Do we really need LibreOffice installed by default?

[Elad Alfassa]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 5:08 PM, Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 09/16/2014 12:18 PM, Ryan Lerch wrote:
>
>> The ease of finding and installing an office suite when there isn't one
>> installed by default would be something that would make a great user
>> test scenario before yanking libreoffice.
>>
>
>  Both the scenarios of opening an exisiting file, and trying to create a
>> document -- some of the things to consider could be:
>> * what people search for -- (do all users use "Word Processor", or just
>> "Word")
>
> * if they search for a word processor in Software, does LO show up as a
>> "best bet" or do other applications like abiword or calligra show up? --
>> a default here may help the user because they are getting the software
>> that may be considered "the best"
>>
>
Searching for "word" lists mostly unrelevant stuff at the top of the list,
but that's an easy fix - LibreOffice just needs to add "word" as a keyword
in the desktop file or appdata.


>
> +1
>
> Let's also talk about our target users (and run the test Ryan suggested
> above on them.) We're looking at targeting app developers, right?
>
> - Are app developers typically bandwidth-constrained?
>

No. But targeting developers does not mean we need to provide subpar
experience to non-developers. If we want to encourage more people (even
people who are not professional developers right now) to become developers,
we need to create a platform accessible for everyone - the first step to
developing is to be able to use the platform properly.


>
> - Do app developers need an office suite? Do they create content using
> one? Do they consume content that requires having one? (Say a requirements
> doc from a product manager?)
>
> Some do, some don't. I get requirement docs on email or intranet sites,
and sometimes on PDFs, so I don't need an office suite.


> - If they need it, they have to download it at some point. Either before
> install, or after install. Is the payload the same whether or not it ships
> in the image or if it's pull down via yum, right? So if they need the tool,
> how does pulling it from the image save them bandwidth? (would keeping it
> in the image save them bandwidth since if they obtained the image via local
> means / repositories / etc typically available to developers they'd only
> use internal network and not have to go external?)
>

No, there shouldn't be much difference.


>
> - Would an app developer prefer to have the software included in the
> install image or would they prefer to download it when it was needed?
>

I assume this would vary from person to person. Not all developers are the
same person.
People testing their apps on VMs will have it easier if our default install
would be smaller, for example, because they'll need to allocate less disk
space for the VM.


>
> ~m
>
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However, design aside, I assume part of the issue of the immense size of
LibreOffice are deps that make little to no sense: Why would an office
suite written in C++ and Java need PyXB, which is, according to the package
description, "Python package that generates Python source code for classes
that correspond to data structures defined by XMLSchema."? This dependency
is huge (98MB) and comes with a lot of documentation that should probably
be split into a subpackage. I really don't understand why LibreOffice would
need that *on runtime*.

-- 
-Elad Alfassa.
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