OpenOffice.org Newspaper Ad Mockup Released

Benjamin Horst writes "The volunteer effort raising $10,000 to place at least two backpage ads in New York City's free daily paper Metro is now entering its second full week. We've collected over 10% of our goal already and continue to find new pledge donors at a healthy pace. Our project's purpose is to help 'cross the chasm' and bring awareness of OpenOffice.org 2.0 to the large number of computer users who stand to benefit from its broad feature set and range of useful capabilities. This is not the first time an open source project has sought a high-profile newspaper ad buy. In fact, our effort was directly inspired by the Firefox New York Times ad. Firefox's famous effort announcing its arrival on the world stage helped push it from about 10 million downloads to its current tally of over 185 million!"

Comments

Is it

[gerbalblaste]

Is it really worth the money?

Re:Is it

[c_fel]

I dont think so especially with the poor design they show on their mockup. Personnally I find this ad totally non-informative. More, maybe it's because I'm canadian but I think the "They'd download it" is totally inapropriate. Hell, they'd not download it, they don't know what's a computer.

My 0.02$.

Re:Is it

[admactanium]

hate to say it but this is a pretty bad ad. every aspect of it is really lacking and is definitely not worth the money in its current state. creating an ad to run in the wsj isn't something that should be taken lightly. i've done it a number of times (with other people's money of course) and on such a big stage you'd really want to polish any communications to highest degree, especially for an ad effort that will draw press to itself. this ad will probably do more to hurt the cause than help it. it's so unprofessional-looking the average user will be forced to wonder if they couldn't lay out a better page in microsoft word.

Re:Is it

[mboverload]

I agree, it's pretty horrible. I'd consider donating if they came up with a really nice one like Firefox had.

Then again they need to improve their product more before they launch it. Making it less bloated than Microsoft Office is a good goal. I mean...come on? Slower than Office? How is that possible?

Re:Is it

[Sen.NullProcPntr]

"I dont think so especially with the poor design they show on their mockup. Personnally I find this ad totally non-informative. More, maybe it's because I'm canadian but I think the "They'd download it" is totally inapropriate. Hell, they'd not download it, they don't know what's a computer."

From the fine web page;

"Your comments and feedback are requested and encouraged. Please submit them to the Google Group mentioned above so that all interested volunteers can participate in the discussion."

I don't know, it kind of looks like something you would see in a newspaper but if you can do better - let them know about it!

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

Slower than Office? How is that possible?

http://java.sun.com/

Re:Is it

[0racle]

maybe it's because I'm canadian

Absolutely, ad campaigns should say nothing at all that the target audience understands, it might offend someone from another part of the world.

Re:Is it

[christian.einfeldt]

IMHO, we won't know if it is "worth it" until we try. The strength of open source software is trying, and learning. Ben has done a pretty good job of bootstrapping this ad campaign. Firefox did a really good ad campaign, but for a wide variety of reasons, the OOo community has not yet managed to pull together a similar ad campaign. Maybe because there were doubts as to its effectiveness.

At any rate, I find it extremely tempting to try to make this effort fly, which is why I have been supporting the effort with a wee bit of publicity.

Re:Is it

[3mpire]

USD? ;)

Re:Is it

[sTalking_Goat]

I agree and I'm American. the "They'd download it" thing just makes me feel like they're trying to insult my intelligence. So what if they download it? I might care if they software developers, and if you could actually know they'd download it.

Re:Is it

[Lumpy]

Problem is they put almost ZERO effort into the AD. It looks as cheezy as a mid 80's Cable TV advertisment. Hell the Comcast "Comcastic" ad's have less cheeze level than this does.

Getting a student or two at an art school to make a top notch advert worthy of a back page ad on a newspaper is really stinking easy.. Most students kill for something to put on their resume and having it published is even a bigger bonus to get the students signing up.

The Mock-up is worse than some of the low refinance rates flash ad's all over the net (Gawd that moster playing a love song one sucks worse than most flash animations on albinoblacksheep.com)

If they want to do this they nered to first get a national newspaper class add created. Not that hard and will cost nothing if they apprioach it right. THEN go asking for money.

Re:Is it

[kremvax]

No, not if it's Metro.

That's the free throwaway 10 pager they pass out by the subways. The articles are sub-par, even for a free fishwrap. This won't have an impact on a literate, decision making crowd.

If they want to foster adoption, take out a quarter pager in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. People who have the clout to have their companies adopt a new and better office platform read those.

Re:Is it

[alshithead]

Actually I'm using OpenOffice on a Windows XP system and it is slower than Office. My wife is using Office 2003 and it is faster on comparable hardware. That does NOT mean OpenOffice is the lesser application. It does everything I need it to and it didn't cost a cent. Meanwhile, I hate waiting but what the hell, an extra half a minute here and there doesn't amount to much for something that's FREE.

Re:Is it

[YAN3D]

Guys, give them a break, these guys are not a corporation or a 50,000 member foundation. I'm guessing it's a couple of guys who are trying to raise awareness. Who knows, maybe a designer will step up and help out instead of bitching them out.

Re:Is it

[OECD]

Getting a student or two at an art school to make a top notch advert worthy of a back page ad on a newspaper is really stinking easy..

Given that the credits read "Design by ..." I suspect this is exactly what they're going to do. They could have made it a bit more obvious, though.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

"they don't know what's a computer?"-WTF

Re:Is it

[gravis777]

Its awful. It looks like someone came up with it in about 5 minutes. The whole Mt. Rushmore thing is totally inappropriate, it might actually drive people AWAY from the product. The ad is totally uninformative. I truthfully think a frontal attack on the big office packages, something along the lines of "Why pay $600 bucks for MS Office when you can get our product which does the same thing for free" or something similar to be much more effective. Shoot, even those AWFUL Sprite commercials are better than this. I would have to say tha this ad is one of the biggest disappointements the open source community has delivered in a while

Re:Is it

[NitsujTPU]

No. OO.O doesn't have a lot of the things that FireFox had in place when they did this.

People forget a lot about FireFox. For one, everyone, 10 years ago, was using Netscape... which begat Mozilla... which begat FireFox.

People are comparing this to FireFox, because FireFox has a lot of support. People view FireFox as an open source victory. There's a lot different about FireFox though. For one, it was competing against IE, which wasn't as feature-rich and didn't work as well (sorry MS). Compare to MS Office, which OO.O actually has a tough time competing against (Yes, let the flamewar begin. There's nothing like 1000 posts saying, "but I don't use those features!").

Anyway, by the time FireFox was dumping out newspaper ads, IT pros were already recommending their users install it rather than IE, and people were listening. I don't think that that is remotely true of OO.O.

Also, the ad isn't going to resonate with anybody. 99.95% of the population doesn't believe that all software needs to be free, and certainly even less understand what that means, since most people who discuss the matter and clamor to the call don't actually understand what it means.

The ad just isn't going to work on the general public, and it's too soon, there isn't the grassroots support for it. They should wait a year or two until they have their own head of steam, and don't have to ride FireFox's coattails.

Re:Is it

[babbling]

Some things I think should be in the ad:
- A screenshot of the UI.
- Emphasis on it being a free (in price, since businesses care about that more) Office suite that can import/export MS Office files.
- Emphasis on it being able to completely replace MS Office.
- A "download it for free from" and then a URL.

Re:Is it

[SEWilco]

I agree, it's pretty horrible. I'd consider donating if they came up with a really nice one like Firefox had.

So what licenses is the Firefox ad available under? Can you use that as a starting point?

Re:Is it

[boingo82]

What are you talking about? As a former graphic artist at a newspaper, I know as well as anyone that Helvetica 55 roman is where it's at!
All that ad needs is a few gradients, 1pt boxes around all the text, and some drop-shadows, and it's ready to go!

Re:Is it

[Frosty Piss]

The design is hidious, about on par with the design of the web site. Surly there is something better out there. How about a contest?

Re:Is it

[Moqui]

I know a few of us are working on alternative proposals for the team. They gave it the good freshman try, but there are plenty of designers that use the software that will step up to the challenge.

First to go -- Yellow background and floating picture... :)

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Not only that, but the claims in the ad are dubious and subjective at best, if not outright untrue. For a start, I'd be expecting a call from Microsoft's legal team, followed by several others, over the claim to be the "world's best" at all those things.

If they run that ad, then unfortunately I think it will have only one overwhelming effect: it will convince serious businesspeople everywhere that open source software is from amateurish wannabe land, and shouldn't be touched with a bargepole.

Re:Is it

[LouisZepher]

Indeed. How about this? A chalkboard with two basic addition-style columns. In the first, list what MS Office can do, in the other, list in similar order everything OpenOffice does. At the bottom of each column, where the answer would go in a problem, list the price ($600 vs Free). Then, in an area outside the frame of the chalkboard, simply say "Do the math" or something...

Re:Is it

[bunbuntheminilop]

Note that the firefox logo isn't part of the package. The logo is being used under licence from graphic designer John Hicks.

Re:Is it

[Da_Weasel]

I couldn't agree more, that's horrible even for a mock up. They should spend a little more and have a marketing student at a local college student help them design it. They need to focus on what people seeing the ad will care about. Like that it does what Office does for it FREE! Maybe a cute catch phrase like "Step into our office..."

No one else cept us geeks care if it open and free (as in speech). What they want to know is that when their professor ask them to write a paper the said professor can open it. They want it to be free as in beer. Un-geekify the ad, because geeks already know about OOo...

I wonder if they did the mock up on OOo Write? lol...if so let hope they don't put a stupid "Created with OOo" thing at the bottom...that would sure drive away the 5 people that decided the ad was good enough to justify a download...

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Open Office was just as bloated and slow long before they added anything involving Java. Java definitely doesn't help the cause but the old and incredibly bloated code base is the real problem. Have you ever looked at the Open Office source code? It's a horrible mess. Open Office will never get faster unless they rewrite a lot of the code base from scratch. Furthermore, by default Open Office uses GCJ, which is NOT Java and has nothing to do with Sun.

Re:Is it

[Da_Weasel]

maybe they could do a Crazy Edie spoof...

We've gone totally crazy!! We're slashing prices....
Not $600
Not $350
Not even $150
Were practically giving it away...
No...actually we are giving it away, because we've gone totally MAD!!!!!

New Yorkers can appreciate an ad like that..
http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/crazyeddie/

Re:Is it

[Da_Weasel]

Converting USD to any other currency is easy when USD = 0.

(Besides, based on what info is available on that page they are running the ad Metro, but only the one distubuted in NYC)

Re:Is it

[Firehed]

I completely agree. The fact that OO.o is free is really all that it has going for it. If you're doing strictly typing, it's a decent substitute, but doing *anything* beyond that is near-impossible. Common tasks like creating a chart aren't effectively mirrored (though the god-awful customization of charts where clicking is utterly counter-intuitive is...) and even pretty basic just-barely-beyond-typing features like mail merge are atrocious. Mind you, it's not much better in Word, but they'll have to at least match the quality of features before they try advertising. I mean damn, at least make the paper margins the same or at least give an option to easily change it (yes, 2cm all around is much less wasteful, but the 1.0-1.5" in Word are effectively world-standard).

Make it as good as MS Office for Mac 2004 (which is ironically far better than the Windows version, or at least the last one I used), then come back for an ad redesign. I've tried to substitute OOo for Office, I really have, but as soon as I do anything that's not strictly typing, I'm screwed. And make a version that works properly on the Intel Macs. If you get a ton of people to download it while it's still in the frankly-shitty state it's currently in, you'll likely scare them off for life. Especially since chances are that 99% of them already own Office.

Re:Is it

[Da_Weasel]

Why didn't you sign in? I surely would have modded this funny....

Re:Is it

[Da_Weasel]

I agree. They would benifit much more by establishing some sort of relationship with Firefox. Maybe a link or ad share type of thing.

Re:Is it

[bursch-X]

Trying and learning is often a nice way to get ahead, but when we're talking ads in mainstream media, it's all about your (or your product's) reputation and credibility. If you just try without knowing WTF you're doing, your reputation and credibility ist lost.

Of course you might have learned a bit, but the people looking at the catastrophical ad also learned from it that you have no credibility, and your reputation is down the drain. No second chance there.

Re:Is it

[jaseparlo]

Some things that should not be in the ad:

* Performance metrics V MS Office (Even more so in the PPC Mac version!)
* Comparison of Clipart and Wordart features (My kids won't use OOo cos it has none)
* Cost/Benefit in switching from a version of Office that people/companies already own

As far as I can see, the difference between Firefox and OOo is that FF was a distinctly superior product, that filled a gap left by the poor features, security and function of IE. OOo on the other hand fills the same niche as MS Office, but is free. Both of them are massive bloated feature rich monsters, that 95% of people use about 5% of.

Sure, if you don't have any kind of Office software you might try OOo before forking for Office, but if you already own a copy of Office, the time taken to learn new menus and workflow isn't worth switching. Likewise if you are just gonna pirate Office then it's easier to get what you'll be using at work or school than learn something new.

Corporate environments ditto, retraining office drones to accept that a function is in a different spot, rolling out new software etc, isn't worth the time cost of switching from the Office 2000 install that was paid for once and has served well for 5 years. Likewise if you have MS licensing, it's probably all bundled with your OS licensing anyway. This may be different when the next version of Office comes out though, for orgs that will be upgrading at that point the tabbed menu structure in the new Office will mean drone retraining anyway.

I'm not pro MS by any stretch, but I have to work with it. These are arguments compiled from my attempts to live on OpenOffice alone, and from family and friends who I have tried to convince to switch. FF gave easily understood advantages, in security, functionality, but the motive to change Office suite just isn't as compelling

Re:Is it

[Spy der Mann]

Is it really worth the money?

Is Open Source worth the investment in thousands of hours of programming?

It's the same question, but different currency.

Re:Is it

[Baricom]

let [sic] hope they don't put a stupid "Created with OOo" thing at the bottom

Actually, that should really be in there. Not for the markup they have, of course, but definitely for the final ad. Using your own dogfood is something that people expect from software manufacturers.

Re:Is it

[alphamugwump]

* Comparison of Clipart and Wordart features (My kids won't use OOo cos it has none)

Hmm. I'd say that no clipart in OOo was an advantage. Just imagine:

Are you sick of stupid-looking flyers? Do "screen beans" really piss you off? Have you ever murdered someone for using gratuitous clipart in a presentation because they thought it "looked clever"?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then openoffice is the office suite for you! It doesen't have any! (maniacal laughter)

Get your free copy today, at openoffice.org.

Re:Is it

[omeg]

Yes, they probably are. But PLEASE don't! There are billions of design students, but only a few of them will be able to make anything that looks even remotely professional. The team is much better off searching on until they find someone who can provide them with a real design. Afterall, I can attest to the fact that a lot of design students are also just idiots who only learned how to download Adobe Illustrator last month. They usually don't learn what good design is until years of working in their second or third studio.

If a badly designed ad (with bad humor) ends up in any newspaper, it will make sure that a lot of people will NOT get the product. They will just think of the Mt. Rushmore and the horrible tagline ("They'd download it").

No marketing is infinitely better than bad marketing!

Re:Is it

[mwvdlee]

It's not ugly, it's just missing a primary colored wobbly header, cute bears aligned to the borders and lots of pink filler.

Re:Is it

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Not only that, but the claims in the ad are dubious and subjective at best, if not outright untrue. For a start, I'd be expecting a call from Microsoft's legal team, followed by several others, over the claim to be the "world's best" at all those things.

That's the nature of the advertising beast. You can claim to be the best -- precisely because it's not a reasonable claim. in other words, nobody is going to read it and say, "Oh, they're the best! I have to go buy it now!"

On the other hand, you cannot claim to be better unless you can prove it. If the ad said "Better than Microsoft Office", they would be liable for claims of false advertising if they couldn't provide actual evidence that they're better than MS Office.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

If they run that ad, then unfortunately I think it will have only one overwhelming effect: it will convince serious businesspeople everywhere that open source software is from amateurish wannabe land, and shouldn't be touched with a bargepole.

And those serious business people would be totally right...

Re:Is it

[WalksOnDirt]

As the guy in charge of computers for a small company, I've seen a lot of damage caused by people installing programs they saw advertised for free. I've often explained to people that while free programs may or may not be ok, a free program that can afford to advertise should always be avoided. The cost of that type of free program is more than someone in business can afford.

I use Open Office and I recommend it to others. On the other hand, I've trained a lot of people to avoid it once they've seen the ad.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF

What the fuck?

Re:Is it

[SerpentMage]

I am not so sure here. I think if Microsoft or another company wanted to they could ask, "So what do you consider as world's best?" It is a reasonable question to ask since you made the claim. And then Microsoft could post that claim. So for example if the claim is freedom, Microsoft could turn that around with, "Office 2007 freedom to exchange data however, or whereever, and whenever you want." Of course OpenOffice could reply, but only so long as you use Excel. Well, oops, the original ad did not say that. OpenOffice has to respond... Ooops OpenOffice does not have the money...

As good as their intentions are, what many in the Open Source community fail to realize is that people DON'T REALLY care about their freedoms. It's a sad state, but what people care about is being mostly free, with some "restrictions."

And if I may be cynical (context I am German)... Would the founding father's really choose Open Office? After all Open Office is from a bunch of Germans! Microsoft on the other hand is true blue American. From the little I know of the founding fathers their focus was on America, and everything America! I am not critiquing the founding fathers. Just saying if you are going to raise that argument make sure it is a consistent argument!

Re:Is it

[urbanshepherd]

Definitely needs some professional input on the design front.

How about they hire a designer, and give them a free copy of the software for payment....

Re:Is it

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

As far as the bulk of your post, I agree 100% -- people don't care about 'freedom' when it comes to software. If it even occurs to them to question what their default decision (MS Office in this case), they will want to know two things: 1. What does it cost? 2. Can I do everything I can do today?

However as far as "best" claims -- I was speaking more in terms of what precedents have been set under US law. If you look at most (US) advertising, you will see a lot of claims for things that are the "best"; but if you ever see "better", it's either a) something that can be substantiated (i.e., better than product X at doing Y) or b) so general as to be meaningless -- example, "Feel better, faster."

It's actually very interesting - if you pay close attention to the working of most advertising, you realize that almost of all of it promises you nothing at all. Here are some common tag lines that I've heard lately: "Makes you feel like you can breathe again" "Helps clear sinus" "Virtually unbreakable"

Sounds good, but what do they really claim? "Makes you feel like you can breath again" -- a close look shows that they claim nothing. They don't improve your breathing-- it just 'feels like' you can do so. "Helps clear your sinuses." Helps what? If that product isn't clearning my sinuses, andonly 'helps' clear them, what is actually doing the clearing? How much 'help' does it provide? "Virtually unbreakable". Of course, virtually means virtually nothing at all. Might as well advertise the product as "breakable" -- it means the exact same thing. "Feel better, faster". Note how this one doesn't even say that their product does anything at all? It just leaves it up to the listener to make the inference... but someone ever sued because it didn't make them "feel better, faster", they have only to say, "We didn't say that our product would do that."

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

You are aware of the rather large portion of the Canadian population which does not speak English as a first language, right?

How many languages do you speak...perfectly?

Re:Is it

[drsquare]

How does using open office stop other people from using clip art?

Re:Is it

[SargeantLobes]

Also, the ad isn't going to resonate with anybody. 99.95% of the population doesn't believe that all software needs to be free, and certainly even less understand what that means, since most people who discuss the matter and clamor to the call don't actually understand what it means. The ad just isn't going to work on the general public, and it's too soon, there isn't the grassroots support for it. They should wait a year or two until they have their own head of steam, and don't have to ride FireFox's coattails.

Well ads actually work, because they make you look serious, professional and like a big corporation.

The largest problem FOSS is strugling with is its image that it's all made by amateurs, which make it seem unreliable. When it comes to things like this, a big corporate image will do good, and people will remember it. Plus when you do something like this people will write stories and talk about it.

The add seems to be in the wrong place though. Plus it look horrendous, if I were OO.o I would veto this, since it will only end up hurting them.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why pay $600 bucks for MS Office when you can get our product which does the same thing for free"

I think you meant to say "Why pay dollars $600 bucks for MS Office when you can get our product which does the same thing for bucks $free dollars".

Repeat after me:
$600 = six hundred dollars
$600 bucks = six hundred dollars bucks

Re:Is it

[oliderid]

The message is totally irrelevant. The message is aimed at "open source" geeks. Most of them (if not all) have already tried (and somes use open office).

Lambda citizens don't care at all about the "Microsoft Evil empire". They don't even consider it
as evil. They don't think their freedom is threatenned by it. A large fraction in the corporate world even admires Microsoft for its achievment. It is a well managed US company, its market share is the best evidence. Trying to place founding fathers/presidents (ie US mythology) against an US successful project is completly stupid (and I'm not American, I already use Firefox and openoffice). The message is alienating a large fraction of potential users.

The real issues for them are:
- Price
- user-Friendliness
- Compatibility (with existing documents, mainly MS Word)
- Features
- Security

I think Openoffice.org should hire a marketing manager ASAP. When a marketing guy tries to influence the application architecture, it becomes a mess. When a developper tries to define
the marketing message, it leads to the same mess.

Get the big picture and stop to think that you are messiah. The whole world doesn't turn around computer technology. Today it is merely a commodity.

And frankly the lay-out is plain ugly, I hope they won't sign it with "made with open office...".

Olivier

Re:Is it

[john83]

MS is shortly going to be trying to convince businesses to do exactly that though. I doubt that switching to the next version of MS Office is no easier than switching to OO.org.

Re:Is it

[goof21]

No, not if it's Metro.

That's the free throwaway 10 pager they pass out by the subways. The articles are sub-par, even for a free fishwrap. This won't have an impact on a literate, decision making crowd.

I can't speak for New York, but just about everyone on the tubes in London has a copy of the "free throwaway 10 pager" during their morning commute. I wouldn't just dismiss the potential.

If they want to foster adoption, take out a quarter pager in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. People who have the clout to have their companies adopt a new and better office platform read those.

I'm not sure coroprate adoption is the priorty at this stage. While it would be a great thing, just about every IT employee from a sysad to the CIO should already be aware that OpenOffice is an option. Those people don't need the education of an ad as much as Joe User, who may not be able to afford MS Office.

Distribute the ad to typical PC users without $600 to spend on MS Office. Watch market share and popularity grow. Then let them go to work and say to their managers, "Hey, I use OpenOffice at home, can we start using it here?" Managers see OpenOffice is free, and suggest it as a "cost-cutting" measure to earn them their next promotion. Managers never listen to IT anyway, so in spite of IT's protests that MS Office works much better, they wind up having to deploy it regardless. That's the impact I'd shoot for.

Re:Is it

[efence]

Maybe also add links to the latest CVS snapshot, mailing list and bugzilla?

Re:Is it

[Ginger Unicorn]

How about an advert that shows someone's company being fined out of existance, or their home being raided, then says "Can't afford to pay for Microsoft Office? If Microsoft catch you with an unlicensed copy, it won't matter what you can afford."

Then have some Ubuntu-esque happy smiling people handing each other CDs or some schmaltzy crap like that, and say "OpenOffice.org will never cost a penny, and is free to download and share with whoever you want"

Then "Have a copy on us". then a download URL or whatever.

Re:Is it

[KronicD]

Personally I feel that it would be better if they spent their money on a series of smaller ads run in a variety of newspapers (hopefully better than Metro). I'm all for publicity of OSS, but this seems sub-optimal.

Re:Is it

[LFTr]

If they are going to spend $10,000 on the ad, they should at least improve the graphic design. OpenOffice needs a mascot or something that people can identify with (like the Fox). Right now it's just another grey program with no real marketing spark. OpenOffice is not terribly slow. I use it all the time. A big market for OpenOffice is students and universities. There is no need for people to buy the "student edition" of MS Office when they can download OpenOffice for free.

Re:Is it

[richlv]

* Performance metrics V MS Office (Even more so in the PPC Mac version!)

i suppose you mean startup time. yeah, oo.org is quite slow on startup, though extremly large times are caused by missing and enabled java.

* Comparison of Clipart and Wordart features (My kids won't use OOo cos it has none)

i have to ask - wtf ?
if you mean clipart collection that is shipping with oo.org, that is different than 'features', isn't it ?
anyway, there's http://www.openclipart.org/ and several other collections (there even was one specific package to oo.org, but i can't find it right now).

wordart - double wtf.
first, oo.org for a long time has had a tool named fontwork. it is very powerful, it allows you to shape text along any line etc.
starting with 2.0, there is 'fontwork gallery', which is simpler & more like ms wordart. these things are described in help, you could also have used mailing lists or forums.

* Cost/Benefit in switching from a version of Office that people/companies already own

why not ? that is one og things that should be emphasised, i think.
there are a lot of factors that must be taken into account - future upgrades, file accessibility, integration possibilities. i'm sure you can find a lot of information about these things on your own.
there will be cases when it is better to keep existing msoffice installations - but you will have to upgrade at some point, and, as others have mentioned, upgrading to next version of mso probably will be harder than to oo.org anyway.

Sure, if you don't have any kind of Office software you might try OOo before forking for Office, but if you already own a copy of Office, the time taken to learn new menus and workflow isn't worth switching.

really, it is not THAT different. you get a logical page->format instead of file->page setup (or whatever that was). if a person can adapt to a different car, this really is no big change. if somebody is unble to retrain, maybe employing such a person should be considerated. i really enjoy the examples where a company is moving to oo.org, but is offering employees a choice - either they get a small wage increase or stay with msoffice. suddenly nobody has retraining or productivity issues.

Likewise if you are just gonna pirate Office then it's easier to get what you'll be using at work or school than learn something new.

sure, pirating distorts marketplace - and ms knows & encourages that to a certain amount :)
it's mostly businesses that are starting to evaluate available options based on the price.

Re:Is it

[richlv]

though oo.org does not include photo editor or design software.
it's mostly word processor & spreadsheet coupled with presentation & drawing module + database frontend (+java db).

probably something nice could be created in draw, otherwise i don't think it's crucial using your own software for things it is not designed to do.

Re:Is it

[linvir]

As far as I know OpenOffice draws all of its interface by itself, whereas presumably Office uses the stuff in the Windows kernel.

Re:Is it

[Vorondil28]

I belive you left out the "OMG Ponies!" part.

Re:Is it

[rbochan]

It looks like one of those awful "...for Dummies" books.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking more along the lines of showing a picture of a guy being rescued from a bad situation, like being rescued from the ocean and the caption reading "Saved!" or "You've been saved". Or, maybe a grubby hostage that obviously looks like he's been chained to the wall of a prison or torture chamber for many years somewhere finally getting the shackles off. Then, explain some detail, like "There are free alternatives to Microsoft Office. One alternative is OpenOffice. With OpenOffice, your documents, spreadsheets or (yadda yadda) will never be held hostage to an outside corporation. You will own your data. You can install it as many times as you want and even give it to your friends. What's the catch? There's not one."

OK. I'm obviously not a marketing guru. But, someone who is could get the point across that the OpenOffice is free. It frees you and your data. And, it completely replaces a $$$$ solution.

-- dc

Re:Is it

[TheGreek]

As far as I know OpenOffice draws all of its interface by itself, whereas presumably Office uses the stuff in the Windows kernel.

You don't know very far, then.

Re:Is it

[ElleyKitten]

Well ads actually work, because they make you look serious, professional and like a big corporation.

Not if you have an ad like this one.

Re:Is it

[ckotchey]

Wow, hate to say it, but the ad is TERRIBLE. There is no mention of why anyone would use it, how it compares to whatever applications they would use, the cost savings they would realize, and any of the other numerous benefits of such a move. Instead, they are being told that 4 guys long since gone 'would use it'???

WASTE OF MONEY

Re:Is it

[yhetti]

This isn't true, though, especially for businesses. Even small businesses are using MS SBS (Small Business Server) which uses Exchange. Exchange needs Outlook to function as anything useable. OO has no Outlook replacement. *every single bit* of new code and work should be going into making an Outlook replacement that works *with Exchange*. Saying that OpenOffice can replace MS Office, at this time, is a complete lie, and not the direction we want to take this in.

For personal use, OO is pretty good, but it's still not ready for massive advertisement and downloads. Think of it this way: you have the option of downloading OpenOffice for Free, or Microsoft Office for Free. You install both..but which do you use? At the present (assuming I were in Windows) I would use Word.

This is nothing against the OO team. They do a tremendous job; but it's not *quite* at the point where I could unleash it on my mom (or, perhaps unleash my mom on it.)

Re:Is it

[zoobsolar]

After reading all the criticisms of the ad, I havent bothered even looking at it. Sounds like it unanimously sucks. Reminds me of word.. which also sucks. And Open Office.. well, I have been on linux since it came out and have tried OOffice a few times through the years. Give us a shout when it actually works well. So far as I can tell, and aside from it being free, its not any better than word.

Re:Is it

[Aqua_boy17]

Don't forget the ponies!

Re:Is it

[couchslug]

Firefox should stay out of the blast radius of any OpenOffice advert-driven failure. FF can stand on its own.

Re:Is it

[Midnight Thunder]

I dont think so especially with the poor design they show on their mockup.

I think the is a symptom of the whole project. While in terms of functionality it may be complete, it doesn't feel like they had a UI expert to clean things up. I must admit I haven't used it in a year, but I was left with a bad impression. I am not sure whether anything has changed.

As much as I dislike Microsoft, I still feel that MS Office is the better of the two products, especially the Mac version :)

Re:Is it

[Rakshasa Taisab]

That's no excuse, English is my third language and even I can see how wrong that sentence is.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

You can speed it up by navigating to the Tools-Options menu, selecting the "OpenOffice.org-Java" window, and unchecking "Use a Java runtime environment." It opens about twice as fast...

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

So your point is that until someone achieves perfection, they should be barred from participating? Who gets to set the standard for perfection, then?

The OP may have made a grammatical error, but your error in reason is worse.

Re:Is it

[SlashChick]

Just FYI, it's not $600... it's $300 (less if you don't want Powerpoint.)

http://www.trustprice.com/Microsoft_OEM_Microsoft_ Office/269-09977/partinfo-id-555211.html

Re:Is it

[munpfazy]

maybe it's because I'm canadian

Absolutely, ad campaigns should say nothing at all that the target audience understands, it might offend someone from another part of the world.

The key word here was *maybe*.

I suspect that, in reality, the reason the parent finds the phrase inappropriate is because it's stupid, not because he's Canadian.

What the hell does it mean to say that Theodore Roosevelt would download open office? For that matter, what's it mean to say that a software project written by an international collaboration of developers and available in a hundred languages is "for a free people?"

Surely there are more interesting things one can say about openoffice with a full page color advert. And, for that matter, better places to say it with $10'000.

If you're going to try to sell someone on the free software movement, you need a lot more than a single juvenile reference to some vague patriotic notion of "freedom." And, if you are going to try for a patriotic reference, there are much more appropriate images than Mount Rushmore. "Free as in big stone shrine to four US presidents with very different political philosophies, not free as in beer," just doesn't cut it.

What's more, if you're going to convince someone to try your software in particular, you could do a whole lot better than to try to sell them on free softwaremovement using a one page advert.

There's only one passage that actually tells you what the software *does*, and it's not only the smallest text on the page but it's also grammatical nonsense. If a friend told me in casual conversation that "Openoffice is the best slideshow, drawing, and database all-in-one clean package," I'd ask them how long they'd been learning English and offer to help them practice the language. If a friend told me he was planning to pay $10'000 to write that in a newspaper, I'd beg him to let someone else write the ad instead.

Re:Is it

[Tragek]

Interestingly I've found this to be a windows problem. On my 2400+ windows desktop OOo takes longer to open a window from a cold start than does OOo on my FreeBSD 900Mhz laptop. Both are equipped with identical amounts of ram (512). OOo is in fact a much more sane thing to use on a nix system for some reason, though, I'm at a loss to really explain it.

Re:Is it

[Tragek]

Say what?

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

ATM Machine = Automated Teller Machine Machine

Ooooooo... I like this game. Who has some more examples?

Re:Is it

[youthoftoday]

Hm. Given what you yanks are doing round the world that might not be the _best_ strategy.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4717974.stm

more to the point, if they didn't mean that ad to be the final version, why even bother creating a place-holder graphic at all?

Re:Is it

[Ash-Fox]

Interestingly I've found this to be a windows problem. On my 2400+ windows desktop OOo takes longer to open a window from a cold start than does OOo on my FreeBSD 900Mhz laptop. Both are equipped with identical amounts of ram (512). OOo is in fact a much more sane thing to use on a nix system for some reason, though, I'm at a loss to really explain it.

Anti-virus software?

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

Of course I know that a portion of the Canadian population does not speak English as a first language. A way larger portion of the population of the United States does not speak english as a first language, but I don't notice them posting on an english website. Also, you need to learn to lighten the fuck up. Oh, also, maybe let the poster defend him/herself.

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

No, you need to lighten up. And to capitalize correctly, if you're going to post on English boards. At least, according to your own rules.

You'd probably be surprised how many people posting on mainly English-speaking sites do not speak English as a first language. Should we belittle them for every mistake to stoke up our own egos, or help them to learn what they're doing wrong so they can improve?

I know which side of that question the person who needs to lighten up falls on.

Re:Is it

[Chapium]

I cannot speak for office 2003, but Office XP and 2000 knock OpenOffice off its feet in terms of loading time, performance and stability. I also run office on a few lower-end machines. The difference in load times is quite dramatic, even with the quickstarter.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

how about instead of a chalkboard use a spreadsheet, this also lets you cover the UI pic someone mentioned below.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

I love it how people don't have a sense of humor, I should have never responded after my first posting. And back to the main main point, that open office ad mock up was hidious, someone shoot the person who came up with that shit.

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

Amazing how you managed to fit that point into the following words, which form the sum total of your original post:

"they don't know what's a computer?"-WTF

And people not responding positively to unfunny comments doesn't mean they don't have a sense of humour, just that you're not being funny.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

I hope you know your entire first sentance makes no sense. And perhaps I was wrong, you have a sense of humor, just a very, very, very small one.

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

:)

Read a book and get back to me.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

Right. And which book will teach me about nonsense sentances? I am sure they are out there, so please, give me a few names, and I'll see what I can do. Oh wait, I get enough nonsense in every day life, so I'm sorry, I don't have time to research your idiotic sentance to figure out what you were attempting to say.

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

Any writing text with a good chapter on complex sentences and relative pronouns should help. Check out the chapter on commas while you're reading.

By the way, 'sentence' does not have an 'a'.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

While I am very aware of the fact that I cannot spell very well, I would consider that to not be as important in writing as grammer. I believe that many English and Writing profesors would agree. Your sentance was awkward and would be considered a bad sentance if you presented it in a college writing workshop, hell even in a high school class.

Re:Is it

[Tragek]

You know, that could well be it; of course, I'm not really planning any time soon to try running without it. I suppose I ought to find something smaller and less... intrusive, than Avast!. Any ideas?

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

If that one issue (which centres around style and not, in fact, grammar) is your only point--well, then, you haven't got one.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

Since when did writing an incorrect (I should have said awkward at best) sentence that makes no sense become a mater of style? Oh sure there is experimental narratives and all that jazz, but when your writing in this kind of settings, a more traditional one than experimental narratives, writing a bad sentence is writing a bad sentence, and nothing more or less. So my point is 1) That was a really bad sentence, and 2) Your an idiot for not admitting it and trying to hide it my attempting to insult my intelligence.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

Yes, I realise that in my first point I made a typo and said my instead of by, and yes, my second point is hypocritical.

Re:Is it

[Ash-Fox]

Well, I would suggest changing permissions on the OpenOffice.org folder so "everybody" cannot write to it. Then set your anti-virus software to 'skip' scanning that folder when using the resident scanner (This is what I did for games under windows often).

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

The fact that you didn't understand a correct sentence is not my problem. You're focusing on that one non-issue in order to draw attention away from what it was pointing out: that your original post made no mention of the quality of the presented ad as you had claimed.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it jazz.

The sentence was fine. You did not in fact state that the ad sucked. You made a snarky attack on an honest mistake and then demonstrated a lack of the skills necessary to justify your arrogance. You even stated that it's fine to only learn part of a language (say, grammar) at the expense of other parts (say, spelling) and still claim to have a mastery of that language. That's like saying you're a fine pilot but you just don't think landing is important so you don't bother with it.

So in short: whatever, buddy.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

I never claimed that my original post made any comment about the quality of the bullshit ad. I did however say something like "back to the main point about the ad" or something, but I never actualy said my original post was about the ad. Get your facts right. In a later post I said the ad sucked, but never attempted to in my original posting. If you would pay attention you would know I never claimed to have commented on the ad in my first posting, instead my first post was making a small jab at a Canadian who messed up a sentence. Then you responded, then I blasted the ad in a later posting. Any by the way, that sentence was not fine, it was flawed and made little sense. "So in short: whatever, buddy."

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

You did not claim that your original post made such a comment, that much is correct. However, you did make the following statement:

And back to the main main point, that open office ad mock up was hidious, someone shoot the person who came up with that shit.

How do you suppose that this was your main point? This was your first mention of the ad in the entire thread. In fact, it was your only mention of the ad. You claim above that:

In a later post I said the ad sucked, but never attempted to in my original posting.

This is not true. You mentioned the original ad only once, when you claimed that it was the "main main point". A point you had not referenced until then, and did not reference after (as you claim above).

Don't lecture me on fact-checking until you can remember your own posts.

Re:Is it

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they could give the software away free to newspapers that publish the ad, to get a discount

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

When I said main main point, I wasn't referring to my original post. I was not saying that that was the point of the original post. I was just saying a main point is that the ad sucked. Perhaps I should have said something like "on to the main main point" instead of back to the main point. You must have miss interpreted the line "IN a later post I said the ad sucked, b ut never attempted to in my original posting". You say that is not true, then you say what I said in a different way. Like I said, I mentioned the ad sucked in a later point (later as in after the first point, not again after I said back to the main main point). I am not sure why you were confused on that point. And as to your last line, right back at you idiot, I know what I posted, and even looked back to verify, you misinterpreted what I was saying.

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

No, you just didn't say what you thought you did.

That's the power of language.

Re:Is it

[JimDaGeek]

A NIC card. Network Interface Card card.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

Right, sure man, whatever. I know exactly what I said and meant, you have the right to understand it in a different manner, but you do not have the right to tell me what I said just because you understood it differently.

Re:Is it

[dhalgren]

I know exactly what I said and meant, you have the right to understand it in a different manner, but you do not have the right to tell me what I said just because you understood it differently.

Ah. But you presumably have this right--this is, after all, exactly what you've been telling me about what I've written.

And anyway, of course I have the right to tell someone that he is mistaken. Anyone may do that. Don't get all victimized over a little wounded pride.

In short: you are mistaken, and I am done.

Re:Is it

[WCD_Thor]

Interesting point, your right too; you do have the right to tell some one they are mistaken, I conceed that point to you, but you also have the right to be wrong, which you are, for I was never mistaken about what I said earlier. I did, and will continue to contend that I did, say what I meant to say. It is you who are mistaken.

The only way

[fimbulvetr]

The only way I would consider donating to the project is if they'd remove Java from the the default setup. It's like those annoying M$ office features that you need to go shut off after a fresh install. I realize it's just a checkbox, but you'd think the free, open source software org. would expend a little more effort to rid their software of slow, proprietary bloatware. I, among numerous other people, have asked for them to remove java, but they will not.

Other than that, the software is worth a download if abiword doesn't float your boat. Until they actively work on the slowness and non-free portions of their code, I'll stick with abiword and gnumeric.

Re:The only way

[Anonymous Coward]

While Java is a bit of an overkill as a necessary install requirement, it is required if you are going to produce xml documents. As general office software I have found OpenOffice.org quite good. It still needs some polishing but I am not going to shell out hundreds of dollars to purchace M$ Office

Re:The only way

[QRDeNameland]

What part of producing an xml document "requires" Java?

Re:The only way

[LindseyJ]

How is that flamebait exactly? Oh no, he pointed out a valid point about OO. As an aside, people who replace the 'S' in MS or Microsoft with a dollarsign make themselves look like bigger tools than Microsoft itself.

Re:The only way

[LindseyJ]

And I got modded down for saying so. Gotta love zealots.

Re:The only way

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

Look who sponsors the work. It's just like the situation with that $100 laptop. They use a stripped version of Red Hat when a practically drop-in solution already existed (DSL). It's all politics.

The day they take out java will be the day Sun places java under the GPL. You're right, it will never happen.

Re:The only way

[getwhipped]

What part of producing an xml document "requires" Java?

The part that runs on most operating systems with little or no configuration-based maintenence costs.

Re:The only way

[linvir]

DSL looks like this, Fedora looks like this, and you think it's politics? Are you kidding? Red Hat is a big company with lots and lots of experts on their payroll. A decision to go with them isn't politics, it's business.

Re:The only way

[ElleyKitten]

I'm sure once Fedora's stripped down and put on a black-and-white screen it won't look any better than DSL. That said, it does make a lot of sense to go with what's pretty much the biggest name in Linux with a large corporate backing than to go with one that, well, isn't.

Do it...

[DoofusOfDeath]

It's so rare to feel like I can help the world in such a simple, clear, affordable way.

I just pledged $10. It felt good. Please consider doing it too.

Re:Do it...

[Ireneo Funes]

I'm sure the world is extremely thankful!
Please tell us that you were joking.

Re:Do it...

[christian.einfeldt]

hi DoofusOfDeath, Thanks for contributing. I'm not "officially" part of the team, but I have helped out with a wee bit of publicity, and so I appreciate the help. I have known Ben Horst, the guy who started this project, for some time, and he really is a great person to know. He's just a very enthusiastic person who likes to see things happen, and is willing to put in work to make it happen. I'm glad to see people supporting his effort.

Re:Do it...

[cdomigan]

I just saved $10. It felt good. Please consider making a decent design.

Re:Do it...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Hi Christian,

You're welcome - the cause is worthy. After reading the other posts, I thought some more about it. While I'm still glad I contributed, the current ad design really is pretty far from the quality of the Firefox campaign's page. If you have Ben's ear, please encourage him to seek and accept help in making the ad's design all it can be before sending it off for publication. We only get one change to make a first impression.

Kind regards,
Doofus.

Re:Do it...

[christian.einfeldt]

Hi DoD, Ben just emailed me with the link to this /. article, and so I know that he is reading it now.

WRT to quality of the ad, I'm thinking that Ben's idea was probably "release early and often" in the hopes that he would spark a discussion such as we are getting now on /. If people don't like the ad, it would be really helpful if people could 1) make some detailed constructive criticisms, or 2) maybe do a quick mock-up themselves, so that we could improve it.

Thanks again for contributing to the effort, DoD!! Christian Einfeldt

Re:Do it...

[nacturation]

Hell, I'd put $10 towards them *not* running the ad. Anyone with me? If we hit $10,000 first they agree to not post that eyesore?

Re:Do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually been moved to uninstall OpenOffice after viewing the mockup.

Re:Do it...

[curtisk]

Yeah, that "Ad" is rough....but I guess after waiting a while for OO to load, the designers' patience ran out and squeezed out this turd.

I don't like being the armchair designer, but really! Not the best foot to put forward. And I want to like OO, I love the idea of it, just the implementation thus far.. it still needs some work, and a complete overhaul in alot of places before it can be competitive. Or just rely on everyones ability to throw massive amounts of RAM/CPU at it.. :/

Re:Do it...

[mrchaotica]

I'm with you! I donated to the Firefox ad, and I'd be happy to donate to this one too... but not until they get a better ad design, run it in a better newspaper, and spend another year improving the software first!

Re:Do it...

[linvir]

maybe do a quick mock-up themselves, so that we could improve it.

Have just done a quick skim through this page at -1, looking for nofollow tags in the source so as to find links nice and quick. This is all I can find - well designed, but a shitty ad (way too much text).

Re:Do it...

[Trogre]

Refresh the page. It looks a lot better now.

Re:Do it...

[nacturation]

Hell, that's infinitely better!

Is it just me...

[jollyroger1210]

Or do the presidents on Mt. Rushmore look especially uneasy?

Re:Is it just me...

[Joebert]

In thoose days, they rocked wood teeth...

Well

[warrior_s]

I dont have anything against openoffice.. but comparing openoffice with Microsoft-office.. it still has looong way to go (you are free to disagree).. where as firefox beats Internet-Explorer quite easily.

Re:Well

[pinqkandi]

I agree with you.

I used OpenOffice for a while, and I really really tried to use it as my main editor. But it lacks so much, so long to go. People say to me, "Well hey, it's hundreds of dollars cheaper...". Yeah, but I lose thousands if I can't effectively share editable documents with other people (who are usually using MS Office. Usually = 95%+).

A few months ago, I saw a presentation by an owner of an open source solutions company. He had made a presentation in OpenOffice - but converted it to a PDF for the actual presentation. Why? He was worried it wouldn't work on the presentation computer...

Re:Well

[Lehk228]

i do the same, or i convert to HTML, or i convert to flash.

i see this as an improvement over office since the wrong version of office installed will cause just as many, if not more problems than OO.o export to MS Office formats.

Re:Well

[AhtirTano]

I dont have anything against openoffice.. but comparing openoffice with Microsoft-office.. it still has looong way to go (you are free to disagree).. where as firefox beats Internet-Explorer quite easily.

Indeed. I convinced my project to use OpenOffice. I did this purely to satisfy my anti-Microsoft ideology. I convinced the others via cost and demonstrating how well it handled Office files. Two months later, 2/3 of the people were complaining about how bad it was, and the rest were admitting that it wasn't so good. 1/3 of the people had installed Office, knowing that the rest of us would still be able to handle their files. The rest of us continue to use openoffice because of ideology, apathy, or laziness.

Basically, only the spreadsheet has worked to our satisfaction. Text documents are passable, but unpleasant. Presentations are completely inadequate. The migration to Office was mainly triggered by the need for PowerPoint.

I still tell people about OpenOffice, and that we (mostly) use it for our project. But I only recommend it to people who have to do simple things, like short reports or billable hours.

On the other hand, all of us independently decided to use Firefox. And nobody except me realized that there were all those extensions and themes---they chose it because it just worked better "out of the box".

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont have anything against openoffice.. but comparing openoffice with Microsoft-office.. it still has looong way to go (you are free to disagree)..

Agreed. And actually, Microsoft agrees too. Office will be delayed beyond January 2007.

Re:Well

[pete-classic]

I'm a pretty light-duty office suite user. I keep my budget on oocalc, do DVD covers (for software releases) on oodraw, and a bit of writing on oowriter. I don't do much collaborative work (I hear that this is where MS Word shines), but I find oowriter's style system so useful that it makes using Word downright painful.

Just one guy's experience.

-Peter

Re:Well

[Baricom]

I find oowriter's style system so useful that it makes using Word downright painful.

You should try Word's style system some time. You may be pleasantly surprised.

I want OOo to succeed - really, I do - but they're simply nowhere near Office yet. Like the ad itself, OOo has an excellent idea but a lousy implementation.

Re:Well

[Rix]

That's a perfectly sensible thing to do. OpenOffice's pdf export is excellent, and not every computer has PowerPoint installed on it. Most pdf viewers are better for the purpose if you don't want to edit anyway.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I convinced my project to use OpenOffice. I did this purely to satisfy my anti-Microsoft ideology.

Which is basically a fancy way of saying "I'm a counterproductive moron".

Re:Well

[crhylove]

I'd agree with this whole heartedly. In fact the main article is wrong on one of it's central premises:

Firefox has over 185 million downloads because it's GOOD. Not because they ran some ad. I'm sure the ad helped, but how could it have anything remotely to do with the popularity of the project over it's simple interface, intuitive ease of use, and overall superior design to other available products?

If I could count the number of times somebody has MADE me install MS office, DESPITE security risks, I'd be a really good counter.

Open Office is just WAY WAY behind a lot of other vastly superior FOSS apps.

Firefox
Gimp
Audacity
cdex
shareaza
thunderbird
Alien Arena
Nexuiz
Speex
Gaim

There are a LOT of great FOSS products out there, and sorry for the flame, but it's warranted: OO isn't one of them.

In fact, the fact that not every FOSS project lives up to the quality of those mentioned kind of hurts the whole movement. Maybe we should have more stringent standards on what it takes to be 1.0. My opinion on OO.org: It's at about .8. Useful, but slow and lacking key features. Not for "real" business yet.

Any ad at this point is going to hurt more than help. Hell, I might just scrub the whole oo.org name etc. and try to clean it up a bit and rebrand it. Open Office is kind of a dumb name anyway. Even Abiword is a better name, and that's not great.

As a matter of fact, why doesn't somebody break OO.org up into pieces and fix them one at a time? Or at least make abiword ready for primetime, since it seems closer and obviously doesn't have all the bloat (although, to be fair, that wierd bug on windows boxes where it doesn't display text properly is a deal breaker, and it ALSO should not be called 1.0 yet)?

FOSS needs to get small things done right, one at a time. The whole concept of OO.org is flawed. Until each piece (calc, writer, etc) is superior to the industry standard (MS Office, unfortunately), don't bother packaging them into a big bloated app.

rhY

Re:Well

[dodobh]

Well, you folks could simply have started requiring ODF for internal communications (or SXW for older OOo versions), and then let the MS Office users complain about incompatibility.

As long as you try to stay compatible with MS Office, you _will_ get screwed. The easiest way to get around that would have been to say "We don't care, we are going to use ODF, and MS Office users can become compatible with us." Then let _them_ worry about compatibility issues.

Re:Well

[jb.hl.com]

You do realise this is akin to saying "Fuck you, we're writing everything in Urdu, and you English speakers can put up and shut up", don't you? And that it makes much less sense?

To reiterate: For businesses, who want to reach everyone and need to to survive, shock switching away from MS using customers (e.g "Code to standards, fuck IE" "use ODF, fuck Office") does not work.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I convinced my project to use OpenOffice. I did this purely to satisfy my anti-Microsoft ideology.

I completely agree with parent... it just happens to sound like something from a 1930s Soviet show trial.

Re:Well

[MobileC]

I dont have anything against openoffice.. but comparing openoffice with Microsoft-office.. it still has looong way to go

I agree.
But Microsoft is trying and one day they might just get there...

Re:Well

[TERdON]

Well, if I was to do business in Pakistan, I would count on either having to learn Urdu or hire a translator/interpreter. Wouldn't you?

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

*rolls eyes*

Yeah, that would be an expected cost of doing business in Pakistan. Such barriers are one of the reasons that most businesses try to deal domestically, in a language that all employees can speak. And if some domestic business comes to me and says "we may as well be speaking farking Swahili, hope you're ready to translate" then that's a cost that my business isn't going to take on.

Seems rather 'duh' to me.

Re:Well

[ElleyKitten]

Learning Urdu involves more than just a free download. I don't see what's so hard about downloading OOo for ODF files. People download Acrobat instead of complaining it should be in .doc format. Anyways, the GPP was talking about ODF for internal communications, not sending out ODF to customers and other companies and whoever. I see nothing unreasonable about a company insisting that all employees use a standard that they decide is best for the company. Do you?

Re:Well

[AhtirTano]

Well, you folks could simply have started requiring ODF for internal communications (or SXW for older OOo versions), and then let the MS Office users complain about incompatibility.

I don't understand why you said this in response to what I said. Compatibility between OpenOffice and MS Office has been good for us. Requiring ODF would have done nothing but force people to use a product that they don't like using. How is that beneficial to anybody?

As long as you try to stay compatible with MS Office, you _will_ get screwed.

If we were incompatible with MS Office, we would have been screwed. We had an important presentation to make, and we tried doing it with OpenOffice. Writing was going too slow and the results were unimpressive. The main presentation writer switched over to PowerPoint, and everything ran much better. We then ran the presentation using OpenOffice, and there was only one small formatting problem we couldn't figure out how to fix. Compatibility with MS Office has been good for us. It's using OpenOffice that is a problem.

To give you an idea of what we don't like about it: The comments functionality in OO is the pits. Working with multiple fonts is a pain--the dialogue box is so buggy it irritates me every time I use it (which is frequently). We use a lot of unicode, and we have been unable to set up keyboard commands to easily insert specfic characters (Word does that with no problem). Autofilter in the spreadsheets is deficient to the point of being unusable. The only good thing I can say about the presentation stuff is that it handles PowerPoint files pretty well. And overall, it is slow to start up, and response time for simple things can be too long.

Re:Well

[dodobh]

And as a customer, I tend to send such requests in ODF. If you aren't compatible with me, sucks :). A 100 large server order isn't something to be sneezed at :).

Design

[djwhornplayer]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the sample ad looks horrible?

Re:Design

[Ant P.]

Not just you. That thing needs a lot of work. A _lot_.

Re:Design

[cervo]

The worst thing about the ad is that it does not tell me anything about Open Office except that it is free, runs on windows/mac, and is an office suite. Firefox's Ad mentioned that it was faster/more stable than Internet explorer and it never made unsubstantiated claims of being the "best". Firefox just claimed to be an alternative which is why it worked so well. Furthermore, getting user experiences in the ad was also a good idea to appeal the reader on a personal level. The open office ad is kind of in your face, I am free, I am superior, download me. Personally the ad comes off as very arrogant; if I did not know what open office was I probably would not even bother giving it a try.

What is probably the worst thing of all is that Open Office is both slower and less stable than Microsoft Office. Really I'm not quite sure why anyone would switch other than price. If they advertise themselves now when the product is less than ready for full time, they risk leaving the public in general with the impression that Open Office is inferior to Microsoft Office and always will be. Whereas if they waited until the product was superior to office they would have a better chance at making/keeping converts.

Re:Design

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't just you. It looks terrible, and that terrible image will be associated with the product. This isn't going to help, it is going to hinder. /How ironic that Slashdot's bot prevention image for my post was "homespun".

Re:Design

[christian.einfeldt]

Hi, A lot of people have complained about the layout of this ad. It would help if people would give more detailed feedback. And even better, if anyone reading this has the talents to whip something together quickly and would like to do a quick mockup, all that much better.

Please remember that this is a total grassroots effort. I'm not "officially" part of the project, but I have done a wee bit of publicity for the effort, but I do know that the guy who started this effort is fresh out of college, and doesn't have a big budget. So any substantive help would be appreciated!! As with any open source project, if you don't like it, make it better!!! Don't just complain!

Re:Design

[Quarters]

You're not alone. The layout is simplistic, the font choices are basic, the colors are attrocious and thhe picture has nothing to do the product. The ad copy is fully hippy-esque "stick it to the man" angst to the detriment of any meaningful copy that actually describes the product and its strengths.

Based only on that ad I'd assume that OpenOffice some bush-league office suite that I'd find in the schlocky productivity aisle in the software section of BestBuy or Wal*Mart, alongside the "AdSubtract" and "InternetWasher" crap.

Re:Design

[Khaed]

No, it's certainly not just you.

Rant/ramble ahead.

First of all the yellow is pretty gaudy, and if anything the yellow and white should be reversed, so that the URL box below the picture has a background that is highlighted, not the way it is now. The black/white reverse for the top URL would look better then.

The whole Independence/Rushmore thing is a little insulting. I've used OO.o for a long time, and wrote most of my school papers in it up until I started using AbiWord. I still use OO.o occasionally, but I don't see it as being nearly as important as the Declaration of Independence -- which is what I get from the ad --

I'd change the tag below the URL to "Great (all the features) in one free package."

Emphasizing the freedom/free software aspect is good. Highlighting compatibility and guaranteed future compatibility would be good. I don't know how to fit "You won't have to use OO.o x.0 just because everyone else does and Sun decided to be snarky and make changes to screw backwards compatibility" into an ad, but I'm sure someone else could.

OO.o has a lot of nice features. Being free is one of them, but interface wise, I just don't know if it's ready to take on Microsoft Office. It's bloated and MS Office is just easier on the eyes. In my experience and opinion.

Of course, in a weird twist, OO.o saves documents in Word/Excel format that are actually smaller than the same exact documents saved in Word/Excel... might be true for other aspects of Office, but I never compared them.

Rant/ramble mode off.

Re:Design

[LordNimon]

I agree 100%. It obviously was not designed by a advertising professional.

Re:Design

[antic]

Maybe it was put together in Open Office?

It's not just you. The ad is crap and would be money wasted - looks amateur and pushes a shoddy message. People want something that's cheap, works, not bloated, and can open/save common formats - who cares about past leaders?!

Re:Design

[G-funk]

Oh lord. I nobody's really going to spend $10,000 putting that garbage in a major newspaper are they? You couldn't sell free money with that ad! It looks like something spit up by a 15 year old "web designer" that does the first incarnation of most small business' websites beccause "my nephew's a computer wiz".

Re:Design

[Quarters]

Why? Why should I make a mockup for you? I'm your *customer*. If I am turned off by your ad because I don't like it the failure isn't mine for not fixing it for you. The failure is yours for not understanding your target audience well enough. This is exactly what is wrong with the ad - it assumes everyone is against capitalism and therefore anything that says "FREEDOM" must be good.

It's an office suite, if I don't like the ad promoting it because of the neo-hippy bullshit it's spouting or the fact that there is nothing in the ad to actually educate me about the merits of the product then I won't bother with it. The last thing I feel is a compulsion to donate my time and skills gratis to fix a failure of an ad. Frankly, if that ad is any indication of the agenda of the grassroots group I don't want anything to do with them.

Re:Design

[christian.einfeldt]

Hi Quarters,

Why? Why should I make a mockup for you? I'm your *customer*

Ya know, Doc Searls of the Linux Journal once said that "open source is what happens when the demand side supplies itself." That's quite true, IMHO.

This is a total grassroots effort. Neither Sun Microsystems nor IBM nor Novell or anyone else has "officially" given a dime so far to this OOo ad campaign. YOU own this ad campaign, just like YOU own OOo and every other Free Open Source Software project.

I'm sure you've heard this joke. Microsoft says, "Where do you want to go today?" Apple says, "Where do you want to go tomorrow?" FOSS says, "Are you coming, or what?"

So, what are you going to do? Just sit back and complain? Or do something positive and help with this ad campaign?

Re:Design

[QRDeNameland]

If the guy is fresh out of college, then he should know a few people who at least minored in graphic design who'd be happy to have something to put in their portfolio, one would think.

A couple suggestions...

1) Yellow is a poor choice of background color.

2) OpenOffice has a nicely designed logo for its splash screen. Why not follow the graphic design already suggested by the product? The overall look of the ad is more appropriate for a used car lot or a bail bondsman.

3) Instead of focusing only on freedom, how about something for the more practically minded, like mentioning how the MS Office can often cost more than the computer it runs on.

4) Get a few more people involved (including some folks OUTSIDE the FOSS community) and brainstorm a bit.

Re:Design

[StikyPad]

Actually, I think "OpenOffice.org" in 10 pt font in the center of an otherwise blank page would look better. That would require very little work, and it would make people wonder -- probably enough to visit the website. But as others have pointed out, the product itself needs a lot more polish before it's trumpeted as a replacement for MS Office.

Re:Design

[ozmanjusri]

Christian,
I'll add myself to the list of people who are horrified by the advert as it stands.

1. The theme, "Free Software for a Free People" is sophomoric, as is the use of Mt Rushmore. In a time where fake patriotism is constantly used to maniplulate opinions, it comes across as cynical and shallow.

One of the key positive points of FOSS is that it operates from a postition of moral integrity. A manipulative advert (one which uses a non-related emotive theme to push the product) subverts that impression of integrity.

2. The branding of the advert is all wrong. The style of the advert does not echo the style of the product. Have a look at the OOo home page, then look at the advert. Even the title of the advert is different from the OOo title. There should be enough similarities for them to have a "family" resemblance.

3. Skip the pointless hyperbole of "World's Best...". Instead, list a couple of the strongest positives of the software "Supports the standard ODF format" "One click PDF output" etc.

4. Why only "Download for Windows or Mac"? Where's the *IX support? Cross-platorm capability and consistency is one of the key strengths of the platform. Don't be so dismissive of it.

Re:Design

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Not everyone has or can afford the Microsoft product. I use Open Office and a very old version of Word Perfect Office.

I don't have significant issues with Open Office, but then, I don't use or need many of the more advanced features of any office-type suite, just something to write letters, document things, calculations and so on.

I know I could just get the Microsoft stuff through illicit sources but I won't go that route. I would like people to respect my works and give me due credit and compensation if I request it, it would be hypocritical of me to not respect other people's works in like manner.

Re:Design

[scum-e-bag]

The worst thing about the ad is that it does not tell me anything about Open Office except that it is free, runs on windows/mac, and is an office suite.

Surely that in itself is enough to generate interest from the inquisitive mind. Viral marketing takes over from there. From memory firefox spent a lot more than $10K on its advertising adventure.

What is probably the worst thing of all is that Open Office is both slower and less stable than Microsoft Office. Really I'm not quite sure why anyone would switch other than price. If they advertise themselves now when the product is less than ready for full time, they risk leaving the public in general with the impression that Open Office is inferior to Microsoft Office and always will be. Whereas if they waited until the product was superior to office they would have a better chance at making/keeping converts.

No doubt that it lags MS office in a number of departments. Speed is becoming much less of an issue as processor speed increases. As for bugs... well, in my experience they are minimal. I find myself alongside joe six-pack in finding it easier to download and use OO instead of searching for the warezed MS version that doesn't require 1000 levels of serial number authentication. The biggest issue with OO is macro conversion, and joe-six-pack doesn't use macros all that often.

Re:Design

[danielk1982]

Not just you. This ad sucks. It looks like it was photoshoped in 15 minutes by some Unix hacker. The total effect is cheese (and hey, it comes in yellow too).. I mean come on: "Free Software, for a Free People"!!!??!

Re:Design

[ClickOnThis]

The worst thing about the ad is that it does not tell me anything about Open Office except that it is free, runs on windows/mac, and is an office suite. [...] The open office ad is kind of in your face, I am free, I am superior, download me. Personally the ad comes off as very arrogant; if I did not know what open office was I probably would not even bother giving it a try.

Hear hear! Well posted.

If I may, I'd like to embellish your comments by noting that the ad does absolutely nothing to build brand recognition: no OO.o logos, no sexy screenshots, no feature bullets, nothing that puts the essential aspects of the product into the zeitgeist of the consumer in a way that is memorable or "viral".

Maybe OO.o needs a mascot? Linux has Tux; Firefox has, well, Firefox; Thunderbird has ... okay, you get the idea.

Re:Design

[westlake]

Firefox just claimed to be an alternative which is why it worked so well.

How effective was the Firefox add, really? Is there any solid proof it had any influence at all?

Re:Design

[gaspyy]

Absolutely. No kidding, I was shocked when I saw it.

Regardless of OO.o features (which are so and so) at least the ad promoting it should be on par with MS Office or Wordperfect Suite.

Re:Design

[NutscrapeSucks]

If the target market is "people who can't afford Microsoft Office", then perhaps a cheesy in-your-face ad is the most appropriate.

When you see those ugly, poorly designed ads for used cars, home financing, rodent removal, and so on, the cheeze is purely intentional because the target market tends to avoid marketing that looks like its too classy for them. Just because the ad is ugly doesn't mean it will be ineffective.

Re:Design

[alphamugwump]

OOo has those sick-looking seagulls...

Re:Design

[generic-man]

Metro is not a major newspaper in New York. You want the Times or the Wall Street Journal for that. Newsday, the Post, the Daily News... hell, even the Spanish-language Hoy is more respected than the freebie Metro is.

(elitist New Yorker mode off)

Re:Design

[Infernal Device]

Microsoft says, "Where do you want to go today?" Apple says, "Where do you want to go tomorrow?" FOSS says, "Are you coming, or what?"

The flipside to that is that at least the first two asked before they dragged you there.

Re:Design

[Rix]

I think the point most people are making is that the project is harmful in and of itself. OpenOffice is fine fore me, but it's not ready for people who spend their entire work day in front of a word processor. The only thing this ad could accomplish is disuading those people from trying it when it *is* ready.

Re:Design

[polansky]

Just sit back and complain.

Re:Design

[Tony Hoyle]

I suspect it barely had any effect.. how many people saw the ad vs. people who downloaded it.. probably about 0.0001%

OO are trying to get their ad in one of those free papers that just litter the streets not some major journal.. so in their case make it 0.000000001%

Waste of money - they'd be better off using the money to pay a decent programmer for a few months.

Re:Design

[jgrimstveit]

The mockups doesn't look too good, and I don't think they will be used either. Here are a few more mockups, at least better than the first try: OpenOffice-curves.jpg and OpenOffice-line.jpg are nice, IMHO. Or at least good starting points.

Re:Design

[TheRaven64]

Why only "Download for Windows or Mac"? Where's the *IX support?

Because the target audience doesn't care about *NIX. Anyone who does download it for Mac is in for a nasty shock though; X11 required, no working drag-and-drop, menu bar in the wrong place, countless HIG violations, etc. NeoOffice/J is marginally better, but is even slower.

Re:Design

[Gleng]

At least the answer to "Are you coming, or what?" can be: "No, I'm going this other way instead." :)

Re:Design

[Quarters]

That is all such BS. I have never been, am not currently, and probably never will be interested in spending my time working on a FOSS project in any capacity. I'm a professional who knows to reevaluate my tools and change them if a better way of doing things appears.

That ad has done nothing to convince me that OO.o is a better alternative. Telling me, "It's Freedom, man" is worthless. The people that live by that creedo are already using OO.o. Hauling out a picture of some dead money-models and putting words in their mouth is just insulting. Not telling me why OO.o is better than Office is just plain stupid. I know office, I've used Office for years. Why would I, as a professional, through away all of that instituional knowledge just to save a few hundred dollars by installing this program that I know nothing about?

The ad is a failure. Don't cover that up by trying to saddle me with some utopian Hobson's choice like, "are you going to sit back and complain or do something?". The responsibility is that of the grassroots campaign, not of the people it is trying to reach. If you haven't noticed, I am doing something. I'm telling you you're not resonating with the group of people that you need to be focusing on. Beyond that I won't lift a finger to help you. This isn't some fraternity. It's business. You haven't shown me you can help my business so I will either continue to use the tools I already own or I will look for other solutions.

Re:Design

[ElleyKitten]

It looks like it was photoshoped in 15 minutes by some Unix hacker.

Come on. It was gimped. Unix hackers don't use photoshop. It's obviously gimped.

Re:Design

[JohnFluxx]

Quarters... It was _you_ that jumped in to the request that people give feedback. Why on earth did you feel that you had to reply and say that you personally have never helped, and would never help. Clearly other people do help with FOSS, and other people still may want to but haven't yet. Since you are neither of these people then just ignore the call out. Why did you feel it as some sort of personal attack on you?

Re:Design

[Quarters]

Well, duh, giving feeback is different than "Go redo our ad for us!" Any simpleton can come to that logical conclusion. The feedback is this, "The ad is poorly conceived, ugly, and doesn't convey any useful information. That's what I've been saying all along.

The designers don't want feedback. They want someone to step in and solve their problems for them. If they can't promote OO.o then maybe they shouldn't be doing it. They're going to do more harm then good.

Ugly ad + call for money + low subscription newspaper as a target = nothing more than these people trying to glory-hound in front of the community. They're clearly not equipped to handle this so they shouldn't. But since it's FOSS no one can stop them.

They'd download it

[rminsk]

"They'd download it...". It would help if you would at least get the grammer right in the ad. The design is very ugly.

Re:They'd download it

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the grammer[sic] wrong?

Re:They'd download it

[rminsk]

It is in the present tense when the people in the figures are already dead. It should be "They'd would have downloaded it".

Re:They'd download it

[Petrushka]

It should be "They'd would have downloaded it".

OK, show of hands: who would trust proofreading done by this person?

Re:They'd download it

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't normally use the abbreviation, but this calls for it.

LOL

Re:They'd download it

[alx5000]

Actually, the sentence in the ad is totally correct. It means "They'd download it [if they were still alive | if they have to use an office suite | etc... ]".

"They'd would have downloaded it" is gramatically incoherent and, if you meant "They'd had downloaded it", then it makes no sense since the Internet was no place to download anything (heck, no place at all :P) at the time of these gentlemen's lives.

Re:They'd download it

[Anonymous Coward]

"They'd would have downloaded it" is nonsense, fucktard.

The ad isn't the present tense either, it is subjunctive and it is perfectly correct grammer[sic].

Sorry to burst your bubble, but no one likes grammer[sic] Nazis who don't know what they're talking about.

Someone please mod both of this pigfucker's posts offtopic.

Re:They'd download it

[Anonymous Coward]

my god, either you are the dumbest motherfucker to ever walk the earth or i have been trolled.

Re:They'd download it

[Fjornir]

I wouldn't trust his proofreading but I bet he can ask if you'd like fries with that.

Re:They'd download it

[Fjornir]

Pssst. Check this out.

Re:They'd download it

[NitsujTPU]

I don't want to be a grammar Nazi, but I think that what you meant was "you'd would."

Re:They'd download it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd would!

Re:They'd download it

[Anonymous Coward]

"OK, show of hands: who would trust proofreading done by this person?"

*Raises hand*
No, I wouldn't trust the proofreader, I'm just wondering if it's okay to leave.

Re:They'd download it

[whitehatlurker]

They'd've liked fries. But they'd have to be BIG fries, 'cause they're big guys.

Re:They'd download it

[treeves]

I'm not sure they'd would have. Presidents doesn't have to worry too much about forking over $500 for software, and they doesn't have time to mess with it anyways. They'd would of had they're staff make sure the computers they use were ready to go.

Ugh.

[Stormwatch]

Now that's a fugly ad. Compare it to the famous Firefox NYT ad - that one was beautifully well-designed, but the mockup for OpenOffice's ad looks like something that any amateur would put together in 15 minutes using MS-Paint and a pic ripped from a school book. Also, it is too in-your-face ideological, it barely mentions the app's qualities!

Re:Ugh.

[onco_p53]

I think rather than donate money; the first step is to get somebody who could design their way out of a paper bag. That "mock-up" is utterly hideous. There is no way I would download software based on such a poorly designed amature advert.

Re:Ugh.

[Ireneo Funes]

Firefox ad may look neat and all but I find it to be flawed in that it doesn't stress out enough that it is FREE.
You see a HUGE ad printed on the backcover of one of the most widely-read newspapers in the world, would you rather think someone's trying to help you or to sell you product X?

That's right. Now you look a bit deeper and find that product X is infact an internet browser, whoa!, are they expecting you to pay for something you get by default with the latest instalment of windoesn't?
I don't think so either.

By the time you'd have noticed it's actually free you're probably 2 pages ahead and not caring.

At least the OO.org mockup does nice in the getting-to-the-damn-point department.

Re:Ugh.

[norfolkboy]

worse than that, i think this advert may do damage. there is serious potential to make OO look like a nerds product, with no real substance, and no serious development or thought behind it. this is not the case in reality.

Re:Ugh.

[NitsujTPU]

Yeah, that's another problem. Who the hell wants to dump $10,000 on an ad in the Metro. That's going to be your version of the Firefox NYT ad? An ugly ad in the Metro?

Re:Ugh.

[boingo82]

You're right - the least they could do is have the people at Worth1000 give it a go. That would be worth the $100 cost, as then they wouldn't be totally WASTING $10,000 on running the ugliest ad I've ever seen. (ps, nice sig)

Re:Ugh.

[RealGrouchy]

Compare it to the famous Firefox NYT ad ...

Yes, that's what they used for inspiration, then they followed these instructions to improve the marketing angle.

- RG>

the ad looks like crap

[a.koepke]

Please, someone help them and design a proper advert.

That looks like something put together in MS Paint. It really is a crap advert and does nothing for OpenOffice.org.

If you are going to spend a lot of money putting an advert in a paper at least make it worth your while and get a decent advert designed.

Re:the ad looks like crap

[this great guy]

That looks like something put together in MS Paint.

Or Open Office.

Don't hit. Don't hit.

Ad is missing important points...

[RootsLINUX]

- doesn't mention that OO.org can (usually) read/write .doc, .xls, .ppt documents
- doesn't mention that it can run Linux and other O/S (I know Windows and Mac users are the target audience here, but the wide platform availability is one reason why I switched personally...)
- "Free Software for Free People" => doesn't quite work. It is not explicitly said that OO.org can be downloaded and installed for zero financial cost, but instead alludes that OO.org is "free" in the same sense that people are "free". A person can not cost anything (unless you are a slave), so... the ad draft doesn't communicate the important point of "free to download, free to install, free to use"
- don't even get me started on the bright yellow background. I know its a rough draft, but at least make it a *good* rough draft! If I saw something that cheezy/annoying/distracting/unprofessional in my newspaper, I would turn to the next page before I finished reading the title

Good intentions are there, but I need more faith in an ad that works if I'm going to shell out cash for this cause. I don't want to waste my donation money on an ad that doesn't advertise very well :/

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[JebusIsLord]

- Too techy... just say "Microsoft Office Replacement" or something. I agree in principle though.

- I would expect 99% of Linux users are already well aware of OO, and including the word "Linux" might scare a few people off.

- "Free Software for Free People" both addresses the free-as-in-speech thing we all love mentioning, and lets the user know that the software is free-as-in-beer. I really don't think that part is ambiguous or confusing.

- Agreed. Someone here must have some l33t photoshop ski11z... anyone?

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[unoengborg]

- I would expect 99% of Linux users are already well aware of OO, and including the word "Linux" might scare a few people off.


You miss the point. Of course Linux users know about OOo, the point is to tell people that it runs on all sorts of platforms. This incrases the value of the package as a software platform. I hardly think Linux would scare anybody away. Especially not in combination with Solaris, Windows, MacOS-X, FreeBSD.

BTW, Why are there no seagulls, and why is it yellow instead of blue and white. If you do an add you should use your logo and company colors. That way you strenghten your brand. Whenever sombody sees some one else open OOo they should be able recognize the logos in splash screen from the add.

Why not mention that ODF is the new iso standard for Office documents, why not mention that you easy can share documents with other popular office suits

Besides, I think promoting it on MacOS-X is a bit premature. Most Mac users don't have X11 installed. and will not think of it as a real Mac program as things like menus and fonts will look weird to them.

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[haroldag]

Not to mention it doesn't have OO.o's logo, which visualy marks who they are. I'll be happy to donate once it looks professional, not more professional: professional.

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[nacturation]

doesn't mention that it can run Linux

Maybe in Soviet Russia it can.

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't mention that it can run Linux and other O/S

Good catch. I was totally unaware that this office suite is capable of running an operating system until you pointed it out.

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[kie]

In Soviet Russia OpenOffice advertises you!

or something link that.

[Your funny comment about old people in Korea
  could be in this space here!]

Re:Ad is missing important points...

[gronofer]

True, "Download for Windows or Mac" puts me right off. Even if there is a Linux port, it's no doubt implemented as an afterthought with Wine.

I'd consider donating if the ad was nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Showing a picture of Mount Rushmore and saying "They'd download it" is not something that I'd give money to. However, opening word documents without having to pay $600 for a copy of Office is pretty damn sweet, especially when you work for a company that refuses to buy software and asks you to pirate everything.... I support the cause.

Ugh.

[Zadaz]

If that's the ad mock up, I'll pass. It looks like something I'd see taped to a phone pole above a undecipherable Xerox of someone's lost cat.

I like OO and all (Especially when my $2500 computer came with a trial version of Office.......) but could they find one capable designer to donate 30 minutes of their time somewhere--anywhere in the project?

I might support a real ad in a real publication, but paying good money to distribute this visual hernia in the back of a disposable rag isn't going to bring credibility to anyone.

Old Chinese wisdom

[ezratrumpet]

Be careful what you wish for.

The comparison of Open Office to Firefox is apples/oranges. Firefox is at least as accessible to the end user as IE, and is a better choice for many users. Open Office might not be as favorably compared to MS Office as Firefox is compared to IE.

Despite its flaws, code blot, and so forth - when I reach for my own money, I choose Open Office every time. I imagine that many NY Times readers will reach the same conclusion. Will NY Times do for Open Office what they did for Firefox? Only time will tell.

Re:Old Chinese wisdom

[0racle]

Since the ad is not going into the NY Times, I doubt many of the NY Times readers will be moved by the ad at all.

Ach, mein eyes

[mnemonic_]

That ad looks like total shit. Seriously, it makes the OpenOffice.org project look like a joke. It's insultingly unprofessional design work.

Re:Ach, mein eyes

[slashflood]

Oh, meine Augen.

You're right, it is ugly as hell!

Re:Ach, mein eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

That ad looks like total shit.

It's called truth in advertising.

Re:Ach, mein eyes

[illuminatedwax]

To be fair, punctuation marks aren't capable of making very good art. (Or at least whoever did the work was too ashamed to add their name to it.)

misleading ads

[icepick72]

The ads will says "World's best word process ..." and lists off all the products. These are tactics I expect from Microsoft, not the Open Source world. I know the name of the game is to get the most attention and the most people trying your product (especially at a $10k price tag to advertise) ... that I respect, but OO.Org is definitely not the best software package for those jobs. Don't get me wrong -- it's really good, it's growing, and I use it and love it. The tactics suck, plain and simple. This advertising is no better than we see from any other large corporation. There's obviously enough creativity in the open source community to be able to hit these ads from a multitude of other angles that are more truthful. I think it's unfortuneate and I hope the strategy is altered before these ads go to market, especially because MS Office power users (note: not necessarily day-to-day users) are going to be disappointed and word-of-mouth can be equally detrimental as it is good.

Re:misleading ads

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have taken a look at the planned ad.
No where does it say its better.

Re:misleading ads

[icepick72]

Exactly my point. It instead says "World's best". 'Nuff said.

Dear OpenOffice.org...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please release a version that loads faster than 2 minutes. No, preloading it into memory is not an acceptable solution. I kind of like to use that memory for things other than OpenOffice.org (I know that's hard for you to understand).

Call me a troll if you like, but this is why I use Abiword, Gnumeric, etc. instead. Until OO.org really fixes the slow loading, they're second-class citizens to me.

Re:Dear OpenOffice.org...

[wordsnyc]

OOo Writer, without the quickstarter running, loads in 2 seconds on my cheapo Dell 3ghz running Ubuntu. Two minutes? The ad is hideous, BTW.

Re:Dear OpenOffice.org...

[Ash-Fox]

Takes seven seconds to launch OpenOffice.org writer from KDE3.5.3's 'start menu', running under the 2.6.12 Linux kernel (not optimized for my system). While running a bunch of other programs. Running mobile Pentium 4 clocked at 1800mhz.

Re:Racist warmongers!

[Billy the Impaler]

Go on then, explain how Abraham Lincoln was a racist. We're all on the edges of our seats, O wise troll.

If you have to advertise something

[Colin Smith]

It isn't good enough on it's own merits... ok that's bollocks, but word of mouth is far more valuable and cheaper than taking out adverts in a newspaper. Hell it's something that all the ad agencies are trying to fake just now anyway.

The Ad

[inexia]

The advertisement professes very little of the capabilities of which it can perform, moreso, the fact it provides indpendence from the Office Suites people pay money for usage. The fact the programs in Open Office are quite expansive and offer a very well integrated ability to best the products people "pay" to make their lives easier. I don't feel that the Mt. Rushmore with the ubiquitous yellow "...for idiots" color is beneficial in the developement of which they created. The programs are, and many would argue, easily to use for the purpose they provide. I helped a friend to use it and they were very grateful at the purpose the tools were developed. I like how you are able to take a break and load the spreadsheet; type in "=GAME("StarWars") and take a minute to smile at the few moments of gameplay before toiling again. I think the developers are worthy of Advertising what they have accomplished but wish they did it in a better way than something archaic...IMHO

omfg

[Arthur B.]

1) it's ugly, I mean UGLY
2) it's wrong!
It's definitely NOT the best spreadsheet, it's ages begind excel or even gnumeric

Ahh, now I understand why someone submitted this..

[xiong.chiamiov]

...they designed it. Makes much more sense now.

Average person downloading OOo for the Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so.

I think you'd lose most of them before the fifth or so click. And "what the hell is X11?"

"RTFM, noob. There's 16 page PDF that easily describes how to install it!

Joe SixPack wont get it

[Freaky Spook]

The advertisement doesn't really say exactly what it does, why it is good or why it is worth downloading.

For years security experts and geeks have been telling users to "be very careful with free software" to avoid malware and other nasty junk, and this ad quite frankly looks like some of the armature SPAM I have received in my inbox, if I saw an ad for this it doesn't make me want to download it or trust where it is coming from.

For 10K I would take a different approach, the best advertising is word of mouth so I would do something like Mac did in the early 90's, fund schools with software/hardware and a learning program for the software, if it impresses schools then more schools will happily adopt it, plus each kid could be given a free copy to take home to practice on.

10K could do one classroom in one school, but the word of mouth and the publicity from a company trying to help education would be priceless.

Re:Joe SixPack wont get it

[ggurley]

I agree that helping schools utilize OpenOffice.org for instruction they provide is one of the best ways to get users acquainted with the office suite. I have written a book specially for use in educational institutions to provide instruction for OpenOffice.org titled "A Conceptual Guide to OpenOffice.org 2.0". More information is available at http://www.conciseconceptsinc.com/.

yeck grammar

[icepick72]

They'd download it Purpose place for WFT!!! No one can accuse me of using perfect grammar all the time (actually, most of the time) however this is a professional ad guys, not some highschool hijinx or grafitti

Mac support: You've got to be joking.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice is hardly an application I would recommend to OSX users. Why?

1) It requires that X11 is installed.
2) Has a very non-Mac user interface.

Just my 2cents.

Re:Mac support: You've got to be joking.

[Chop]

Granted I am not a Mac user but at least I know about NeoOffice and that is why the (butt ugly IMHO) advertisment should be for OpenOffice and NeoOffice

Chop

Who reads Metro?

[apflwr3]

Seriously, Metro is not a paper of note. It might be picked up for a quick read on the subway or for lunch by some NY office workers but it's certainly not the caliber of other free papers like the Voice, NYPress or even the Onion. I can't imagine it will get Open Office much return for their investment.

Wouldn't that $10,000 be better spent on banner ads on high traffic site or Google adwords? Then they'd reach a worldwide audience, and the reader would be literally seconds away from downloading the suite for themselves.

Re:Who reads Metro?

[Th0th]

I totally concur, I live in New York and have never picked up a metro. While I would regret giving money to that Socialist Rag, the New York Times; it would be money much better spent and they would come much closer to their goal of increasing awareness of OoO. The only people who I see with the Metro are Bums (their target audience???) who pick them up for free and try to sell them to tourists who don't know any better.

They're not ready yet.

[Cattywampus]

OpenOffice.org is really jumping the gun here, and I think it's gonna backfire pretty hard.

I do use OpenOffice on a daily basis, and I love it. However, it's still dog-slow and clunky in some parts, unfinished or unpolished in others, and buggy here and there. You have to get to know its individual quirks. I tried getting my Microsoft Office-loyal boss to use it for a while, and he gave it up pretty fast. He found a number of things that he was used to doing in Excel that he couldn't do in OOo.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing the project or the efforts of its contributors, nor can I stand up and say that I've contributed code or money to it. What I am saying is, they haven't reached the level of completeness that Firefox had reached before the Firefox ad came out. Couple that with a typically glacial development and release process, and you'll get hordes of new users checking it out ... and being annoyed by it.

And, yeah, ditto the "holy cow, that's an ugly ad" comments, too. It looks very amateurish to me.

Re:They're not ready yet.

[jeffbax]

I'd have to agree, at least as a Mac user. I would never advertise to us with the version of OO.o for Mac. Its not even a native App, and is also much slower for it.

Marketing 101

[pipingguy]

Lose the freedom/hippie theme and appeal to wallets. How much does MS office cost these days?

Re:Marketing 101

[thin_em]

Agreed that the proposed ad & approach is completely wrong (it comes across a bit "student-like" for me). I'd rather that intelligent viral marketing was used. Be better if it had something like Apples old "Think Different" campaign. It'd be better to create a niche marketing campaign rather than a head to head with office per se.Personally I'd emphasis Open document format & PDF export at the moment.

for 10 grand

[FudRucker]

for that kind of money they better make that add look more honest and professional and not cheezy or gimmicky...

Re:for 10 grand

[christian.einfeldt]

Hi FudRucker,

Yes, Ben is going to redo the ad. It seems as if his community effort is spreading, in part in response to this /. article. So stick around. You will probably see a better version released soon!

Christian Einfeldt

layout

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that this is an advertisement for OpenOffice, but that doesn't mean that the ad had to be created in OpenOffice. This ad looks terrible, and I (and many other graphic designers) could do a better job with 5 minutes' worth of work and a copy of Quark or InDesign.

Perhaps a community member with access to a copy of Quark or InDesign could volunteer their services? Even leaving aside the fact that the ad has virtually no content -- the Firefox ad didn't have much more, and many Nike ads have even less -- this one looks so amateurish that I might actually have a worse opinion of OpenOffice than before I saw the ad. (How am I supposed to make professional-looking documents with their program when its ad looks like this?)

Version 2 by pro designers

[zamyatin]

Don't worry, version 2 of this ad will be created by professional designers! Nothing gets a designer to come out and help like putting something out there for them to criticize.

Much better would be for this discussion to focus on the real issue of the fundraising effort. Thinking about the target market, the choice of NYC as the location, questions about the number of daily readers of this paper (450,000, in fact), thoughts around the Tipping Point concept of Malcolm Gladwell, reaching a new crowd of non-geeks and home/small business users, etc. These are the valuable points we should be talking about! Not the draft, mockup ad that will soon be superceded.

Re:Version 2 by pro designers

[treeves]

Interesting idea. Maybe they made the ad intentionally as bad as they could in order to attract someone to come design a really good one, for free.

Re:Racist warmongers!

[XanC]

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery.

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.

I will say, then, that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor ever been in favor of making voters of the free Negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which, I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other white man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man.

I think the grandparent is simply trolling, but the idea that Lincoln was a great hero of racial equality is complete bunk.

bad use of scarce money

[Anonymous Coward]

Money is a scare resource in the open source world. I think the money would be better spent on inducing people to fixing or doing boring, yet important, things. I personally think the money should be spent on hiring a professional to write a very good tutorial / intro for average users. Heck, make it a video / VCD / DVD. Just plop the DVD into the DVD player and follow along on your computer.

The ad is pathetically bad

[DavidinAla]

I'm supportive of the idea of running an ad to raise the profile of OpenOffice, but this ad is horrid. People in the FOSS community might link this to freedom, but the normal, typical end user couldn't care less about that. ALL he's interested in is whether this free product is good enough to take the place of something that he's paying for now (or that he might see as "free" since it came with his computer). Whoever designed this ad created something to appeal to the open-source advocates who care dearly about the "freedom to tinker and change." This is not a pitch that will have merit with the average end user.

If you doubt that, think about this question. Why do MOST people who use Firefox download it? Is it because they want the freedom to modify the source code? For a few geeks, yes. For normal people, no. It's because they've heard it's easier to use or it's less prone to security issues.

If you want to get people to use your product -- even if it's free -- you have to get their attention by speaking to what THEY are interested in, not what you're interested in. This ad fails miserably at that.

David

"Free" is bad

[Comatose51]

Don't say "free" software. People associate "free" as in free beer with cheap. Remember the saying, "There's no free lunch"? Especially in a field filled with adwares, "free" can set off alarms. Why would these guys offer free software? There's must be a catch. That's what the viewers will think. Use open or some other word that makes people think "free as in freedom".

Re:"Free" is bad

[vonsneerderhooten]

... and fancy that, the project is called Openoffice. Man that is some coincidence!

Re:"Free" is bad

[whitehatlurker]

They do say "Free software for a free people" and "independence" - both implying (to me anyway) that this is an appeal to the "spirit of liberty" that one assumes to be prevalent in NYC. (Seeing that they've got that nifty French statue and all.)

Re:"Free" is bad

[shoolz]

You're absolutely right. The ad is to woo ordinary users, but the word "free" will turn them off. Outside the F/OSS community, "free" means "avoid at all cost".

• Free download!
• Free install!
• Free to use!
• Free trial!

Whenever people see the word "free" used in the context of software, they think malware, adware, spyware, phishing and viruses.

10 out of 15 OSS users pick OO over YellowBook

[Doomstalk]

It reminds me of a phone book. Not really something you want for an eye-catching ad.

what about ODF?

[Fluffy_Kitten]

why don't they just make an ad for ODF instead of making an ad for OO.o
Isn't this thing really about promoting the format instead of the product?
Personally I use abiword and still use ODF because it is better than default abiword format.

The marketing looks like crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe. I love the smell of irony in the evening. Slashdot usually has nothing but ill to say about marketing. But here we see the results of poor marketing, AND we have the cabel giving "marketing" advice.

NeoOffice is the preferred OO.o on OS X

[amake]

NeoOffice doesn't require X11, works with OS X's native fonts and printing system, supports all OS X's text input methods (Japanese, Chinese, etc.), and is much more attractive and snappy as of 2.0a.

Re:NeoOffice is the preferred OO.o on OS X

[Pink Tinkletini]

Much more attractive than what, vanilla OpenOffice? That's not saying much. Any Mac user will tell you NeoOffice still looks like shit, and more importantly, behaves in ways that contravene a Mac user's expectations of elegance and consistency.

Not free software

[Ireneo Funes]

Hey you, developers!
This is a free software ad, not free software itself.
It doesn't have to look bad and incredibly amateur.

Please, don't doom it on OS X

[bedouin]

I'm sorry, but for the average user (and even myself) OpenOffice is not ready for prime-time. Please don't ruin the name of OpenOffice in the eyes of Mac users by making their first experience with it such a poor one (on other platforms I think it's a great Office alternative). Wait for OO to become a native OS X app and then appeal to Mac users.

And as others have said, the design is awful.

Re:Please, don't doom it on OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Note that they don't pimp it for Linux. Don't waste ad space on Mac users either.

Get busy with a better ad design if you want to get more money. I'm not wasting $$ on advertsement version .01.

Want more support? Provide a better product.

Kudos on the effort so far, however, you still have more work to do.

Rathole

[TrueWest175]

Advertising is about long-term positioning and awareness. This is $10,000 down a rathole.

What a shitty add design

[stoicio]

That ad is shit.

Yes, the ad is fugly...

[VValdo]

With the majority (by far) of comments remarking on the utter badness of the ad, both aesthetically and in terms of its content, I should point out the following note when this was submitted:

This is just a draft, and we are in search of your feedback and suggestions!

I can only assume the ad will be replaced with something a lot, LOT better. Maybe it would be a good idea to get that part straight before soliciting for cash?

I'd like to see:

* What OOo is.
* Why you would use it.
* Compatibility with MS Office
* Compatibility with WordPerfect (?)
* Save-to-PDF and other standout features
* Who brought you this ad, and why they did it.
* NeoOffice as an interoperable alternative for OS X.

Whoa. That was triangular.

All the above could be done in a really clever way. A cool graphic. A slogan. Something that grabs your attention and then makes you read more. A contest or something might help to facilitate the best idea(s) floating to the top.

W

That's being unfair to things that ARE horrible.

[ScentCone]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that the sample ad looks horrible?

Just basic stuff, like the absurd hyphenation of "all-in-one" in that context... it screams "high school marketing project," and conveys the sense that the technology effort might not be any more fully executed.

Combine that with the low-brow attempt to appeal to some reflexively counter-culture audience, and the tone is just plain wrong. The project doesn't need more hipster nerds using the software, it needs more corporate IT people to like it. And those folks are not going to talk their bosses and users into using it on the grounds that doing so makes a political statement or somehow "gets even" with profit-oriented companies. Come on! It's profitable companies you want to attract, and conveying that whole "business is teh evil" atmosphere will do more to alienate prospective users than pretty much anything else.

And, of course, never mind that Excel can still kick its ass, which makes the "world's best" claim just transparently false... and isn't that sort of hucksterism the very thing that the F/OSS most hate about software from The Man?

Better to have a contest with marketing/design students - they've got a vested interest in building up their portfolios and can really use "won contest" on their resume. And, they may actually have a clue about how punctuation, capitalization, clauses, verbs, and those other little details play a role in communication.

Paper?

[fatius]

Man, that ad is bad. But at the same time, I've lived in new york for a long time now and I still don't know anyone who's actually looked at that paper. So we're not in danger of anyone actually seeing it.

Completely agree

[spoco2]

Absolutely agree on all your points. Too often open software proponents are all about the 'ideological stance' that the software is taking, and how it's better for bunnies or something.

People DON'T CARE! They really couldn't give a flying hoohah about how wonderful Open Source software is, and how it'll save the world. They just want to know that hey! Look, I don't have to pay top dollar just to write a letter or do a spreadsheet... hey, look, it's FREE! Wow, I'd better check this out.

But, put together a TERRIBLE looking ad with ideological crap that says nothing about the product... you've got a whole lotta waste of money.

Re:Completely agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually open software proponents don't care about ideology at all, you have them confused with free software proponents (like everyone else seems to).

More info available at this link

[christian.einfeldt]

Hi, I did an interview with Ben Horst for Mad Penguin. You can read the interview here, if you would like more info about Ben's effort to start this grassroots OOo ad campaign:

http://http//madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=7036/

The difference is....

[spoop]

Firefox is arguably much better than its competition, IE, but OpenOffice is arguably worse than the competition, Office.

Re:The difference is....

[swimin]

There's another difference, Firefox is equal in price with Internet Explorer, but OpenOffice has a big price advantage.

Yep 600 bucks worth of long way to go

[codepunk]

Yep it has 600 bucks worth of long way to go....right....

suggestion

[RickBauls]

How about adding something about how OpenOffice is the first app to support the newly standardized Open Document Format? That's seemed to have worked a few times for me.

Good ideas, VValdo, why not just do a mock-up...

[christian.einfeldt]

...of your ideas and send it to Ben Horst? His email address is right there on the ad. I know Ben, and I'm helping him out a bit with this totally grassroots campaign, and I KNOW that he would love the help.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Christian Einfeldt

Horrible Download/Installation Process

[monkeybrainsoup]

Maybe they should spend their money on making their website,download, and install process a little more streamlined. I've told tens of people that were in need of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to just go get OpenOffice. ~80% came back to me needing help downloading and installing the software. Yes, these people are definitley not the best at figuring it out, or trying different things, or even reading instructions on a website, but if openoffice.org provided an interface on their site to download as easily accessible as the one on getfirefox.com, they would immediatley have a larger user base.

1) Don't make users choose a mirror. Users don't have any clue what that means. Figure it out yourselves, but leave the option open for "advanced" users. The torrent is a nice touch though for the "advanced" options.
2) Provide direct links for the most likely platforms. Sadly this means Windows. On the front page. In huge fonts. (Just do it)

Re:Horrible Download/Installation Process

[KiloByte]

2) Provide direct links for the most likely platforms. Sadly this means Windows. On the front page. In huge fonts. (Just do it)

Or, just check if the platform can be guessed from UserAgent. In a good majority of cases, it can. For example, all Internet Exploders > 5 mean it's Windows (or wine, and thus a clueful user).

Re:Horrible Download/Installation Process

[IANAAC]

Provide direct links for the most likely platforms. Sadly this means Windows. On the front page. In huge fonts. (Just do it)

Or do as the Mozilla folk do: detect what you're running and take you to a big green download button for your OS.

Re:Horrible Download/Installation Process

[vonsneerderhooten]

thats why i whipped up a very simple autorun.inf(google it) which runs setup.exe, and burned the whole mess on to the cd's i distribute. That's about as braindead as it gets.

Good start

[JayTech]

It's a good start, but it's going to take a lot more than a few ads here and there to make the M$ crowd realize there are better alternatives available. I believe the best way to introduce people to this "new technology" (lol) is by word of mouth.

Donate money to something that matters: orphans

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of wasting $10 or $20 on dorks - I mean geeks - so they can thump their chest against Microsoft, why not donate the money to something more charitable: http://www.life2orphans.org/
$10 can buy some baby formula, diapers, or clothes and make a real difference for these orphans. Yes its a Slashdot cliche, but think about the children.

Wow

[imemyself]

The design for that looks fuglier than StarOffice 5 did. I mean, that had to really take some hard work to make something look that horrible. And the content isn't any better. "They'd download it." WTF were they thinking? If they actually put this ad in a paper, the best thing they can hope for is that people don't remember it. This could only have a negative impact on OOo's adoption among non-tech people.

You can't beat

[Kickasso]

OOo's price/performance ratio, that's for sure.

You can if you value your time

[grahamsz]

If I save 5 minutes a day by using excel...

Re:You can if you value your time

[Stormwatch]

Save time NOT doing it. Using Excel and Word - and especially copying stuff from one to the other - is a torture. It hangs, it crashes, it just doesn't work right! I don't know how OpenOffice fares in comparison, but for some reason I doubt it can be any worse!

Just read all the comments

[joeybagadonuts]

And I guess I am the only one to think that this is a Microsoft plant. The amateurism of this reminds me of some of their worst, foiled anti-Apple campaigns of years ago. I really can not find one piece of the ad that isn't terrible. The text, colors, layout, pictures, and self-glorification in the credits - if I wanted to set up OO for failure, this is pretty much how I would do it. Although I guess I would be more discrete. And I wouldn't put it in a birdcage-liner pub.

Re:Just read all the comments

[christian.einfeldt]

hi joeybagadonuts,

And I guess I am the only one to think that this is a Microsoft plant.

Ben Horst, the guy who started this project, has been a member of the OOo membership and active on the discuss lists at OOo for a long time. I have known him for 3 years. So no, this ad campaign most certainly is not a Microsoft plant.

For the US market only

[vandan]

The 'free people' bit raised a few chuckles around my workplace. After all the stories of the US government rapidly meeting their aim of converting the country to a fascist state, with universal surveilence of all ( including bank records ), I find it laughable that Americans still consider themselves free. There are also a plethora of countries around the world who have experienced first-hand the flip-side of US imperialist 'freedom'.

By all means - run the ads in New York. But don't show them to the rest of the world. You'll get a different reaction.

Also, why is there mention of Windows and Mac support, but no mention of Linux? Last time I checked, Mac support wasn't nearly as complete as Linux support ...

Re:For the US market only

[christian.einfeldt]

hi vandan,

The 'free people' bit raised a few chuckles around my workplace. After all the stories of the US government rapidly meeting their aim of converting the country to a fascist state, with universal surveilence of all ( including bank records ), I find it laughable that Americans still consider themselves free. There are also a plethora of countries around the world who have experienced first-hand the flip-side of US imperialist 'freedom'.

Your point is well-taken. I'm helping Ben Horst out a bit on this campaign, and I've gotta tell you, I am extremely concerned about the prospects for the implementation of "perfect control" in the US. The more Microsoft owns of the market in the world, the closer the day of perfect control becomes. DRM. Spyware. Closed format standards. A two-tiered Internet. Paying to access your own data, whereas the government and the corporations get it for free.

There really are a lot of things that are ass-backwards here in the US. I'm not kidding when I say that we in the US need help from the rest of the world to remind us what freedom means. I'm glad that you and your colleages got a chuckle, but I ain't laughing. I live here. If you think the US looks locked down from the outside, you should come here and experience it. We really are sliding into the abyss. So don't mock us, help us. Seriously. There are a lot of people here in the US who are very, very opposed to the direction that things are going, but we need help. The media is owned by conservatives. The conservatives control all three branches of government, and a majority of the States' governments. We need money, and we need publicity for the few areas where free-thinkers are winning. Open source software is one of those few areas where free thinkers are winning. Come on, throw us a bone! Support this effort! Christian Einfeldt

Re:Racist warmongers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pssst. Fucktard. Go read Forced Into Glory. Basically Lincoln didn't want to free slaves, he wanted to deport all Africans. Emancipation was a political compromise aimed at pissing off the South and appeasing Lincoln's party.

Lincoln was a frequent user of racial slurs, and felt that blacks were not equal "...in intellectual and moral endowments..."

Re:That's being unfair to things that ARE horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

And although things that look horrible aren't necessarily bad from an advertising perspective, at the very least have someone proof-read the thing! The hyphens in "world's best word-processing, spreadsheet, slideshow, drawing and database all-in-one clean package" really do render the sentence senseless.

Change it to:
"... and database, all in one clean package"

It won't make the advert pretty, but at least the readers won't trip over the words.

And FWIW, I'd recommend the text over the photo said "They'd use it" rather than "They'd download it".

Does this ad suck by design

[geekwithsoul]

In the not too distant past . . . OpenOffice people realize that people are actually expecting them to run some sort of ad using their donations

OOOOOOOOHHHHH SHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIITTTTTT!

and they smash this traffic accident of a design together in the hopes that everyone is so horrified that someone with some brains and aesthetic sense gives them something better to use

. . . seriously, this ad is the perfect example of what is wrong with OpenOffice in comparison to Firefox:

1. OpenOffice is not as good as the commercial software it's trying to compete with, and so it is sort of hard to come up with a marketing-type message.

2. The software itself, while functional, lacks any sort of cohesive vision or raison d'etre beyond "hey, what do you want? It's free"

3. It looks like crap. I know this is hard for many of you programmers out there to hear, but if your application *looks* like crap, people are going to think it *is* crap, no matter how good it actually is.

4. Whereas Firefox took their message to the New York Times and built-up a lot of well justified hype, the OpenOffice folks came up with something that looks like a cross between a church picnic flyer and a political manifesto that maybe a dozen clueful people will read and understand.

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[oliderid]

I don't agree with your point one. A product equation is features compared to price . If the features are null, then whatever your price is, you won't sell anything. If the features are rich, but the price is too high, you won't sell anything. A lot of MS office features are unknown to lambda users. But the price is high. Open Office has certainly less features, but it's free. Then Open office can find its place at its current stage in the market. There millions of people out there who could use open office without noticing any missing features. As a business owner would you be happy to save...Let's say $200 per computer? I will and i've done it. Olivier

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[Lumpy]

Sorry but number three is simplt not true. MAyby YOU like the fisher price look of MS office 2003 but most people think that OO.o looks quite nice.

What OO.o needs is a complete featurefreeze and nothing but optimazation and making it tight and fast.

OO.o is a wonderful product. I use it daily but it is slow and needs some major speed-ups done, not more features or time wasted making new icons and UI transitions and other useless crap that MS likes to slap on an older product and call it "new".

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[linvir]

One and three have been done. Now for me to tell you that I disagree with point two.

The software itself, while functional, lacks any sort of cohesive vision or raison d'etre beyond "hey, what do you want? It's free"

The beauty of Open Source is that software usually doesn't get written unless someone needs it. Everyone knew that FOSS was in desperate need of a professional-style office suite. Maybe you just weren't paying attention. In fact, Firefox comes off far worse in this respect, because browsers have never been a sticking point, whereas the best we had before OOo was KOffice. I don't even know where you get that "hey, what do you want? It's free" part from.

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[geekwithsoul]

I was not talking about Open Source in general, but OpenOffice specifically. Right now, it's bloated and slow (thus reinventing the broken wheel that is MS Office). Imagine how much cooler it would have been to use the Mozilla model and design a stable application platform, and encourage additional features to be added through extensions. Then you not only have the benefit of a faster, lighter OpenOffice suite, but a natural merit-based competition between extensions resulting in a healthier development community. I know that it is currently possible to design plug-ins for OpenOffice apps, but from what I've been able to find, it's not as easy as it should be to do, and it certainly isn't intuitive as to how to download and install them.

For example, they need to take OpenOffice Writer and strip it down until it's simply a Rich Text Format editor (a la 'WordPad' for those of you in Windoze land). Everything else should be done as extensions. Before they even think about advertising to the mainstream community, they need to lock up the geek user base (who seem to just want a RTF editor that can open and save Word docs) and then look on that as a base to expand from. They have a long way to go, and they're not going to get any closer by following the same "all things to all people" approach that Microsoft has.

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[geekwithsoul]

Hey, I never said it had to look like MS Office, as in my view that looks like crap too, just in a different way. My point was more about looking at how companies like Apple, Mozilla, and Google have created applications that look good and where the interfaces don't get in the way of the user. No interface is perfect, but those companies come a lot closer than most.

Also, since this whole thread is about OpenOffice's ad and trying to appeal to the mainstream, bringing up the fact the OpenOffice is not even close to being eye-candy is relevant. As for a feature-freeze and optimization, the damn thing is so bloated now that it's like tuning up a Hummer -- sure it runs better than an untuned Hummer, but that's about all that can be said for it.

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[linvir]

That idea is fucking awesome. The kind that makes me think "Screw this PHP bullshit! I want to make one of those!".

Re:Does this ad suck by design

[WilliamSChips]

You shouldn't be using PHP in the first place, it's worse than BASIC in teaching you bad programming habits. Oh, and can you draw 'the DRM' in the style of a superhero villain? Like that 'RMS screwing the penguin' pic, it's for the good of the community, except this is even better--it's for the even better of the community!

No one important reads the Metro

[Anonymous Coward]

Metro is not the correct target audience. It's a free paper that barely anyone picks up. Try the NYTimes or Wall Street Journal if you want the ad to mean anything.

I don't get it.

[TaggartAleslayer]

Why? Why spend money on ads like this?

I work in an industry full of stuff like this. Everyone outside the industry calls it "the media". Everyone inside calls it advertising. The purpose of a newspaper is to sell ads. The purpose of television programming is to sell ads. The purpose of most web sites is to sell ads. Eventually, if you deal with it day in and day out, you start to despise the system.

So you load up Linux and start playing with something like OpenOffice. You enjoy the lack of commercial draw. You enjoy the movement away from advertising, into the realm of products shipping on their own worth.

Then you see people throwing away money on ads that could be better used elsewhere. Honestly, the first thing that came to mind was, "Those thousands of dollars could go to a worthwhile charity and do more good for the cause."

Maybe I'm just tired. I simply hate commercial advertising for a product that has so much more going for it.

well, this'll do, I guess

[misanthrope101]

I've been trying to figure out a place to tell someone about my favorite OpenOffice feature, and I guess you just nominated your post by mentioning PDF. I can copy/paste a web-page or selection into OpenOffice, and all the HTML links will be preserved. When I export to PDF, all the links are still preserved in the PDF! I've been using PDFcreator and printing to PDF for a couple of years, but that method loses all the links. But there's more...

Also, if I've structured an OpenOffice document by using styles (Heading 1, 2, 3), that creates bookmarks in the PDF document when I export it, even nesting the bookmarks in a hierarchy.

At least for this purpose, which I use a lot, OpenOffice is better than MS Office. I've been trying to figure out how to keep copies of web-pages with the links intact, or to keep a collection of Slashdot and Panda's Thumb posts while keeping the links, and OpenOffice works really well. Also, Openoffice can be run from a USB stick if you download the version from Portableapps.com. That beats the hell out of MS Office.

That has nothing to do with the article at hand. But don't you feel better anyway?

What does Sun think about all of this?

[bunbuntheminilop]

If I'm not mistaken, Sun has actual real money tied up in OOo. Are they happy with an independant group advertising what could be considered development software?

Has anyone actually asked them?

From the ad"Worlds Best"

[ABeowulfCluster]

If the 'worlds best' software makes fugly ads, no wonder they stick to MS Office.

What's missing?

[babbling]

I don't disagree, but I'd like to know what some of the most important things are that OpenOffice is missing. I'm not a heavy user of any office suite, and to me, OpenOffice appears mostly the same as MS Office.

Re:What's missing?

[Ambidisastrous]

I'm mostly using Write (=Word) and Calc (=Excel), with some Impress (=PowerPoint). The main problems are in importing screwy MS Office files and losing the arrangement of things, and exporting files that use OOo's enhancements. In general, OOo is noticeably less mature than MS Office, but more logically laid out in the details, and both points can trip it up when the suites interact. MS Office really is a very solid and complete suite; it's a serious challenge to try to upstage it that way Firefox did IE.

Write doesn't handle background and embedded images reliably. If the original Word document used strange techniques like a mishmash of text-wrapping and some automatic layout, or abuse of styles, it might all go to hell in Write. The bulletted and numbered lists behave a little differently, and the way to do certain things is not always obvious. The typesetting is also slightly different, so the last line of a page might jump to the top of the next page in the conversion. In addition, OOo has a very logical layout (eerily, as if programmers had designed it instead of marketers), so more things are easily adjustable, at the expense of Office's familiar defaults. Some of these adjustments will do mysterious things when loaded in Word again.

Calc's most obvious fault is in borders. Excel has the infuriating property of only giving 12 borders to work with -- a few thin ones to cover all sides, a double line underneath the cell, a thick line underneath or all around -- some useful options, but far from a complete set, leaving the user to grapple with the program in order to do something different. Calc gives a complete set of border arrangements, but lets the stylistic properties be set using styles in another dialog. Excel doesn't know how to handle this more elegant concept, so it displays the borders as dotted lines out of spite. Calc's less obvious flaw is that it doesn't necessarily handle macros and embedded scripts correctly. There's also one odd alignment option that's exclusive to Excel -- "center over selection," without merging the cells. Finally, the "Data Analysis" tools seem to be missing as well in Calc, though it's possible I just haven't found them yet.

Calc's vestigal weakness is that it uses the same built-in functions as Excel. Look at the definitions of COUNTIF() and SUMIF(), and the way array functions work -- better to see them now and groan, rather than discover them on a deadline and cry. (I still use Calc for most of my real work, and touch up the borders in Excel when I need to send the file to somebody sensitive.)

Impress did impress me -- I found it easier to put together a presentation using it than Powerpoint. But when I checked my work in Powerpoint afterward, I saw that PowerPoint handled lists differently, sometimes collapsing the margins/indentation (treating the bulletpoints as images to wrap around, instead of indenting the whole list). I didn't do much fancy stuff, so there could easily be more hidden shortcomings -- but my presentation did look pretty sauve after I fixed the lists.

There are also a number of oddball Office-like programs, e.g. Visio, with various F/OSS equivalents that aren't part of OOo. It could be an interesting future project to assemble a most comprehensive office package that's a superset of OOo... but we'll leave that on the table for now. As a closing point, remember that PDF exporting is built into OOo, so you always have truly portable exit plan if it comes to that.

Re:What's missing?

[Tony Hoyle]

Just last week a couple of friends (non technical people) mentioned to me that they'd switched to OO after powerpoint let them down badly - apparently Powerpoint runs presentations at different speeds on different machines and requires the same fonts installed so when they took their expensively produced presentation and decided to use it for an important meeting on a different machine it looked like complete crap and ran at 10* normal speed (it was synchronised with a soundtrack so needed to be *exactly* the same speed).

Importing to OO fixed it, but messed up the colours slightly. It was still usable though.

I heard about it when they started cursing Microsoft... These aren't the people I would normally have expected to know what OO was and definately not the standard slashdot types.. but they all (well, a group of 5 of them) switched to it because Office let them down at a crucial moment.

Of course this is a place where backward compatibility doesn't really matter - documents are produced for the moment, so ODF is fine.

Re:What's missing?

[Potor]

I use OOo as my main editor at home, and what I hate the most about it is that tracking changes does not work so well. On a decent-sized document, OOo almost grinds to a halt if the changes are hidden. I also miss Word's grammar checker, which I actually find quite helpful.

Re:What's missing?

[treeves]

One feature I've found lacking in Calc is the Pivot Table and Pivot Chart functions. OK, they're not completely missing, they're just not as powerful or as easy to use. I really like that feature in Excel.

Re:What's missing?

[mrchaotica]

I don't use office suites much either, but what I've noticed is that it's ridiculously unintuitive to create any kind of template (in Impress, Write, or otherwise) compared to MS Office.

Not really...

[IANAAC]

If they were to include some screenshots of Writer, Calc, etc.,and mention compatibility with Office just as every other distribution that includes it does instead of that cheesy yellow crap, they might actually attract attention.

Well, that and actually run the ad in a subscriber-based newsparer, such as the Times, instead of a free rag.

Seriously, that ad is going to attract noone.

At least no one will download it

[kopo]

From the ad auction page:

Roughly 450,000 people read [Metro], and they represent a young, affluent and savvy demographic.

Have you ever seen Metro? It's a cheap (quality-wise; we know it's free), informationless tabloid that's handed out (and usually refused) in the New York City subways. It does not represent a "young, affluent, and savvy demographic" -- it represents people slightly above those who read the supermarket tabloids, and who would like not know how to download and install OOo.

As for calling the proposed advertisement as bad as a "high school design project" -- that's a bit of insult to high school design projects. I was creating more professional stuff back in 9th grade.

Re:At least no one will download it

[linvir]

So basically its readership is 'people wimpy enough to get a free paper forced on them'. Reminds me of that time I actually bought a copy of the Big Issue...

Who is this ad really for?

[tqbf]

Why is "Benjamin Horst"'s name in the ad?

Since when do ads have "producer credits"?

Is this an ad for OpenOffice or a chance for some guy to get his name in the paper?

Re:Who is this ad really for?

[christian.einfeldt]

hi tqbf,

Why is "Benjamin Horst"'s name in the ad? Since when do ads have "producer credits"?

I am assuming that he is doing it for practical reasons, such as to make it easier for people to address him when they contact him about changes to the ad, so that they don't have to say, "hey you" in emails.

Is this an ad for OpenOffice or a chance for some guy to get his name in the paper?

No. I know Ben. He is not an arrogant person. And he's been an active member of the OOo community for at least the three years that I have known him.

Initial reactions...

[jejones]

1. Gratuitous centering. Read Robin Williams's The Non-Designer's Design Book.

2. The main metaphor is the Declaration of Independence... but only two of the presidents on Mount Rushmore are Founding Fathers. Surely there are stock images of paintings of the signing of the Declaration that could be used.

3. I'd be inclined to not interrupt the hook. How about "Declare your independence... they did." followed by the spiel for OpenOffice.

4. OpenOffice is software. OpenOffice.org is a web site. Not the same thing.

5. This is awfully late to be asking for input into the ad design given the theme! It needs to come out as close to July 4th as possible.

6. Ditch the yellow... please?

Re:Initial reactions...

[christian.einfeldt]

hi jejones,

I'm helping Ben a wee bit with publicity for this ad campaign. Thanks for your feedback. I'm sure that your input will help Ben make a better ad. A new and better ad certainly is now in the works! Please stay tuned!

Again, this is an all grassroots effort done on nearly a zero budget, so every little bit of feedback helps!

Re:Initial reactions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "4.OpenOffice is software. OpenOffice.org is a web site. Not the same thing."

The software is named OpenOffice.org too, due to naming conflicts with an existing product named "OpenOffice".

Re:Initial reactions...

[klparrot]

4. OpenOffice is software. OpenOffice.org is a web site. Not the same thing.

Actually, the software is also called OpenOffice.org (don't ask me why). Not that I'm defending that awful ad.

Ben Horst is just using the advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Ben Horst isn't organising this out of the goodness of his heart.

Slashdot just gave him a huge amount of hits to his website where he is advertising 3 URLS selling products or services.

As far as I can see, he knows that horrible ad will never run, he is just after hits.

Oh, please.

[IANAAC]

A friend of mine, who uses nothing but Win XP called me one day. She had just purchased a new PC and, because her office PC had MS OFFice installed, she just assumed her new home PC would have it too.

She called in a panic one day, asking if I knew of anything that could generate Avery labels. It told her OO.o could and she could download it.

So, after downloading it, she called again, asking where that particlar menu function was, since it's not at all the same as MS Office. I told her, while I was on the phone with her, she generated her labels, and said "This is cool! And it's really free?"

Bottom line, it did what she wanted it to do, and now it's all she uses at home.

This argument of "only if you value your time" smacks of MS astroturfing. It's no longer valid.

Re:Oh, please.

[k_187]

not everyone has either the time to relearn it, or someone to call to walk them through it.

openoffice for dummy?

[krunk4ever]

Is it just me or does it also remind you of the _______ for dummy books. First thing that immediately came to my mind was openoffice for dummies. //krunk (^_^x)

My eyes!

[chemystery]

Goodness! My eyes! H2S04 would feel better in contact than that piece...

Is Microsoft behind this sabotage attempt?

[Animats]

This ad is so awful that it looks like an attempt to sabotage OpenOffice. The design is terrible, the message is confusing, and it will look even worse on newsprint. Did Microsoft have something to do with this? Anybody competent could do better. The first line ought to read something like this.

Free office software. No purchase necessary. No fees. No subscriptions. Nothing to pay, ever. No ads. No spyware. No limits on use. No limits on copying. No charge for upgrades. No kidding.

How is this possible? OpenOffice is free software, developed by hundreds of users and companies worldwide. ...

Yeah, thats the point

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Ad's aren't about getting to a point. People don't understand points, look at ads today. While facts are difficult and confusing, emotions are universial and easy. EX: "I'd like to buy the world a coke", "I wish I was an Oscar myer wiener", "That's a spicy MeatBall", "Whasssup!", "Where do you want to go today", "Think Different", ect, ect. You might not like them, but everyone else does. At least thats what highly paid advertisers think, based upon past performance and ads targed at the general public. Even look at the old webshpere comercieals for IBM. What on earth astronaughts have with the application server, I don't know, but my mom liked them. She wanted to know if we needed to buy it for the home computer, and if it would allow us to see the spacemen on our computer. Yeah she's special, but she also has a Phd in English. She's not stupid, just easily manipulated. It worked for OS 2. Those wacky websurfing nuns led my dad to by OS 2. He didn't even know what a OS was.

Actually...

[tmk]

...the design is not so bad. They just have to change the slogan: "OpenOffice - Cheaper Than This Ad!"

Interesting..

[xant]

Now if only there was some way we could squeeze a cliché into that.

Re:Interesting..

[LouisZepher]

Okay, so it wasn't a genuis idea, but it's a bit less tacky than the Rushmore one they're currenly going with. I suppose it's still better than saying "You'll love it or your money back!"

Did anyone ever think that maybe . . .

[kingkoopaunion]

the "proposed" ad was a joke?
Maybe not, if this community is willing to believe that someone would seriously try to publish an ad like that, it's possible that someone (presumably an engineer) could make that and congratulate themselves.

Also, as noted below, nobody takes credit for this, meaning that it was probably not serious.

New office app

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi everyone,

I'm writing a new open source office application because I don't like what's currently available.
Can somebody host a website for me and do all the advertising etc? I have got the first completed. I used C as that is the only programming language I know. Feel free to add in features in whatever language you choose. Here is the code so far:

int main() { return 0; }

If you could submit patches for any features you want added that would be great. I was thinking somebody could make a cool splash screen. We could put in a big for loop so it looks like the app is doing lots of work.

Thanks,
Uber hacker

Re:New office app

[linvir]

GNU/int main() {
/* we're done */
return GNU/0;
}

There, I've tidied up the syntax, put in some comments, and changed some of the stuff back to reflect all the work done by GNU in creating GCC and the rest of the toolchain.

ew

[tbird81]

it looks like the ad was made with openoffice.

Re:ew

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a horrid, horrid production. But blame the (ahem) draftsman, not his tools.

This could do more damage than good to the OpenOffice-using professional community in New York.

Where do I sign

[illuminatedwax]

Where do I sign up not to ever use Open Office again after seeing that ad?

That ad looks like someone from Fark made it.

OO not ready for mainstream yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Save the money, and run this ad when it uses a reasonable amount of memory.

Bravo!

[jawtheshark]

I couldn't agree more.

Oh, and for the grandparents kids: there is a thing that is called "Fontwork Gallery". I suspect that "WordArt" or whatever it's called in MS Office, was too risky to take over. It's in the "Drawing Toolbar" and the icon looks like an "A" in a frame.

Don't be so desperate!

[Jugalator]

Try to picture seeing an ad that doesn't inform well, but try to use patriotism and that it's free to get you to download it as a substitute for information. To me that would just seem like a hell of a suspicious piece of software. Did the designers really try to put themselves into the same mindset as the readers? Additionally, keep in mind that many may already own a copy of MS Office, so the money has either already been spent, or they don't care about piracy in that case. So saying it's a free office suite that the men of Mt. Rushmore would use may not be overly convincing to those. Now, maybe if they listed exclusive features the story would change.

And don't be so desperate and play on people's patriotism, please! You aren't a virgin trying to get laid on prom night here.

Ironic...

[theheff]

because it looks like this ad was made in OpenOffice... puke...

"They'd Download It"

[jpardey]

Nice ideas, the Fathers of Freedom or whatnot (I too am Canadian) being interested in free software. However, much like the Firefox ads, it goes too much into the free software philosophy, which most people don't care about.

The ad serves as a warning: Avoid punctuation in a heading. Also, try to make your ad say something, and don't make it look ugly. At least they didn't start a land war in Asia...

My own mockup ads

[Stormwatch]

My own OpenOffice.org mockup ads , see if you like them.

Re:My own mockup ads

[Anonymous Coward]

They look good, but there's much text that's all the same size. People will think they're looking at an article, not an ad, and people will skip articles that aren't about subjects they already care about.

Still much better than the ads Slashdot linked to, however, which are a sin against graphic design.

Re:My own mockup ads

[ThinkingInBinary]

Those look much better. My only (hopefully constructive) criticism is that there is too much body text; it's hard to get the gist of the ad by just looking at it. Perhaps a few bullet points in larger text?

Re:My own mockup ads

[glsunder]

They look nice design-wise, but they're too wordy. Most people would never bother reading it. I don't do advertising, but I'd say you have 1/2 a second to catch people's eye, and assuming you do, the ad needs to convey its meaning in 5 - 10 seconds. There's a lot of noise out there for people to filter out, and an ad with a lot of words is just more noise.

This isn't an ad, it's a cry for help

[Ambidisastrous]

My understanding of Joe Sixpack may be a little off the mark on this, but:

I've gotten the impression during the past couple years that Joe Sixpack is slowly becoming aware that Open Source and <blink> FREE </blink> are two different things. One is this geeky thing that's free, has powers that are foreign to the Windows/IE/Office97 world, seems to be powered by communists, and is too difficult for non-geeks to use. The other is full of viruses and little gnomes (sorry) who will steal your identity. Firefox, Wikipedia, and this fabled Linux thing are lumped into the first category with varying results; spam leads you to the second category.

The point is, OOo is currently a good fit for someone with an old computer who can't afford MS Office 2003, and who can't open open half the .doc files out there with their current version of Office -- provided the ad explains what OOo is honestly and clearly. The selling points are:

• It's Open Source -- strong enough for a nerd, but made for real people.
• It can read more formats than any other office suite, possibly including MS's latest and greatest.
• Great PDF support, standard -- even MS Office doesn't have this.
• Supports the ODF international standard -- again, MS Office probably won't have this for a long time.
• The most portable suite available -- works on Windows XP/2000/Me/9x, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD (stretch the list of systems to emphasise how universal it is) and kinda on Macs, too.
• Never lose a document to outdated formats again
• Free download and support from www.OpenOffice.org [sprinkle logos around]

I agree that what we're seeing today isn't an ad, it's a cry for help. The ad that actually makes it to press should emphasise the facts in favor of the product -- the Firefox ad looked legit, with quotes to back it up; OOo should try the same approach. It has a devoted and sincere community, it's baggage- and cost-free, and it offers some things MS Office doesn't.

(RE classroom project: that would be good, but it seems like more of a holistic Linux effort -- OOo does not define the entire computer. A variant could be: let folks donate old, seemingly worthless computers; install a lightweight distro that can support OOo (if possible), and set up a new computer for the school that way. Then make sure there's support on hand to help everyone get comfortable with the new systems...)

"The best" is an objective term

[jpardey]

Everyone who has watched that apple commercial where the mac guy talks to the pc guy about video and other "life stuff" knows that better means easier.

Hence, notepad, with its easy and consistant interface, is obviously the best text editor around, with all the features you could ever want to... edit windows formated text. All those idiots using VI should grab WINE and notepad, and get on the better bandwagon.

Very poor design

[Wonderm00n]

Very poor design! No one with taste will give money to this campaign if the design is the one on the website.

NeoOffice is fugly as well...

[TERdON]

* NeoOffice as an interoperable alternative for OS X.

Gaaahh!!! Please don't mention that OpenOffice is available for Mac OS X in such an ad. NeoOffice works, but in my opinion it is JUST AS FUGLY AS THIS AD. Non-native widget set, slow as hell to start, graphics that don't match the rest of the system, open, save and print dialogs aren't based on the system standard.

Basically, it is an interface disaster (because it's heavily based on the win/lin OO.o, which sorry to say wasn't built to be portable to OS X)

To add to that, NeoOffice is still based on OO.o 1.1, when OO.o itself has gained huge improvements from the 2.0 upgrade.

Basically NeoOffice works for geeks like you and me, but shouldn't be used by end users yet. For this ad campaign, it would be a lot better to just leave the Mac market alone, just let the OS X users be, until there is a decent version built for OS X from scratch, and not as a hack afterwards...

Re:NeoOffice is fugly as well...

[mkelley]

I ran NeoOffice as the MS Office replacement for about 50 Macs in an art dept. For people who only need Word and Excel a few times a week, it's not bad. I use it personally on OS X because it works well. The users do not have a problem with the looks, because it resembles (good or bad) Office. Never had a problem crashing or flaking out....(now ask me about Thunderbird on OS X, connecting to Exchange and that's a different story)

I personally wouldn't add anything to the OO ad about OS X, because it's not officially an OO project. The only thing I would add, would be professional design. Let designers design and programmers program. Find someone professional to design the ad.

Re:NeoOffice is fugly as well...

[VValdo]

NeoOffice works, but in my opinion it is JUST AS FUGLY AS THIS AD.

Check out this thread.

W

Ugly!

[Anonymous Coward]

The mockup is horribly ugly! (Well, so is the UI of OpenOffice.org...) Please get a volunteer with a sense of aesthetics. Please don't run an ad like that. It is an embarrassment.

OpenOffice is bad for your health.

[delire]

Blur your eyes, the advertistment looks like a packet of cigarettes, with the white "This Will Probably Kill You" warning at the base. Not the best graphic association to push when touting office software, especially given MS Office is already responsible for 1000's of new nervous disorders and facial ticks each year.

Furthermore, why push FSF rhetoric in an advertisement, "Free software for a Free People"? Tell Joe Clickit why OpenOffice is better than MS Office, tell him it's free to download, and then provide means for him to find out about what FOSS has to do with 'liberation' in a broader sense.

OpenOffice is not our biggest concern

[Theovon]

The biggest problem for the FOSS community is not that we haven't spread OOo enough. The biggest problem is hardware vendors that won't release documentation we need to develop open source drivers! If you're going to donate money, why not donate to the people who are working on developing hardware specifically for the FOSS community? (You know who they are.)

10 big ones?

[rgravina]

Really, US$10,000 could be better spent improving the product. There's no way I'd donate to something like this. It *might* improve awareness, but it sure as hell *will* provide the newspaper with a huge chunk of revenue. That's all I really see this doing. Great software becomes popular because it is great. I've introduced a few people to OOo, some continue to use it and others went back to MS Office. Those I introduced to it who were students or employees using it at home generally stuck with it. Those who had MS Office on their work laptops or wanted to be sure they had 100% compatibility with office formats went back to office (I do realise this is MS's doing). If OOo could spend that money working through a few of it's problems then many of those people may stick with OOo. As others have mentioned, it's not easy getting users to switch from a product they already own and, for the most part, does what is advertised. Firefox, on the other hand, I don't think there is anyone I have introduced that to that has later switched back to IE full-time. Firefox is clearly better than IE, even if all most people care about is the tabbed browsing. Really I feel all of these open source projects that are spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertising are totally misguided.

Re:10 big ones?

[rgravina]

Hmm... I didn't mention that I use OOo and think that the new V2 it is *excellent* - it looks good, and there's no need to pay hundreds for MS Office because of it. I *am* grateful for this. I just wanted to point out that I don't think the $10k price tag is worth the money, and what precious user donations they do get should be spent on something more useful. I think that Sun employs many of the developers, but even then, user donations could go to buying test equipment for the non-Sun volunteers, paying the non-Sun volunteers, placing bounties for bugs/features etc.

ugh

[minus_273]

That is a horrible ad. It looks like a 5 yearold made it. Compare it to the firefox ad, they are in different leagues.

Starting OO faster

[Sigg3.net]

The rollover buttons in the menu and that nifty splash screen?

But seriously, I use OO to write in XP (Abiword in linux), and it needs to be fast.
Disable java in OO and make your own shortcut (in Windoze) to call writer (or whatever app).
Quick Tip: Making OpenOffice 2 start faster

List of things wrong with this ad?

[SamSim]

* Offensively bright yellow backdrop * Backdrop clashes with photograph * Worst possible choice of font * Text too bold and "shouty" * Black/yellow/white combination makes it look like a police warning notice * Hideous layout * "Declare your independence" needs a period at the end * Everybody will think "OpenOffice.org" is a website, not an office suite * Fails to mention the phrase "office suite" * "Free Software for a Free People" is not something the average office user cares about * Mount Rushmore image will do nothing but confuse people * "They'd download it..." is ambiguous; is that opposed to "They wouldn't download it" or "They'd buy it from a shop"? * "Free Software for a Free People" is questionable capitalisation at best * Fails to provide any kind of favourable comparison with Microsoft Office, most notably in price * Fails to mention that you can use it on Linux * "World's best word processing, spreadsheet, slideshow, drawing and database" is not an objectively true statement * "World's best word processing, spreadsheet, slideshow, drawing and database all-in-one clean package" doesn't make a lot of sense (needs "The" at the start at the very least) * "All-in-one" needs hyphens removing * Does it matter who produced or designed it? Do you often see credits at the bottom of newspaper advertisements? * Giving two email addresses is confusing Is that all?

Not ready for Mac OSX on Intel

[techstar25]

I just bought a new Mac, and to my dismay OO.o is not ready for MacIntel yet. There is a NeoOffice version coming, I believe. In the meantime, OO.o can't claim to operate on Mac when it won't even load on the MacIntel. Those new Macbooks are going to be a hot item (pardon the pun!) in the fall for college students, who are going to need an office suite. Maybe we'll see a MacIntel version by then. But this may not be the best time to run the ad.

Re:Not ready for Mac OSX on Intel

[Ash-Fox]

It will run on a Macintel, the prerequisite is Windows.

whoever came up with the lame idea and design...

[Anonymous Coward]

do the world a favour. kill yourself.

If I donate, I have one request...

[hcob$]

Don't Advertise in the TIMES!

Bad marketing

[DaveV1.0]

If one is trying to promote a product that is not geographically limited, then one would be best served putting an in the widest possible channel.

In other words, they would be better off taking that $10,000.00 and putting a small ad in the business section of U.S.A Today or the WSJ than they are buying 2 back page ads in a local paper.

As a Designer...

[veddermatic]

... if I brought that into a client, one of two things would happen:

1) I'd say "April Fools!!" and laugh heartily with everyone as I threw that on the floor and put my real designs up for review.

2) I'd be looking for a new job if #1 didn't happen.

That "ad" violates just about EVERY principle of good design as well as good marketing. I really don't know where to begin. Being able to import a photo and change the font size (oh, and center text for no reason whatsoever) does not make you a designer. If that runs as is, OpenOffice is dead.

Re:List of things wrong with this post?

[linvir]

* List written in Wikipedia syntax
* Author forgot to choose Plain Old Text
* Post now a barely readable block of mess

WordPerfect rules! Where is FreeWP?

[livingdeadline]

My favourite office suite is still WordPerfect Office. At least for the typing, which is about all I do WordPerfect is still unmatched by the simple fact that it isn't unable to handle the pages' layout and that it has that wonderful reveal codes markup functionality. I can't count how many hours of formatting WordPerfect saves. My dad who is a jurist/law researcher uses WP for, among other things, the way it handles footnotes and references, and I'd happily use WP for all my typing needs, but I have been more or less forced to use MS Word for school stuff, and testing OOo on my Linux systems wasn't a nice experience at all.

And by the way, I think someone should put together a Free WordPerfect 5.1/6 clone for *nix. It'd be awesome to have a really good quality console word processing (*not* text editing) environment on my shell server. Or is there already such a project, or is there a console-WP that works on modern unixlike systems??

Easiest +5 Ever: The Ad Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. It's so bad that the moderators are reaching for the "+5 Redundant" mod.

Re:GNU/Linux

[linvir]

Grandma: But, how will I open my letters?
You: Who cares? OpenOffice didn't mention GNU/Linux in their ad in the Metro. Their free lunch is over!
Grandma: But, my letters!
You: Don't you get it? I was doing their legwork, getting their product into wide scale use! And now they slap me in the face! Here, let me sit at the keyboard.
Grandma: NO! I...
You: Move, bitch! They don't give a damn about us in the grassroots! Fuck them!
Grandma: Get out! Get out and don't come back. Not ever.
You: Oh, you'll pay for this. Your free lunch is over. I visited you when noone else would touch you, and now you slap me in the face?
Grandma: Get out!
You: Right, that does it. I'm going to go round everyones' houses and remove your phone number from all their address books! Your free lunch is over!

Open Office is Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have never used any other office/word processor/spread sheet product. For those that have, OpenOffice is a cheap alternative to more robust and feature rich packages and that if you don't want to pay for it, then you learn to comprimise and work around its problems.

Free software for a Free People, Free people should expect better. Free people also have the choice to buy better.

Print media hypertext

[Anonymous Coward]

The ad will link to the OpenOffice homepage

I think the bigger story is the breaking of media boundaries when this newspaper ad "links" to the OpenOffice homepage.

Whoa...

[Doches]

With that mock-up, they're sure to push their downloads from 10 to 187!

Professional advice: get a professional

[beaverfever]

Here is some professional advice for the OpenOffice people: get a professional to create your ads. Really. You are wasting your money if you do not. The proposed ad has many negative qualities and looks amateurish; it can only harm your efforts.

I have not looked at the Google group discussion on this yet (it was taking forever and a day to open), but opening up something like design of advertising to an online, anonymous committee with a potential size of infinity+1 is inviting disaster, and is probably going to keep many potential professionals with pro bono work in mind from coming forward.

Something like this needs a small team of people who know what they're doing, with good leadership.

Metro

[clinko]

"Roughly 450,000 people read it, and they represent a young, affluent and savvy demographic."

The Metro is handed out before you get on the Subway in the morning. This is how they get the 450k. NO ONE takes it outside of the subway. I would be embarassed to be seen with one.

"Young" - This I agree on. Odds are good on this.

"Affluent" - Not really, it's the subway. The affluent, switch-my office-to-this-software, don't live in the city. They will just buy MS Office with their Dell, or get it from their office.

"savvy" - Maybe, but these are the same people that buy macs, ipods, and OFFICE with their Dells because they don't want to deal with installing.

This is new york, don't waste my time when I can just buy a quick solution.

Um... no

[everphilski]

FOSS says, "Are you coming, or what?"

To which I reply to OO.o: No, you aren't mature enough for an ad to take on Microsoft Office. Maybe in 5 years. Now get to work.

It's meant to look ridiculous!

[nimid]

That's the whole point.

It's designed to make you want to help them make a better one.

Of course they know it's a violent assault on your eyes.

Sheesh, a little reverse psychology and you're all scrambling around like confused children!

Fraud

[Lord Bitman]

"Thanks for the $10,000. We spent it on this."

Is anyone buying that for a second?

This is a complete waste of money

[UpnAtom]

The Firefox ad worked solely because it was a novel idea and every newspaper, blog & media station covered it.

Honestly, take it from an advertising pro, please please please save the money and spend it on encouraging word of mouth.

What are the ad specs for this newspaper?

[Peter Trepan]

Must this be a four-color ad, or could you save money by making it two-color or b/w? Do they offer that on the back page? What are the dimensions of the page? Do they prefer Quark? InDesign? Something else?

Their media kit says Metro appears in 18 languages. I assume this ad isn't going to be translated, but where will the English version run aside from New York? ...London? ...Sydney? ...Johannesburg? (If so, they'll care even less about the Founding Fathers than the American audience!)

What audience are you most after? End-users? Startup businesses? Either way, if they were impressed by ideology, they'd already be on board with FLOSS. You'll have to spin it another way - maybe noting that OO.o frees their small business from the EULAs and license fees of Office. Office's "get legal" campaign is an excellent idea - small business owners are terrified of corporate attack lawyers, and OO.o legitimately frees them from some of that fear.

Re:What are the ad specs for this newspaper?

[Peter Trepan]

Whoops - meant to say: OpenOffice's "get legal" campaign is an excellent idea.

Why not post the specs and have a design contest? The open-source crowd and the graphic design crowd run in similar circles. I don't think you'd even have to offer a prize, aside from bragging rights.

Not taking the right path, and don't use students

[beaverfever]

"Given that the credits read "Design by ..." I suspect this is exactly what they're going to do. They could have made it a bit more obvious, though."

If their intention is to have someone else design it, then why did they design it already? You don't sit down and do a piece of work poorly and then ask a professional to tidy it up for publication. They have gone through 90% of the marketing and design process without any professional input. No matter what the field, most professionals would turn down such a job.

Many people are submitting alternates on the google page, but those will fail too. Does OpenOffice have any leadership? The leaders need to lead; some things can't be done by committee, especially not an internet-sized committee. The leaders need to start from scratch, working with a professional, and go through the entire process to develop proper materials. They'd probably end up getting better results for their money too.

Deciding "We're going to place an ad in this newspaper" and then coming up with an ad is getting priorities messed up. They need to decide what their goals are, then a pro could help them determine which avenue to take, and develop appropriate graphic communications for the task. With a budget of $10,000, there are a lot of marketing options besides running one ad in one newspaper in one city. ...and don't use students. Yes, I was a student once too, but as people have mentioned in other posts, students don't know much, and they aren't professionals yet. I'm certain a reputable design/marketing company would be willing to take this on as pro bono work. Students would be better off getting intern/placement positions with real agencies or studios and learning the right way to get things done, rather than mucking with projects which are over their heads and learning through large-scale trial and error.

Advertisement Critique

[totallygeek]

Although glad that OpenOffice is being advertised, I am bothered by some things with the advertisement itself. First, there is no information about OpenOffice within the advertisement. Second, it does not mention that you can download it for Linux. Third, it shows the presidents, which those not in the know of free software (as in speech mostly) might associate with aged software. Lastly, if someone is not going to download it, they certainly aren't going to email questions about it.

I hope they didn't pay an ad agency much for the development.

Who cares...

[rlbond86]

I've used openOffice and I was unimpressed with most everything about it. Microsoft Office is much better, and is worth paying for, especially for excel and powerpoint.

Re:Who cares...

[Ash-Fox]

I've used openOffice and I was unimpressed with most everything about it. Microsoft Office is much better, and is worth paying for, especially for excel and powerpoint.

Microsoft Office costs too much. I rather the OpenOffice.org suite.

Better spend the money on a programmer

[penrodyn]

I bought a new Windows computer, decided to use openoffice for my spreadsheet needs, I thought it would save me buying Excel. My most frequent task is to load CSV data into the spreadsheet for graphing, or more precesely, paste CSV data to the spreadsheet (you know, open window with data, ctrl-a, ctrl-c, then hop to spreadsheet and ctrl-v), sadly it doesn't work on openoffice. So I dumped openoffice, tried Gnumeric instead, this did work, now I use Gnumeric (it's not perfect but it's seems better than openoffice). I think it would be better if the 100,000 were spent on hiring another developer to improve ussability rather than spend it on an ad.

TWO Ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're hoping to make an impact with two ads in a daily paper? Please.

Anyone who knows a shred about marketing and advertising knows that repetition is the key.

Without a sustained presence (think once or twice per week for an entire year) their message will be lost in the shuffle, and 99.5% of the readership won't remember a damn thing a week after the ads have run.

unprofessional and inappropriate

[spoonyfork]

This is the comment I left on the project organizer's blog:

Please do not use the image of Mt. Rushmore with the caption "They'd download it..." in your OOo ad. It is an unprofessional and inappropriate attribution to people who cannot speak for themselves. US-centric jingoism will most likely not appeal to an international audience and certainly alienate the enlightened... which is probably your target audience. Moreover, it is logically false because the USA founding fathers could not and cannot use OOo. I support your effort in obtaining more publicity for OOo but please do reconsider your current design.

Ummm

[GmAz]

"Worlds best Word Processor, Spreadsheet...." Says who? The niche market of people that get OpenOffice with their flavor of linux? If its the world's best, the world would be using it. But guess what, the world doesn't use it. The world primarily uses MS Office.

Delicious Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

I just find it ironic that the lowly brick and mortar newspaper is coming to the aid of the e-this and e-that tech world. These are many of the same people who've predicted the death of newspapers for years and now they are spending a good chunk of cash on them.

I know this has been posted to death...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but I want to throw in my two cents in case someone from OO.o comes check the damage: "Sirs, your ad is a shit burger."

Re:GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linvir, get back to your MS campus and do some work...Oh wait, I forgot, Billie Boy Gates pays you to read Slashdot and push the company line... :P

OT: MOD COMMENT

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Come on, thats ridiculous. I really wnt to knwo the answer to the at question. Sure I was a bit dramatic, but it was late and I couldn't think striaght. People say the most ridiculous things here,but whenever you check them on something especially if its an anti MS product you're responding to you get labled a troll. OSS is great and I use it on my personal computers, but I CANT use it on my companies because its so slow ( note my company is a nonforprofit operating in the third world, we can't afford new comptuers right now, donations are very difficult to take down)

Uh, what planet are you from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Openoffice is a joke. Its a huge, bloated, barely functional pile of crap. It makes MS Office look good for crying out loud!

The ad sucks, just like OO does

[enmane]

Let's face it,

Openoffice had its day in the sun (no pun intended) but its days are numbered. Overall, the package is slow and bloated and the reports from Office 2007 say that it is still quick even with all that bloated GUI crap (i.e. The Ribbon). OO is incredibly slow in loading and in use without all the functionality of Office and non of the GUI.

OOWriter,
Great program, slow as a dog w/heatstroke but has a good drawing package, bibliography, and eqn editor.

OOCalc
Nothing to see here, move along. Excel has nothing to fear. Charting works like crap.

OOImpress
Nothing new here with less functionality than Powerpoint and animations work like hell in Linux. So much for cross platform.

OODraw
Nice drawing package and better than that in Word. Yeah, that's 1.

Anyhow, I've stopped holding my breath for a kick-ass free package and the package has been in a death spiral ever since Sun got their grubby hands on the package. They should have left it with StarDivision and just paid them $$ to incorporate features as opposed to having developers work on both StarOffice (SUN's) and Openoffice. What, didn't you know that most of the OO.org developers are Sun employees, LOL - it explains the bloatware and Java integration now, doesn't it.

Re:The ad sucks, just like OO does

[Ash-Fox]

Openoffice had its day in the sun (no pun intended) but its days are numbered. Overall, the package is slow and bloated and the reports from Office 2007 say that it is still quick even with all that bloated GUI crap (i.e. The Ribbon). OO is incredibly slow in loading and in use without all the functionality of Office and non of the GUI.

While Openoffice isn't noticably slow for me (just takes a lot memory), what other FREE office suite that is comparable that you know of?

Re:what about ODF - absolutely right

[Rob Y.]

The issue is ODF. OpenOffice is a powerful, free implementation, and you'd certainly want to mention that, but the current buzz (to the extent that there is a buzz) is about governments mandating ODF because it's an *open* format. The story here isn't "it's free". The story is "it's open", and the challenge is to get the word out about why that matters.

Then that 'other' story about Massachusets starts to make sense. Then it gets in the news. Then you get all the free advertising you could want, plus invites to CNN, etc. to debate the issue.

Too Many Clicks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it took like 10 clicks to actually download this thing. OpenOffice.org should follow Mozilla's example and have one-click access to the download on the homepage.

Can't mention the apps qualities.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they app was about the app, it would be even worse. "Switch to open office! It has an order of magnitude less functionality, yet its also an order of manitude slower and more bloated!". Not gonna impress anyone.

IE did not have a prohibitive cost

[Outland Traveller]

People who compare OpenOffice.org advocacy to Firefox advocy seem to forget that Firefox's competition is given away free in Windows platforms, while OpenOffice's competition costs a large amount of money. I would even say that OpenOffice's competition costs a prohibitive amount for many home users, non-profits, non-university students, and small businesses.

In the bang-for-the-buck metric, OpenOffice.org is a big win for a much larger population than currently know about it. There is a message to get out, that could legitimately help many people.

I agree, however, that the advertisement design could be improved.

Spite is SO a business strategy

[ArmpitMan]

I see Sun-sponsered OpenOffice.org ads on the sides of buses every damn day.

Didn't realize that it was just because I live near Redmond.

The OpenOffice.org name alone will doom this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi -

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but due to the stupid use of "OpenOffice.org" (I know there is a trademark issue here), most casual computer users will think the advertisement is for a web site rather than a software applications suite.

- TWR