NeoOffice NeoOffice® is Mac OS X office software funded entirely by the time and money donated by our users

NeoOffice New Features Program

• What is the New Features Program?
• What new features can I donate to?
• Can I donate to more than one project and how much should I give?
• Do I get a refund if not enough donations are received?
• Why is there a time limit for donating to a new feature?
• Where can I make a donation to NeoOffice if I am not interested in making a donation to a specific new feature?
• New features that were cancelled due to insufficient donations

What is the New Features Program?

The primary mission of NeoOffice has been to create a stable version of OpenOffice.org that runs natively on Mac OS X and it takes most all of our available support and engineering resources to achieve this goal. Mac users continue to request new features to be added beyond the feature set of OpenOffice.org. In the past we have had to deny these requests as we have had no way to fund them.

The New Features Program is our attempt to solve this problem by allowing the NeoOffice user community to make donations directly to the specific new features that they want to fund. We have setup the New Features Program so that users can see the total estimated engineering, code maintenance, and user support costs for a new feature. Users can then choose to donate to the new features that they want to see added to NeoOffice.

If enough donations are received to fully fund a new feature's estimated cost, we will start implementation of the new feature immediately after previously funded new features are completed. Just as important, users have no financial risk as we will refund any donations for a feature whose total donations fall short of the estimated cost.

We really appreciate the donations that we have received and hope that users will continue to donate. However, donations cover less than half of our costs and so we have created the New Features Program as a way to enable our user community to prioritize and fund the new features that they want to see added to NeoOffice that are outside of the existing scope of the NeoOffice project.

What new features can I donate to?

Below is the list of new features that we are currently accepting donations for. If you would like to see a new feature added to the list, feel free to propose a new feature in the New Features Program forum. If your proposed new feature gathers enough interest from other users and the new feature is feasible for us to implement, we will add your proposed new feature to the list.

You can donate funds online using a credit card or a PayPal account. Even though we use PayPal as our credit card processor, please note that a PayPal account is not required when using a credit card. Just click on the button that matches the new feature that you want to donate to:

For large donations (e.g. US$250 or greater) we are able to accept checks or electronic payments. If you would like to make a large donation, please contact us directly at the following e-mail address: donationsupport at neooffice dot org.

While we would like to accept other methods of payment for small donations, we have found that for small donations other payment providers can charge large processing fees (sometimes up to 50%) for each donation. Also, for small donations sent directly to us, we have found that a significant portion of each donation can get used up by a bank fees and administrative tasks. Since our purpose is to use donations to fund NeoOffice development and support, we use PayPal as their low payment processing fees leave most of your donation available for NeoOffice.

Can I donate to more than one project and how much should I give?

Yes, you can donate to more than one project. But please carefully determine the amount that you want to donate to each project before you make your donation as limitations in our donation tracking system do not allow any reallocations of donations.

Donate as much as you feel is appropriate but understand that we cannot commit to implementing a new feature until its entire estimated cost is fully funded.

Do I get a refund if not enough donations are received?

Yes, if a funding requirement for a new feature is not met by the posted deadline, any money that was donated will be returned to the donors. The funding deadlines are structured to allow us to return the unused donations. New features that expire will be closed. If, at a later date, the user community has renewed interest in the feature, we will reopen the new feature.

Why is there a time limit for donating to a new feature?

Since we will refund any donations for a feature whose total donations fall short of the estimated cost and PayPal does not allow refunds after 60 days, we must stop collecting donations and process all refunds within 60 days after a new feature's first donation is received. Our time limits are set to ensure that we have enough time to process any refunds before PayPal's refund time limit expires.

Where can I make a donation to NeoOffice if I am not interested in making a donation to a specific new feature?

Donations towards the general operation of NeoOffice can be made here. General donations will not be used toward the New Features Program and, instead, will be used to pay for the ongoing NeoOffice user support and infrastructure. The cost and time spent on NeoOffice are trivial for a large corporation, but they are very large for the two people that operate the NeoOffice project so donations are used to help pay for NeoOffice cash expenses like bandwidth, machines, and webhosting fees that we would have to pay for ourselves.

If at some point in the future we receive more donations than we have in expenses, we will use any excess funds to expand our infrastructure or partially subsidize the work of the NeoOffice developers.

New features that were cancelled due to insufficient donations