[Scottish] Open Office CD Distribution

[Craig Perry]

Hey,

I done a similar thing to this a couple of years ago. I'm not sure my 
experience is entirely relevant because i dont know your exact target 
audience but here's my 10pence worth:

I found that anything _remotely_ technical, just turns the punters off. 
Most haven't a clue about open source software, what it is, why its 
relevant etc. but a cover letter is not really the ideal place to inform 
given the size of the topic. Same again for "multi platform" lets face 
it, joe punter uses Windows and the lucky ones use MacOS (although 
typically with Office installed). I would probably say that it will run 
on Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Linux.

I would however definately include the fact that this software is 
completely free to use and copy legally under any circumstances (except 
if you run a nuclear reactor IIRC), punters seem to take note of this.

I dont know that languages are quite being added constantly but 
certainly language support is expanding. Hyperbole do tend to have a 
negative effect on joe punter's fragile mindset.

Open office is however an advanced and mostly stable (in my experience 
lately anyway) office suite and i would say that.

Regards,
Craig



rob wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I've done an initial draft of a letter to accompany the Open Office CD's. As I 
>don't have all the facts I'd really appreciate it if people could use this 
>thread to hammer out a final usable letter, I'll then type it up and we can 
>move forward with the distribution of the CD's.
>
>If anyone can give me names of people I could contact to get more information 
>on what exactly the CD's are supposed to be for that would be great.
>
>here's what I have so far:
>
>http://www.anderberg.co.uk/openOfficeDraft.txt
>
>thanks,
>
>Rob
>
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