Marketing

I am talking to some projects that use DLP libraries about logo sharing -- will update here when there is news.

Found some Visio files that show the progress of libvisio (via LO). Will look at making a video around it with this script:

[ Screen of binary ]

In a digital world, having control over your data is essential. But if you create a document today, can you guarantee that you'll be able to open it in another 10 years? What happens if the software you use today stops being updated for new operating systems? Or if the software switches to a new file format, and drops support for the old one?

[ Vendor lock in text surrounded by dollar signs ]

That's what we call vendor lock in, and it's used by many software companies to control you and your data. This is bad enough for home or office users – but imagine the consequences for huge archives in public administrations and governments.

[ Document Liberation Logo]

Well, we're changing this. The Document Liberation Project empowers individuals, organizations and governments to recover their data from proprietary file formats and transition to open formats, returning control to the creators.

[ List of libraries ]

The Document Liberation Project achieves this by developing software libraries that let applications import proprietary file formats. For instance, in earlier versions of LibreOffice, which uses software from the Document Liberation Project, here's what happened when trying to import a file in Microsoft's proprietary Visio format:

[ Image from LO 4.3 with missing text ]

The text is missing and the rendering is wrong. But thanks to the work of the Document Liberation Project, and its libvisio library...

[ Image from LO 5.1 with proper text ]

...new versions of LibreOffice open the file without problems, and the document can now be exported in an open standards format like ODF.

[ Logos move onto screen ]

Document Liberation Project libraries are being used in many well known open source applications, such as Scribus, Inkscape, Calligra, and LibreOffice.

[ Image: we want you ]

So join us: (URL, how to contribute)

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gPeF1R7mtQ

Feedback on the marketing-priv list is positive, so I'll add it to the DLP site

I have been talking to Christoph Schäfer from Scribus, who is interested in adding a DLP logo to the Scribus site. He also notes: "I'll meet the CIOs of the German Protestant and Catholic churches in October to make the case for LibreOffice and LibreGraphics. We're currently working on a poster for these and upcoming events, which already includes the current DLP logo."

This is a while off, but could be worth a good report.

Draft text and layout for front page -- will run past discuss@documentlibration list:

The situation

Many computer users today have digital content created years ago and stored in old, outdated and proprietary file formats. Frequently, these old files cannot be opened by any application on the user's current operating system. The users are, put simply, locked out of their own content. And this affects entire organizations too - so what happens when a government is unable to read or access digital data from past years? The consequences are huge.

The solution [thumbnail on right of video]

The Document Liberation Project was created to empower individuals, organizations, and governments to recover their data from proprietary formats and provide a mechanism to transition that data into open and standardises file formats, returning effective control over the content from computer companies to the actual authors. To achieve this, The Document Liberation Project develops software libraries that applications can use to read data in proprietary formats.

Who's using it?

Many well-known free and open source software applications use Document Liberation Project libraries, including...

[ logos of Scribus, Inkscape, Calligra and LibreOffice ]

Get involved!

Join us: read more [about the Document Liberation Project], check out the [list of projects] we're working on, and [contribute] code to existing libraries (or create a new one). Thank you for your support!

OK, I've been communicating with Scribus and Inksape teams and they've added DLP logos on their project sites:

https://www.scribus.net (near the bottom)
https://inkscape.org/en/about/ (right-hand side)

New front page is online: http://www.documentliberation.org

Shorter, snappier, and with links to projects that use DLP libraries along with the promo video.

I've now put out the idea of synchronising releases to the dlp-discuss mailing list, so that we can shout about them more (eg with proper press releases, screenshots, quotes from projects that use DLP libraries etc.)

Blogged about progress during the first half of 2016 here:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/06/17/document-liberation-project-progress-so-far-in-2016/

Meanwhile I asked about combining releases but feedback was that it wouldn't be possible. Still, we should highlight the DLP libraries that are used in LO for the LO 5.2 release.

I now have access to @docliberation, along with the Google+ and Facebook pages, so can do more promotion there.

Done some social media marketing:

• Tweet (https://twitter.com/DocLiberation/status/748170875967516673) got 34 retweets and 4,747 impressions
• Facebook post (same content) reached 975 people
• Google+ page only has 11 followers, so very small; will try to build that

So awareness is spreading. With LibreOffice 5.2 we should mention DLP in press releases and have a call to action to get involved.

Added a self-hosted WebM version of the promo video, as an alternative for those who want to avoid YouTube.

Mike Saunders wrote:

• Google+ page only has 11 followers, so very small; will try to build that

Note that the page didn't exist from the beginning--we did only have the Document Liberation Project community (https://plus.google.com/communities/109370061751362503274), where we posted under our own names. Later, Fridrich created the documentliberation page as an official "voice" for the project. But even after that all posts have been directed solely to the community and it has been expected that any interested person would join the community (This might have been a mistake. Maybe it would help to direct posts to both the community and general public).

Mike Saunders wrote:

• manage to have all DLP announcements of new or updated libraries consolidated into a single big release

An idea: As TDF has decided to support Flatpak (http://flatpak.org/) as a distribution format, it might make sense to create a flatpak runtime + SDK for DLP, containing all the existing import libs and libodfgen. Updates to that runtime could then be synchronized, get bigger announcements etc., independently of releases of particular libraries.

Progress so far: slow growth on social media (in last month: 47 new Twitter followers, 7 new Facebook likes, 1 new Google+ follower). Website views for May and June down from April, despite the new video, website redesign and H1 2016 blog post. There haven't been any new DLP library releases for over four months, so there's not a lot to shout about at the moment.

Still, there are some things we can do:

• Talk about DLP in the LibreOffice 5.2 release announcements, and add links in the videos
• Encourage press to talk about DLP in their articles about LibreOffice 5.2
• Talk to DLP developers at the LibreOffice Conference -- maybe do a video interview
• Create a gallery of before-and-after comparisons showing how DLP is helping FOSS apps to read proprietary files

The last one would be quite a bit of work, testing various different versions of apps and libraries, but could help a lot. I will look into it once LO 5.2 is released.

That all sounds rather good to me - I think the first two items can be
done easily and make absolute sense, for the rest let's see when we can
factor in time. When you do interviews during LibOCon anyways (IIRC that
was a plan), then let's keep that in mind. For the last part, let's see
how many cycles we have free for Q3 or Q4.

We linked to the DLP website in the LibreOffice 5.2 press releases and videos, although Piwik had stopped working for documentliberation.org so we can't see how many extra hits those links brought in.

We linked to the DLP website in the LibreOffice 5.2 press releases and
videos, although Piwik had stopped working for documentliberation.org so
we can't see how many extra hits those links brought in.

Can you poke Cloph to get Piwik up and running for that site again?

Can you poke Cloph to get Piwik up and running for that site again?

Yes, I did that as soon as I saw it wasn't working, and it's back up and running now.

Still quiet in the DLP, but I'm trying to get a couple of things going:

• Posted the script to the promo video I made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSqU2Wp-neQ) on the wiki, and asked LO localization team and DLP-discuss if they want to contribute translations for subtitles (like with the LO 5.2 videos)

• Finding out if anyone involved with DLP will be at LibOCon, to maybe do a video interview or other activities

Thanks to contributions from the community, the promo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSqU2Wp-neQ now has subtitles available in Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Chinese (Taiwan), Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. I've spread the word on the DLP social media channels (Twitter, FB, G+) and retweeted on the @libreoffice account, so hopefully it'll raise some more awareness.

I'm keeping track of metrics (video views, Twitter followers etc.) so will update here in a while to see what effect it has.

After some more promotion, in the last two weeks the video has 578 new views, and @docliberation on Twitter has 60 new followers. After a quiet period for releases, libzmf 0.0.1 is out so will investigate post-conference what we can make from that.

Got interview text from the creator of the new DLP libzmf library, so will put it online next week. Some social media stats for DLP for the last few months:

• 22 Jun 2016: 1,105 Twitter followers / 132 FB page likes / 11 G+ followers
• 22 Jul 2016: 1,152 Twitter followers / 139 FB page likes / 12 G+ followers
• 22 Aug 2016: 1,234 Twitter followers / 141 FB page likes / 13 G+ followers
• 22 Sep 2016: 1,335 Twitter followers / 206 FB page likes / 17 G+ followers

So quite a jump in the last month, building on the LO 5.2 release.

Added interview with new DLP contributor and spread around DLP social media accounts, encouraging others to join in:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/09/26/document-liberation-project-interview-alex-pantechovskis/

Is there more in the pipeline? Did you get some feedback from the DLP team? I'm trying to find out if we should continue working on this, or see how things perform and revisit in early next year.

I do not think there is something else in the pipeline.

There has only been one release of a DLP library in the last six months (libzmf 0.0.1), and I already interviewed the developer of that, so there's not much to report on. I was thinking of doing an end-of-year roundup of 2016's activities, but unless anything else is released in the next few weeks, it'd just be a repeat of what I wrote in June: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/06/17/document-liberation-project-progress-so-far-in-2016/

Florian Effenberger wrote:

Is there anything we could do wrt. to the 5.4 release?

According to the DLP devel@ list, there hasn't been a new version of a DLP library since September 2016. However, some small developments are taking place in the individual libraries, eg:

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/gitweb?p=libvisio.git;a=summary

So there aren't big, shiny features to shout about, but we will mention DLP in the 5.4 marketing materials, like we did for the LO 5.2 announcement:

"LibreOffice 5.2 and LibreOffice 5.1.5 are built with document conversion libraries supporting proprietary document formats from the Document Liberation Project: http://www.documentliberation.org."

So there aren't big, shiny features to shout about, but we will mention
DLP in the 5.4 marketing materials, like we did for the LO 5.2 announcement:

"LibreOffice 5.2 and LibreOffice 5.1.5 are built with document
conversion libraries supporting proprietary document formats from the
Document Liberation Project: http://www.documentliberation.org."

Maybe we can add some call for action/participation as well. Can you
reach out to the DLP folks and ask if they have anything specific to
add? Maybe you can come up with a proposal you show them. :-) Thanks!

Florian Effenberger wrote:

Maybe we can add some call for action/participation as well. Can you
reach out to the DLP folks and ask if they have anything specific to
add? Maybe you can come up with a proposal you show them. :-) Thanks!

Yes, I've reached out to the DLP discuss@ with a request for information on DLP contributions to LO 5.4, and a proposal for marketing them.

I didn't hear anything back from the DLP folks, but when I proofread Italo's 5.4 announcement I'll see if we can squeeze in a DLP mention (and a link) somewhere.

Some DLP developers have got back to me with updates from recent months. It's too late to deeply integrate them into the 5.4 announcement or video, but as an alternative I will write a blog post summarising the news, with screenshots where possible, and spread the word on social media.

Mike Saunders wrote:

Some DLP developers have got back to me with updates from recent months. It's too late to deeply integrate them into the 5.4 announcement or video, but as an alternative I will write a blog post summarising the news, with screenshots where possible, and spread the word on social media.

Sounds great!

I'm getting enough info together for a blog post about DLP updates. Alex P is doing some GSoC work to implement a QuarkXPress filter based on a DLP library:

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2017-August/078193.html

Draft of blog post -- sent to discuss@dlp for feedback, before I put it on the TDF blog:

Updates from the Document Liberation Project

The <a href="http://www.documentliberation.org/&quot;&gt;Document Liberation Project</a> (aka DLP) is working to free users and content creators from vendor lock-in. To achieve this, it develops and maintains libraries for reading documents in many different formats – including those generated by proprietary software. To learn more about the DLP, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSqU2Wp-neQ&quot;&gt;check our our short video</a>.

In recent months, DLP developers have been working on updates and new features, so read on for all the details.

QuarkXPress import filter

Lithuanian coder Alex Pantechovskis (who we <a href="https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/09/26/document-liberation-project-interview-alex-pantechovskis/&quot;&gt;interviewed last year</a>) is working with David Tardon on a filter to read documents generated by the QuarkXPress desktop publishing application. He's doing this as a Google Summer of Code project, and is making good progress importing text boxes, shapes and other objects.

The image below shows an original QuarkXPress document on the left, and how it is converted into the open and standardised <a href="http://opendocumentformat.org&quot;&gt;OpenDocument Format</a> for use in LibreOffice and other software:

http://i.imgur.com/4UtI882.png

Alex and David have implemented the filter in a library, libqxp, so that many open source programs will be able to extract data from QuarkXPress 3.3 and 4.x files in the future.

PowerPoint and StarOffice

Meanwhile, Laurent Alonso has been improving a number of libraries for better compatibility with legacy documents. For instance, in libmwaw he has implemented an import filter for presentations created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2 (Windows), PowerPoint 4 (Mac and Windows) and PowerPoint for Windows 95. If you have old presentations in this format and need to retrieve the main contents, this filter will help you out.

In addition, he has updated libstaroffice, which is a library used to read files generated by StarOffice (which later became OpenOffice.org and then LibreOffice – see <a href="http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/libreoffice-timeline/&quot;&gt;our timeline</a> for the full history). Thanks to Laurent's work, .sdc spreadsheet files preserve more of their formatting when imported, while .sda files created with StarOffice Impress are now converted as presentations.

Give us a hand!

As you've seen, DLP is helping users and content creators to free their data from old, legacy and proprietary formats. DLP libraries are used by many well-known applications such as LibreOffice, Inkscape and Scribus, so your contributions can help millions of people around the world.

And you don't have to be a developer! While code contributions are always welcome, you can help us by reverse-engineering and documenting file formats, or sending us sample documents to analyse and test against the DLP libraries. Any help can really make a big difference, so <a href="http://www.documentliberation.org/contribute/&quot;&gt;see this page</a> to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!

Blog post online:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/08/28/updates-document-liberation-project/

Will promote it now.

One of the items mentioned is a comparison gallery. Was there some progress, or is this still pending?
Can you update the statistics in time for LibOCon?

Florian Effenberger wrote:

One of the items mentioned is a comparison gallery. Was there some progress, or is this still pending?

I really need help from developers for that (especially regarding example files showing the changes), and haven't had much feedback when I've reached out before. I've posted another reminder on DLP-discuss, however, so we'll see if there's a response this time.

Can you update the statistics in time for LibOCon?

Sure, here they are. We've just gone over 1,700 Twitter followers, and there have been two new DLP library releases in the last 24 hours, so that's something to talk about:

22 Jun 2016: 1,105 Twitter followers / 132 FB page likes / 11 G+ followers
22 Jul 2016: 1,152 Twitter followers / 139 FB page likes / 12 G+ followers
22 Aug 2016: 1,234 Twitter followers / 141 FB page likes / 13 G+ followers
22 Sep 2016: 1,335 Twitter followers / 206 FB page likes / 17 G+ followers
22 Oct 2016: 1,405 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Nov 2016: 1,448 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Dec 2016: 1,449 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Jan 2016: 1,444 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Feb 2016: 1,438 Twitter followers / 209 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Mar 2016: 1,441 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Apr 2016: 1,478 Twitter followers / 207 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 May 2016: 1,519 Twitter followers / 207 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Jun 2016: 1,545 Twitter followers / 207 FB page likes / 18 G+ followers
22 Jul 2016: 1,553 Twitter followers / 207 FB page likes / 17 G+ followers
22 Aug 2016: 1,571 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 17 G+ followers

I really need help from developers for that (especially regarding
example files showing the changes), and haven't had much feedback when
I've reached out before. I've posted another reminder on DLP-discuss,
however, so we'll see if there's a response this time.

Maybe instead of using dlp-discuss, mail a few stakeholders directly?
Worth a try at least. :)

Sure, here they are. We've just gone over 1,700 Twitter followers, and
there have been two new DLP library releases in the last 24 hours, so
that's something to talk about:

Cool!

Some updates: there have been six new DLP releases in recent weeks, so I'll post about them:

https://listarchives.documentliberation.org/www/devel/

Also, one developer has supplied me with some before-and-after comparison images to show progress, so I'll use them for promotion as well.

Mike Saunders wrote:

22 Aug 2016: 1,571 Twitter followers / 208 FB page likes / 17 G+ followers

Note that the we originally did have just DLP community on G+ (https://plus.google.com/communities/109370061751362503274). The DLP account was created much later to have an official "voice" for announcements. So you should count the members of that community too. (Not that I think G+ matters much these days--it was different when we started...)

David Tardon wrote:

Note that the we originally did have just DLP community on G+ (https://plus.google.com/communities/109370061751362503274). The DLP account was created much later to have an official "voice" for announcements. So you should count the members of that community too. (Not that I think G+ matters much these days--it was different when we started...)

Ah yes, thanks David -- I'll keep track of member stats for that community from here onwards too.

I've written a "2017 in review" blog post about DLP, summarising some of the achievements this year:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/12/18/document-liberation-project-2017-review/

I'll promote it on social media now. We can also use this for the DLP section of the 2017 Annual Report.

An update on DLP promotion: Italo wrote a blog post about new library releases:

• https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2018/01/22/dlp-five-new-libraries/

This has led to some articles in the tech press in various languages:

• http://www.techcrunchhq.com/libreoffice-6-0-launches-january-31-with-new-libraries-to-export-epub3-files/
• http://www.robosem.net/libreoffice-6-0-launches-january-31-with-new-libraries-to-export-epub3-files/
• https://typicalit.net/dlp-five-new-libraries-22-01-2018/
• https://www.evrensel.net/yazi/80803/libreoffice-6-0-daha-guclu-daha-guvenli
• https://lwn.net/Articles/745052/
• http://libreoffice.hu/document-liberation-project-uj-kiadasok/
• http://www.linux-magazin.de/news/document-liberation-project-veroeffentlicht-libraries-fuer-dokumente/

Also, we have a press list of around 60 (technically minded) journalists for DLP news – they were informed about these new releases, and we can contact them in future with other updates.

This week I'm going to blog about DLP updates so far in 2018, to generate some interest again, and spread via the usual social media channels, Reddit, Hacker News. Also I'll work on a variant of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGkKq3f9aps -- but more targeted at potential contributors (who can submit sample documents or look into them).

New contributor-oriented video made and on marketing-priv@ for feedback...

Here's the contributor-oriented video, now live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJmRPnIX98 – I'll post it on the blog, social media etc.

Any further activities in the past months on this?

Florian Effenberger wrote:

Any further activities in the past months on this?

No, because there have been no new DLP releases, or any activity to talk about. I can do more general promotion about what DLP does, but with no new releases or updates on the mailing lists, it's quite vague...

Fair enough :)

There have been two (minor) updates to DLP libraries, so I've used it as an opportunity for some general DLP promotion:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2019/08/21/updates-from-the-document-liberation-project/

Looks like there have been no DLP library releases since late 2019 -- I've emailed David and Fridrich to see what's going on, and if we should reach out to get new people involved.