is trying to achieve.

Long time ago, Motorola responded to Intel's vapoware announcements with
similar announcements, only more realistic and therefore less impressing.
Everyone knows the result. The right strategy would have been to play with
completely open cards and to point the world to the truth. 

But before we announce our software with "full-featured"-lies, I'd rather say
we do comparative marketing and create a webside that shows what features are
supported or are not supported by what system.

Or  we take the gnumeric and abiword announcements as handle to publish and
promote a whitepaper/stance on "Ethics in marketing of free software". This
paper may feature the famous Motorola/Intel case, Windows vs. GEM and even
rather humorous Miguel-announcements. And it should clearify why we don't
intend to push these commercial strategies into the free software development,
which originally was purely based on technical merits. That's were its strength
is, its power and (last but not least) its ethics.


Matthias