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Sun May GPL StarOffice
Lennie writes: "To my surprise I read here: 'Sun Microsystems is expected to announce this week that it will make StarOffice available as open source. Sun plans to release the suite under the GNU General Public License, which is promoted by the Free Software Foundation and is considered by many to be the purest of the open source licenses.'" Despite its reputation as bloatware, semi-free software and as the tack that Sun sets out for Microsoft, StarOffice is probably the suite that has done the most to allow migration from various MS applications, and free is a nice prelude to Free. If Star Office is GPL'd, it could have great trickle-down effects on AbiWord and other Linux office software.
I don't see why anyone would want to go after MicroSoft;) After all their business practices reek with ethics.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
This is one of the best things that could happen for Linux.
Though personally I'll believe Sun uses the GPL only when I actually see it.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I love Staroffice. Hopefully the first things that could be done would be to seperate the apps from that ugly desktop! 99% of the time I just want to run the word processor. It'd be nice to be able to pass it a command line switch to just start the word processor without the other 75% of the bloated package starting up as well (think Netscape Communicator x 20). That and working on the Word filters would make it one of the killer office apps for me. There would be no more starting up MS Office in VMware anymore.
My father, who has been a network user since the 70s, when he had an Arpanet address, has resisted moving his entire department to Linux for one reason- the lack of a useful reference manager like Endnote.
To my knowledge, there is still no comparable feature in Star Office. This is the dealbreaker, as far as he's concerned. You'd convert yet another chunk of the government to Linux usage if you could point out a program with this functionality that can connect to a GUI word processor in the environment.. How 'bout it?
"It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But see, that's the thing...StarOffice may be huge and bloated, but it has a huge amount of functionality. If, by opensourcing it, either a) a non-bloated version comes out, or b) the other gpl office suites use some of the code to further their developments, then this is a Very Good Thing(TM).
Basically, what this means is that we could get a *really good* free office suite in the forseeable future.
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
I have been using StarOffice for a while now, both under Windows2K and Linux.
I started using it under Windows 2K when I noticed the new licensing scheme for Office 2000. It will force you to register online, or cease to work at all. As I am in no particular urge to feed Redmond's databases, I dumped it and started using SO in a mostly Windows shop (my current client).
I concede that my machine has lots of memory, but StarOffice works fast and well.
I haven't experienced any serious bug and no file-format problem whatsoever. My most serious complain is about StarOffice wanting to be my browser too, and making windows believe it is now offline (in a LAN connected to a T1) everytime SO starts.
If SO goes GPL, I would expect it to get better support and better add-ons, and certanly keep updated with Office file-format tricks (a serious problem in a mostly MSWord world).
> It is offically unimportant to people how bad or crappy a program is as long as it's GPL'd.
If it's GPL'd and of general interest to Linux users, it probably won't stay crappy for long.
Rather, I should say it will become "less crappy" (cf. "sucks less").
> One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around?
No, public domain is the freeest (sp?!?). The GPL only guarantees that derivatives will be just so free as the original was; no more and no less.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
My concern is that the import/export filters may be under NDAs or restrictive licenses that wouldn't allow them to be open sourced. It's just a thought, I could be wrong.
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Is there any way that Corel can make money selling an Office Suite for Linux?
Everything in this post is false.
In about a year time after it is release after everyone picked it apart for the parts that they like. There will a great office suite out there for all u*nx and windows. That can cause a big problem for Microsoft. Also if some figures about a way how to sync with an Exchange Server then Microsoft will have an even bigger problem.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. It stops the not-for-consumer-apps cynics out there who have been spouting off that the gpl is "fine for behind-the-scenes stuff" but will never cut it in the consumer app field where actually selling seats is the prime revenue source.
2. It shows that Sun is actually willing to put some effort into being the "good guy" in the open source crowd. Let's face it, poll your average free software geek about Sun and you get some pretty damning responses: Sun's "open" license is a sham, java's slow and bloated, the hardware is too expensive, Solaris belongs in the Smithsonian... etc. Sun wants to be friends with those people really badly because they're the future CIO's of this world and they want those CIO's to want Sparcs. Simple. The last two years have seen Sun try some half-baked measures to get some respect and, by and large, they haven't worked. Now they're trying a full-baked one. And that's good news for everyone.
3. If you have a lot of spare time on your hands, and want to give StarOffice a bit of zip then maybe we'll all have a serious contender to that "other" office package.
2 1337 4 u!
If you wonder how that fits into this thread... well, so do I. I meant to post it at the top level.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm not happy about the totalitarian aspect of Chinese communism, but at the same time I don't want to confuse the P.R.C. government with the Chinese people.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't mean to say that Mozilla is bad, it's doing really well now. But just dumping the source into open-ness didn't work. It was a mess, it was unuseable and unsalvageable. Essentially it had to be completely ransacked for useable components (note: I'm not in the Mozilla dev effort, so I am interpreting their remarks and the remarks of people associated with it, so I may well be amended. I don't think my interpretation of the reality of the situation is completely off the mark, though.)
Forget about freeing Start office. I want to see the Corel guys bite the bullet.
They are going down the tubes, they know it, we know it. Before the money men come in and try to salvage (ie sell off) all they can I would like to see them gpl all thier software
Kind of like a last stand against the enemy, knowing that thier death might allow the battle to be won, for theire fellows to win the day...
Unfortunatley I belive they really don't care about the idea of OpenSource. Rather it's just another advertisement for them, and likely they would rather thier software die with them than give it away!
Tokyo Joe
I have speculated for a long time about what might happen if someone decided to take an existing, mature office suite and make it truly Open Source.
I haven't exactly been sitting on the edge of my seat. It has seemed likely that someone would do it eventually, but the event has just never seemed very imminent. It's clear that Microsoft, with 95% market share and over 10B annual revenues, has no incentive to make their suite Open Source. Corel has far too little clue, and IBM/Lotus have far too much.
The only glimmer of hope has been Sun, which seems to have a practice of being smart during the even-numbered years and downright silly during the odd-numbered ones.
An Open Source version of StarOffice would open up a remarkable number of opportunities. In the hope that this rumor is revealed to be true, I would like to applaud all of those people at Sun who contributed to the execution of this bold, visionary decision.
And frankly, I'm insulted that none of those people called me. :-) Granted, I doubt that our little 28-person company is even a blip on their radar screen. However, as founder of the AbiWord project, SourceGear has a lot of experience in the world StarOffice is about to join. In fact, I daresay that there is no one else on earth who knows more about losing money on Open Source office apps than I do. :-)
I think that the response from the Open Source community is an important opportunity, and I would like to offer my unsolicited advice regarding the appropriate tenor of our response:
The point is that Sun is making the only decision which will allow StarOffice to become better. It's never about where you are -- it's about where you are going.
For example, I'm fairly sure that StarOffice is built upon a Win32 compatibility library from Bristol. They can't GPL that. The spell checker is probably not theirs. In fact, most full-featured office suites today are built using a bunch of third-party components. If the first source code tarball from Sun is even buildable, I'll be surprised.
But I won't be complaining about it. Doing so is not going to benefit anyone.
Even in an Open Source world, there is room for multiple efforts. Many of the people who work on AbiWord or Gnumeric are doing so for the enjoyment or experience. StarOffice will meet different needs, and there is nothing preventing both projects from reaching their goals. In fact, the existence of StarOffice is more likely to benefit AbiWord and Gnumeric than it is likely to cause harm.
There was a recent published interview with someone from the Kylix team at Borlaprise. This guy gets it. He said things like, "Our success does not require Microsoft's failure", and, "When television came along, radio didn't suddenly go away."
It is possible that this GPL release of StarOffice will eventually cause some impact to the proprietary players. However, we need to speak not in terms of extinction or annihilation, but in terms of reduction of margins.
And we need to give it time before the effects start to be visible. Microsoft's product manager for Office is not scared, and [s]he doesn't need to be.
-- Eric W. Sink
Eric Sink
Software Craftsman
I work for a large company that provides world class unix solutions, and its not Sun. Alot of our management can't seem to figure out what Unix is, much less Linux. Go figure. Anyway, they send email attachments for word, excel, powerpoint, etc. Star Office has been invaluable to me in maintaining a unix only environment that is both productive and cheap and easy to maintain. Now, if they GPL it, I'll also be completely legal.
It remains a kit of useful parts that Microsoft and others can just include into their code.
Looks like Sun's investment is sunk.
Pretty much proves what others have been saying... that only the dying embrace Open Source/GPL/whatever.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Talking to vendors of Linux office suites, one of the biggest problems seems to have been that commercial vendors have been reluctant to implement some features in MS Office clones (foremost, VB/VBScript compatibility) for fear of getting sued on intellectual property grounds. Putting StarOffice under GPL and creating a plug-in architecture may be a good way of addressing this.
Good troll, anyway. You pushed all the right buttons.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
The GPLing of Star Office does not bode well for it's viability. Why? Well...
1. Sun is now admitting that the idea of giving away a free office suite is non-viable and they are opening the source as a way to divest their engineering resources. Don't expect help from Sun in this area.
2. Cross-platform support will die. Open Source projects of significant magnitude just don't happen on the major GUI OSes. StarOffice for Windows will lag far enough behind StarOffice for Linux that it won't be the cross-platform solution that it is touted as today.
3. This might even spell the death of StarOffice. GPL has produces a whole bunch of useful code, but the inevitable branching of the project will kill the corporate acceptability of StarOffice. Branching has proven inevitable on all but the simplest of projects.
4. If all that's not enough, GPL'd projects don't generally produce good end user software in terms of UI. Granted StarOffice pretty well sucks now in this regard, GPL won't help.
Assuming Sun goes forward with GPLing StarOffice, we can all pretty much stop watching it.
Just my controvertial $.02.
*evil laugh*
Now I can write my own GPL'D paper clip and own the world.
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
You know....last I heard they were supposed to port Star Office into an Internet application. I guess the code is:
.NET.
1) A wreck and/or
2)Sun cannot compete in the software space.
I do not know a single person who uses Star Office and by the time Linux gets a working office suite, MS will have moved on to
Once again Linux will be playing a gee wizz thats a good idea catchup game.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
I wonder if a "unification effort" between staroffice's wp and abiword could bring the best of both together so that we don't get into a duplication-of-efforts type situation. I know competition is good for any community, but I'd rather see open souce advocates competing with their commercial counterparts than with each other.
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Can somebody give me a reason *why* Sun would want to do that? Sun is almost as bad as Microsoft (I say almost only because Sun actually does make some good products and doesn't go out of their way to break interoperability with non-Sun software). But seriously, this is the last thing I would expect from Sun, especially given all the stink about them not wanting to make Java an open standard.
Oh, and I agree with danheskett that StarOffice sucks. Even MS Office is better.
On a side note, how is KOffice doing? I heard it was coming along pretty nicely and will be shipped at the same time as KDE2. Can anyone clue me in?
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Sun has been saying they'll Open Source Solaris, Java, StarOffice, the Human Genome, and the Secret to Life, the Universe, and Everything for years now. We've seen little to no actual materialization of these promises.
Forgive me for sounding skeptical, but I'm not going to believe this until I've got the source code on my hard drive, complete with GNU "COPYING" file, and had it compile successfully.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It is offically unimportant to people how bad or crappy a program is as long as it's GPL'd..
Exactly. You have just stated the GNU Manifesto For Dummies (tm). That's because if you don't like the way a GPL'ed program works, you can fix it. And even if you can't, somebody else will conceivably get so pissed off with it that they fix it and let you piggyback. Not so with closed source.
Some other company who realizes that their product is dead and decides to GPL it, would they get big time headlines?
That would depend on the relevance of the product, or rather the nature of the product. A fairly full-featured office suite being GPL'ed is certainly news. YAArkanoidClone probably isn't.
One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around? I am not expert or even that informed, but I was understand that the BSD license took that title??
Both place restrictions on the way the source can be used after opening; that's why they're licenses, after all. The GPL allows the original author to say, "Take this stuff, play around with it, but remember to share afterwards". Since the resulting changes are therefore available to all, the GPL is more free in an utilitarian sense.
I'm kinda fond of this office suite. Sure, it tries too hard, and the interface takes some getting used to, but if you sit down to a real work-session type or deal where you pound out word processor doc's and spreadsheets and such (which is how I work) it actually can be kinda nice. Aw, who the hell am I kidding? I hate the i-face. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. Good thing it's GPL, maybe someone'll dice it up and kill that desktop imitation thingy.
Fight crime, shoot back.
Are you deliberately trying to start a holy war?
Honestly, though, which license is the most free is as much a question of what you consider to be free as it is an objective matter of what each license allows. The BSD license does, in fact, allow people to do more with your software, so you could claim that it is thus more free than the GPL. OTOH, one of the things that it allows is for people to make non-free derivatives of your software, which the GPL does not allow. Some people thus claim that this makes the GPL better because it preserves software freedom, which the BSD license does not.
The real issue about licenses is why you're planning on freeing the software. I think that in Sun's case they're making the software free because they don't want to spend as much on development as it would probably take to make a version of Star Office that's as good as they want. My general impression is that their long term strategy is to develop a version of Star Office that will be managed by an application server- presumably in many cases run on Sun hardware- and replaces the need for separate copies on each desktop. They have probably decided that they want to develop it more rapidly than they can with in-house resources, so they want to open the source and let other people hack it.
With a BSD-style license, though, some of those people could turn around and make a closed source derivative that would compete with Sun's variant, which is presumably what they want to stop. Thus the GPL, which preserves a fixed level of software freedom, is probably better suited to their purpose than a "free-er" license like BSD that would allow non-free derivatives. IOW, the GPL is better suited to their purposes because the way in which it is less free than BSD is exactly the lack of freedom that Sun wants.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
...on any platform is that it is monolithic. Can't run the spreadsheet without loading the whole damn thing.
With this news, that may change soon.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
Back in my day, we didn't have integrated office applications. If we wanted to plot some data, we wrote a fortran algorithm that created a graph. If we wanted to type a paper, we used LaTeX. Our integrated office suite was VI along with all of the associated compilers.
Nowadays, all these wishy-washy office types think that they need a bloated graphical office suite. I think they need to get off there innovative lazy butts and learn VI. Then they will be productive!
-vax computer, vi, lynx. 'nuf said
so what if star office is GPL? so what if it's coming from sun? the whole point is that it's a tool and we can use it. it has code we'll be able to see and we can fix it. WE, not them.
if sun benefits from us, so be it. we get the code and we use it to help us make better tools. that's what i'm using open source for. to learn and get a hold of my system.
ugh.
"you get hit and your head goes ping" --rocky horror picture show
Well, at least the file format import and export filters should be modular...hopefully at least, because if not, that's terrible programming. But anyway, that should be the least of the benefits we'll see (aka, it should hopefully be an assured benefit).
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
Microsoft will more than likely speed up the process of porting its suite of Office applications to Linux. The talk of such a project has been in the rumour mills for some time. I do not see StarOffice competing at all with MS Office on the Win32 platform, but Linux is were MS would love to upset the balance of nature.
We could:
- re-use MS file format code for lots of other open source apps,
- break Star Office up into separate apps. Oh yeah. That would be fantastic.
- debug the thing and perhaps tune it out a little. I have found it to be a little unstable.
Go on Sun - make our day!
I wonder if they'll GPL the old code. You know, Star Office 4.0, the one that, unlike 5.2, ran on OS/2? Seperate apps, smaller footprint, not managed by Sun, couldn't get much better than that.
"What do I care, if life ain't fair,
If you look at me real sore.
I've paid my dues and you should too,
as a son-of-a-bitch to the core"
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
>If Star Office is GPL'd, it could have great >trickle-down effects on AbiWord and other Linux >office software.
Yeah, by completely eliminating their profitability. This move will kill all Comercial Linux office software.
I don't see Microsoft exactly starving because GM or Compaq louses up a license or two.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
StarOffice has not gained significant acceptance because it is a BEAST to run. The thing slows to a crawl on my 64mb P3-400 laptop and results in nearly constant disk swapping. This is because, among other things, StarOffice implements its own Window manager, widget toolkit, etc. The first thing that StarOffice needs to do, if GPL'd, would be to tear out that annoying Win98-clone WM and implement it using standard gtk or Qt API calls. StarOffice is an incredibly mature and featureful product that, in spite of its performance issues, has proven pretty stable. Lack of a competent Office suite for Linux has proven one of the last barriers to mainstream acceptance, and SO is in a good position to erase that. But all of that is a moot point if no one can run it.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Endnote is a bibliographic database that started out on the Macintosh a decade ago. It works with to MS Word kinda like how BibTex works with LaTex, with keyed references, citation formatting, etc. It's a lot more sophisticated than BibTex -- with modules for online databases -- but there is a decent Linux equivalent. I've converted most of my old EndNote databases to BibTex and am currently using Pybliographic to manage them. The conversion from EndNote isn't perfect (EndNote and Pybliographic seem to disagree in the correct Refer format for a book) but good enough for me. Going from Pybliographic back to EndNote, however, works like a charm. Hence, there's nothing lost in trying Pybliographic with Lyx instead of EndNote with Word.
But for a beast, unless its really really well
documented and well written (which judging by the product,it
doesnt seem to be) it probably wont be worth the time.
but people can pull a CA and rip off the "asset" and "sell off" to various open source projects.
At the vary least, how can it hurt? Sun is not exactly pushing staroffice anyway.
CY
Excuse me
Linux in the 70s? hehehe...sorry...that's kinda funny. Too mad I'm not a meta moderator
Look somewhere else for a sig.
When (if) it becomes opensource, I'd bet that's gonna be the first thing that some programmer does. That'd get rid of half the bloat.
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
> If Star Office is GPL'd, it could have great trickle-down effects on AbiWord and other Linux office software.
Why does the OS community always think of commercial companies opening their software in terms of 'take, take, take?'
I've seen it with Apple, Darwin and OS X first-hand. Apple releases a BSD-license OS and immediately, Slashdot shouts "They should Open Source the Mac OS so we can take X and Y!" Now, Sun decides to GPL StarOffice and the Slashdot comments 'maybe this will help [insert competing OS Office Suite here]'
Maybe the other office suites will improve as a result. I hope so. However, the Open Source community consistently projects the attitude that Free software from corporations presents nothing but a feeding ground for carrion birds.
Why can't you improve StarOffice itself? Why do you flaunt your open hostility to commercial ventures that have chosen to support you?
Of course, the OS community thrives on sharing code, and I'm not criticizing that aspect. I am criticizing its tendency to follow, not lead: How many projects announced on Freshmeat or hosted on SourceForge exist as 'Free' alternatives to already existing proprietary software? Does the OS community all act like buzzards, picking the good meat from commercial open source ventures and leaving the bones when they finish?
I read several of the Darwin development lists and I see that there are a significant number of people who actually do contribute to Apple's open source efforts. The majority of you, however, think only in terms of raiding and pillaging, out of some staunch anticommercialism, even when the company supports your cause.
The Open Source Community will never lead as long as it continues to follow. Shining lights do exist, but the vast majority of Open Source software owes its existence to someone else's innovation, someone else's creative process, and someone else's hard work to develop the idea originally.
Realize that a much more innovative atmosphere can exist when you spend your time exploring new ideas and ways to improve the software that go beyond other's ideas, than when you spend your time stealing ideas and code from the next new OS project to come from Sun.
It's not part of the system only of the distribution.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I can see this work well if Staroffice is modified and improved along the same lines as the linux kernel, tightly controlled under a small group of people who are VERY familiar with source code, and recieve code enhancements from others outside the group. If the addition or modification is worth incorporating into the office suite then it is done and a new version is put online. Just imagine: Staroffice 6.0, 6.1, 6.1.1.
1) As we saw earlier today, PDC was not so good and the developers were not very receptive to the whole .NET idea (and to the idea of having to learn yet another language). Expect O'Reilly sales to hit the skies during the next weeks and the FSF download sites to scream under the added trafic.
2) The Supremes (the judges, not the 70's disco group) will be back from vacation and will take a look at judge Jackson's work. They will find it worth its weight in kilograms and let the company be broken. Then Microsoft A and B will hit the courts to see who gets .NET, since it is not an operating system nor an application.
3) The free-software community, taken away by its manifest destiny felling, will get Star Office, AbiSource and whatever and make all of them into the meanest office package in town. Every Fortune 2000 company will have to install it or face a class-action suit from its shareholders for spending money in bloated payware.
4)Wishful thinking is one of our better developed mental function. :)
Yeah it sure helped mozilla. Wheres the browser again? I could care less about alpha and beta releases. Its been two years and no finished product, while IE continues to dominate with over 70% market share.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Despite the claims, StarOffice is a polished, mature product. Unfortunately I have a feeling that the development stalled, given the fact that the difference between 5.1 and 5.2 is minimal. And I think that Sun realized that the rented application style is not going to work, so after they lured MS into the Microsoft.NET nonsense, now they will stop the development on that.
However, let's hope for some stuff:
1. Let's hope that they will release 5.2 as it is. The Mozilla release was a failure: no working browser was released, it is still not a working browser and I think that almost nothing of the Netscape code went into the current Mozilla tree.
2. Let's hope that it is modular, at least internally. Let's hope that the word processor, the speadsheet and the presentation maker can be separated from the rest, from the forgettable database part for example.
3. Let's hope it will be easy to port the file format to an XML format.
4. Let's hope that it can be easily separated from it's proprietary widget set. It is almost sure that it will cannot survive long with that - it will be a cuckoo's egg in KDE or Gnome. It must be ported to the kdelibs and to gtk/gnome to be usable.
5. Let's hope the import/export filters will be in the GPL edition and easily reusable. This will be the first immediate benefit.
6. Let's hope the printing architecture is separated and reusable - second immediate benefit.
7. Let's hope that the component model can be easily ported to kparts. This is a requirement if you want to use it in a real component based environment.
Anyhow, I will surely take a look at the source when it will be released...
Lotzi
I wonder how difficult it would be to take the Java source and convert it into C++? Probably a mechanical conversion would be impractical, but I bet it wouldn't be that difficult. That would solve a lot of the performance problems, and allow bolting a better GUI toolset to it.
Any thoughts?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I rather doubt that Sun can turn StarOffice into a profit center of its own, regardless of what kind of license they use. From that perspective, they didn't risk much, so not much courage was required.
Still, it's hard to overstate the level of inertia inside companies that are as old and large as Sun. (Yes, I know that in the context of the market as a whole, Sun is terribly young and small, but we're talking about tech companies here). I'm certain that someone made this decision over a substantial amount of internal opposition.
-- Eric W. Sink
Eric Sink
Software Craftsman
I have a friend who's pretty gun-ho on SO (he happens to have more RAM than me). Anyway, he actually managed to install it on his dad's windows machine. I found out about this, and was pretty surprised, and so I asked him what his dad said about it. He said his dad didn't even know what had happened until my friend mentioned something about having to get MS Office 2000. "I thought we already had Microsoft Office," his dad replied, "except it didn't crash as much."
>So far I've been pleasantly surprised. I just had to download the installation disks and after that I could install the whole thing over DSL. Wonderful! I wish I could do that with RedHat.
You can. I install Mandrake via ftp often and believe Redhat also has ftp install options. check the boot_net disks.
-- I speak only for myself.
Reminds me this line from Dilbert: - back at my old days we had to code directly with 0s and 1s. ... - you had 0's? We had to use O's. Well, back at *my* old days we didn't have any computers to start with.
I always found StarOffice to be quite slow in loading (Athlon 500, 7200 RPM hard drive) until I used "hdparm" to turn on DMA, multiple-sector transfers, etc. The most important thing was to use DMA. I haven't timed it, but Star Office seems to take less than half as long to load now. This should help other programs too.
I'm desperately trying to obtain a copy of the StarView library with its source code. I've heard some rumors that maybe the guys at Sun are planning to release it again, but I just can't wait to port my company's software to linux. We've been trapped with a Windows only binary version and since the product is not avaliable anymore on the market we are stuck with that license. If I extract it from the GPL StarOffice, I guess we'll not be able to use it in our commercial software. Any ideas ?
>>One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around?
>No, public domain is the freeest (sp?!?). The GPL only guarantees that derivatives will be just so free as the original was; no more and no less.
Public Domain isn't a license...
It's more free becouse it isn't a license at all...
However far to often Public Domain code is turnned into a commertal product and the original PD author basicly gets screwed over...
Nothing prevents PD "theft"....
Thats sad...
I don't actually exist.
What the fuck? I don't think it's even worth responding to this troll. The plain truth is that StarOffice sucks worse than Windows as it tries to forcefully be an OS. AbiWord may not be great but it is perfectly usable (for me) and does not require huge amounts of resources to feed the cravings of its mandatory web browser.
that only the dying embrace Open Source/GPL/whatever.
:)
That does seem to be true with existing companies moving previously closed source projects to open source (projects that start as open don't fall into this, only someone truely ignorant could claim Apache/Linux/Perl/etc are dying). However, be that as it may, it can still only help existing open source projects, so heck, dying or not, we'll take 'em.
Finkployd
Even if opened with a restrictive licence like the Sun community licence, it would be a great thing for anyone who doesn't use one of the existing platforms: Linux on non-intel, *BSD on anything. (Linux emulation is all well and good, but native would be nicer.)
-- Andrew
If, in fact, StarOffice is GPL'ed by Sun, this will be a good step for not only Linux, but those that have to run applications between Linux and Microsoft. However, I don't think this will put any type of a dent in the general computing community. The general population is satisfied with Microsoft, for one reason or another. Change would require work, and nobody likes that.
Wow. That has to be one of the lamest things I've read for a long, long time.
Check this out.
Whoah!
I can't flaunt open hostility toward anybody at all about Sun GPLing StarOffice, because I save my hostility for my zen-rock-garden social life! ("25y/o SWM, reasonable looking and employed, seeks curious, down-to-earth pixie with" -- oh never mind) I'm happy / pleased / surprised / impressed that they're even thinking about releasing it under an other-than-closed license.
As to it helping other projects, well
Re: Leading, not following -- this may be a glass half empty glass half full type of issue, but it seems to me that a GPL'd star office will possible inspire several / many other efforts the same way Mozilla has -- perhaps it will provide the glue that an otherwise stuck project requires (as someone else has pointed out, import filters would be very helpful) or the inspiration to one-up SO in one or more vital aspects. No more harmful than WOrdPerfect and Word jockeying by adding things they think users will like. (Except with Free software, if you think the result is overburned, you can fix it to the limit of your time and inclination). Your description makes software sound like more of a zero-sum game than I think it really is, particularly with sharing-encouraged licenses.
Standing on the shoulders of giants and things like that is the end result I hope emerges, because I selfishly want to find / contribute at least some kvetching to a good Free word processor. I mentioned AbiWord because I like it's style and speed, but it would be even better if the unimplemented featuers *were* implemented. If I'd said "perhaps now SO can inherit some of the great design and ease of use of AbiWord," would that have jarred the same nerves? To me, they're morally equivalent ideas, I just see one as being closer to my ideal than the other. ymmv
From the vultures' nest,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Maybe now we'll get StarOffice for Mac OS a lot quicker. I'm crossing my fingers.
-- Eric W. Sink
Eric Sink
Software Craftsman
Sun has been very hostile tword open source and has allready inspired quite a bit of undeserved antiLinux sentiment and some GPL bashing.
Back with rummors of Ms Linux people responded with fear shock and horror.
I think a little of that is deserved here.
I don't know if Sun has changed it's mind tword open source or not.
What I do know is Sun for a while has become a pain.
It's been suggesting that StarOffice can be scrapped for code.
I don't care HOW good StarOffice is or how much easyer it would be to fix StarOffice and make it better.
Scrap the code...
I won't have anything to do with a product that has Suns name on it... not even Java... (As if that was a hard choice.....)
I must admit this a bit more than personal for me...
I lost a friend over this...
The short end of it... the friend is a bit nieve and it wouldn't have been an issue if this friend didn't take Sun marketting as gosple...
It's really her fault not Suns... but it leaves me a bit bitter tword Sun...
I don't actually exist.
Yeah. And call me a cynic, but I'm still wondering why exactly Sun did this. 'The goodness of their hearts' simply doesn't seem like a very water-tight argument ...
You know, dispite being possibly bloated (Since I'm not sure it is, or it isn't), Staroffice still masses a disk footprint underneath Microsoft Office 97, last I checked anyways.
You need a MS os in order to use Office 2k, so for the many non windows users that people insist on sending Word and Excel files, SO is a pretty good viewer. Peace..Greg
I hope this doesn't happen to Star Office. It's needed.
I'm begging for troll/flamebait status here, I just know it, but it needs to be said...
I have noticed that without organization and project support of GPL'ed code, the codebase dies and we all get upset.
Remember how excited we all got when they open-sourced mozilla? We all downloaded the source, went through the basic compile process and got a flimsy piece of crap (no offence Mozilla folks). Encouraged and motivated, we... Sat on our hands.
What happened? The management of the project was basically weak, and lacked community buy-in IMHO. The whole thing suffered (and still suffers, to some degree) from lack of leadership and a solid and focused development effort. Where is that great open-source browser we hoped to achieve? And after how many years of being open-sourced? (clue: it's been out there for nearly 30 months)
Contrast this with well-managed, truly noteworthy open-source project such as the linux kernel, apache, etc.
I swear people, MS will bury soffice if this is handled badly... It's a given. Where will MS Office be in two-and-a-half years?!?!??!!?!!! soffice will be a non-issue if we assle around with it for two-and-a-half years.
We need excellent project management and an organized development effort for this to succeed. I have never seen it mentioned anywhere, but I suspect ESR was embarrassed as hell after he talked Netscape into releasing the source, and the community dropped the ball (or at least that's how it seemed to me). It was setup very nicely, the quarterback had the ball, made a beautiful pass straight into the endzone... But nobody was there to catch it for the touchdown.
Everyone whip out your copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, turn to page 75, and read the section titled Epilogue: Netscape Embraces the Bazaar. Specifically, read the last three paragraphs of this section on pp. 77-78. I personally regard the last paragraph as "We will get other chances." Well, this might be it, boys and girls.
Sorry if I sound negative; but honestly, I want to see this succeed, and I take it very, very seriously. PLEASE, somebody figure out how and where this will be managed, and fast, or it will be another mozilla.
IANAD (I am not a developer), but I'll do all I can to support this (bug reports, OS-level admin stuff, etc.) and to make this work. So should we all, because we have to, if we're gonna win.
Thanks for reading,
DragonWyatt
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
So why is it that I am starting to evaluate a Star Office rollout based on their putting Star Office on the GPL?
Could it be that I like the security of an open codebase that can't be jerked around for one company's corporate convenience? Nah. What do I know, I'm only a Net admin at a consulting company. I only influence a few thousand seats.
DB
This is having an important effect on the open source community.I've studied it and have come to several conclusions, which are illustrated in the following articles.
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1. Forbes Magazine article
2. "Microsoft on the Defensive"
3. "Reflections on the Cathedral and the Bazaar"
>sad`ji3br#Z5ei"d?0-t42()(f.n1i(itrukt=-b%1'_.20c
What we really need are open API and file format specifications, and preferably file formats based on XML. If there were some competition where individual suite components are concerned, you might not see Access, an app that's almost too buggy even to load itself into memory, stuffed in with Excel (which is fairly stable) and Word (somewhat less stable).
While I'm certainly eager to see M$ dismembered by the DOJ, I'd also be happy to see them forced into publishing their APIs and file format specs.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'm quite glad that GNOME and KDE and GNUstep are using different tools and languages to try to solve the "GUI problem," as they can find different aspects of the solutions thereof, and can be more aggressive in their experimentation as they do not risk "disaster for all" should they try something and fail.
And the above two points ignore the factor that despite their duplications of effort, they may all the same be avoiding larger multiples of duplication of effort. After all, in the MS-DOS world, there were literally dozens of spreadsheet and word processor packages, and it is really only out of quite rapacious behaviour on the part of Microsoft that package counts on Windows fell to more like a half-dozen. (MS Office, MS Works, Lotus Suite, Borland/WP Suite, with, likely, some others that few bother thinking about...)
Duplication of effort does diminish; there used to be about a dozen "Quicken Clone" projects, many of which have consolidated into working on GnuCash. There used to be two GCC projects, which have consolidated to one.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
This claim is based on questionable assumptions:
1. That the code in question will be used regardless of the licence.
2. That the utility of software is measured by availability of code, not by the extent to which it is used.
The first assumption ignores cases where code is rewritten in order to avoid the legal uncertanties of the GPL. In such cases, BSD-licensed code can be (and often is) used. BSD-licensed code can be used in GPL'd products as well, so the pool of users and developers who can potentially benefit from BSD-licensed code is by definition larger than the pool of users and developers who can benefit from GPL-licensed code.
The second assumption is simply a fallacy. Apple's use of BSD-licensed code in its Mac OS will provide the use of that code to all its users. Microsoft could theoretically use the same code in a proprietary product, thereby allowing all its customers to use that code.
On the whole, the market share of GPL'd software is insignificant, where as proprietary software is overwhelmingly dominant. As such, code which can be used in proprietary products, while remaining available for use on open/free products (BSD) has far greater utility than code which cannot (GPL).
My god! Most of these posts are: 1) It's got Sun written on it so it's no good; Sun wouldn't GPL it if it weren't about to be abandoned. 2) Star Office is bloated; scrap the code 3) This would kill all Linux commercial apps. 4) other general FUD GROW UP! Some of you guys won't sit down to think about this at all. All you ever do is whine, pine, and complain. Hell, Star Office is a WORKING solution with support for MANY platforms. With GPL it means we can LEARN MORE about Office Suites -- the good AND bad -- and make improvements from there. If Star Office was THE piece of software to own, and the same was for any office suite, I really doubt any company would say 'hey, let's get rid of this great money maker and open source it and give it out for free'. Why not thank Sun for even considering GPL. Hell, they could have easily said 'well, ok so Star Office needs more attention than we can give; let's trash it or put it on indefinite hold'. Then we don't get A DAMN THING. But at least now we will have more knowledge on file compatibility, and other office efforts (KOffice) might be able to speed up updates. So quit biting the hand that feeds... thank the company for going out of their way to patch up any licensing problems for us and quit bashing people who are trying to gain our trust and respect. If you don't think their effort is 'worthy' enough for your high standards, realise that at least they are making that effort. I'm no advocate for Sun, but these lame complaints I've read whenever some company decides to support the Linux crowd and are almost always somehow criticized really pisses me off. No wonder Linux isn't where Windows is today in terms of popularity among the common -- we all think we're too good for anyone else.
It's nice that StarOffice has so many document filters, and can even translate Mac claris works files (good to have at the university of british columbia), but the translation is not flawless; it can really decimate some documents (like my resume).
That said, I like the spreadsheet and database side of StarOffice, and I think it would be really cool if you could replace its existing browser with something like gecko/mozilla and tighten up the code a bit.
Hey, it's "free." ;)
-DB
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One last thing, is the GPL really considered to be the free-est license around? I am not expert or even that informed, but I was understand that the BSD license took that title?
After considerable investigation, I've decided that the license underwhich you received your education is the most free license.
To date, I have yet to hear of any school asking you to sign a EULA or even read any kind of an agreement at all pertaining to what you could or could not do with your education. You can even claim that what you know is your own knowledge, unless it's a famous piece of knowledge like the theory of relativity.
Seriously? Public Domain is usually considered the most free license, followed closely by non advertising BSD, then advertising BSD. There are several other advertising licenses that permit use in both closed and open sourced applications (such as the IJG license). Then we have copyleft licenses that allow closed-source linking, such as LGPL. Then we have pure copyleft (GPL). Then we have restricted open source (SCSL, MSRL), closed source, military projects, black military projects, "I could tell you but I'd have to kill you", and "you're dead".
A lawyer was recently consulted to see where the Artistic License might fit on this spectrum. We'll get back to you as soon as he stops laughing.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The Open Source Community will never lead as long as it continues to follow.
Being the most innovative kid on the block may look good on the resume, but it only really matters in a world of restrictive intellectual property laws. The whole point of free software is to demolish IP boundaries so that the collective creativity and intelligence of the world's developers and users can be pooled to the benefit of all without being hindered by proprietary restrictions. If the free software community did nothing but plunder the work of other people and use it to build the cheapest, most flexible, easiest-to-use, and most reliable software around and did it without coming up with one idea of its own, well, mission accomplished.
Anyone who wants to get into a pissing match with Sun, MS, or whomever about creativity and innovation is certainly free to do so, but the main purpose of both the Free and Open Source software communities is the sharing of knowledge. Hot-dogging is a personal imperative, and really irrelevant to the world at large.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Version 5.1a (the previous one, the first after Sun bought the company) was the last one for OS/2.
I wonder if a GPLed one could be ported again to the platform. Sun blamed IBM compilers for not being able to compile 5.2.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I agree with most people here by saying that it is a good thing to have StarOffice GPLed...
The name Starzilla comes to my mind, which means, to become a perfect product... later.
But, if I encourage people to honour this initiative, I won't personnally use it.
I don't like the idea of using a XXXMo program suite to type a letter.
As of Yet, I use GNUmeric and ABIsuite.
Not the lightest but at least they do the job.
I think there is a design problem in most office suites today which is related to their integration level.
I mean integrating software components together over a software integrator (Gnome, windows, etc) sounds a bit redundant to me.
I just hope that Starzilla will look more like a Lego set than a menhir.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Furthermore: why would Sun open up the code? not just to play nice. To me it sounds like the development of Staroffice takes TOO MUCH money to continue. So opening up the source is a logical business step and doesnt have to mean it will DIE or being abandoned. They're just looking for cheap programmers (namely the OSS programmers, who don't cost a single DIME)
As some stated in this thread: if there won't be a strong project management, it will suffer. Let's hope that will be in place when the source is opened up (so direction of future development, designgoals etc are set by a team so it won't suffer from the lack of it as in most OSS projects)
I'm looking forward to have a look into the code. It would be a great learning experience for for example students of C.S., for example how to build a decent spreadsheet or wordprocessor. :)
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
all these ... office types ... that ... need a bloated graphical office suite ... need to ... learn VI. Then they will be productive!
Yes, all those business types, spending their time trying to get their three data points into excel, then into a chart, then the chart into a powerpoint slide show*, when what they really need is a piece of chalk, a blackboard, and training in voice projection! It seems** that the only tangible result of the office app madness has been office colleagues swamping each other with reports.
Too many reports about nothing that nobody has time to read. Instead of writing a concise three paragraph statement, people spend twice the time fiddling with presentation.
Your post has been moderated 'Funny', but it's a real issue. I guess ms poured those $2Bn research dollars*** into writing reports in their own office app. about their research....
* Does office even do this..? I've never used office... :-) /. post...
** See Landauer, Thomas K. "The Trouble With Computers"
*** A statistic 'quoted' somewhere in a
For example, I'm fairly sure that StarOffice is built upon a Win32 compatibility library from Bristol. They can't GPL that.
Didn't StarDivision use their own library called StarView? If Sun bought this along with StarOffice, StarView might be in the deal as well as SO.
This would be rather interesting - a cross-platform GUI lib, for Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix plus formerly OS/2 (don't know if it's still supported). And it's been show to work rather well...
I'm sure people will tell me how much it sucks as compared with GTK or Qt, but do they support as many platforms?
My personal f1rst p0st to /.
Remember all the excitement when Netscape went Open Source? Well here I am after all this time still running 4.x.
If Star Office GPL gets bogged down the same way as Mozilla it will be years before we see a usable product.
I think this is grossly underevaluated. Sure, moste companies in the western world have legit licences, but everywhere else (third-world & home users) there are not much licenced MS software. I'd said 80 to 90% of it is not legit. Of course if they didn't sold Excel alone for 500$ bucks over here, they wouldn't be pirated so much (wtf ! 500$ for a spreadsheet ? this is nuts)
But don't worry to much for MS, according to their financial datas, they make a gross margin of 86% and a profit margin of 40%. Any other business would DREAM of being so profitable.
Oh please do - StarOffice is half way there to being a great app; but its big, slow and a little buggy. Let us at the source and let us make it kick ass.
As much as I love anything becoming free, and applaud Sun's possible move to do this, I can't help but have flashbacks from the Netscape release. Both were huge and probably bloated pieces of software. Both had lots of third party stuff which had to be removed, and broke all sorts of things.
I haven't seen the Star Office code obviously, but from using it a little, it sure seems bloated and dificult. I don't know how many volunteers will jump onboard.
Let's remember what JWZ said about Open Source not being magic dust to fix all problems.
And let's also hope my guesses and assumptions are completely wrong, and this is a huge boon to the community!
Erik
Good grief--you drone on about intelligibility and a half dozen other points all inside one paragraph! Is that a formatting problem? In any case it hardly speaks for your own intelligibility.
It seems to me that you are in part criticizing people that do not share your priorities.
For example, would you be content with proprietary software, or would you desire a free equivalent? Suppose RMS or Linus had been content. Where would that leave us?
Fortunately, not everyone believes in the kind of success at all costs as espoused by "well-run" companies such as Microsoft.
Pros:
Free
reads and converts between lots of file formats
feature complete (almost)
Available cross platform
Cons:
not as good as Microsoft Office in usability
filters always convert but no necessarily very well (e.g. glitches in to HTML filters)
Does not seem to have a good API for extensions (java plugs [not just for the HTML browser]anyone, to allow star office to be used in batch mode on a web server)
Not the fastest program on the block.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Drat. Wish they'd chosen to give away the source to the Lighthouse Design suite of NeXT/OPENstep apps instead, much nicer and would've been a huge boost to
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Bad reply
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
As you must know, CPU performance is not the only thing that decides overall system performance. I don't know much about E6000's or other expensive servers, but I do know that one reason people use them is their superior I/O performance. If your test ignores I/O and the task you intend to run is I/O bound, then your test is meaningless.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Here's another take on this issue which could probably be way off target..
Scenario: Sun keeps development of SO going, heavily encourages open source development, and because its now GPLed, they can take good bits from Koffice, Abiword etc. etc. et.c and put them in SO. And even though its GPLed (which means providing source), they could still sell the binaries and make money from a product that would get much better with improvements from the community and from other GPL projects.
GPL doesn't only have to mean freebies for you, it also can mean freebies for Sun (and code sharing is great no matter who's doing it).
It is my belief that traditional PC type desktop packages are eventually going to die. They fail to be open and flexible. For instance, consider what Microsoft tried to do with Outlook: create an application built upon a database, and allow the application to be highly configurable, accessible and fungible.
Where applications are heading is into some sort of ASP hybrid. The core application will sit on your local computer, but you'll be able to use distributed services and resources. For instance, say you want to open a new template for a Word file - what you do is actually browse the net. Somewhere out there is a word-template 'exchange' that lists the location of all available templates, and the cost of those templates.
Another failure of the web so far is to properly integrate distributed application components. For instance, I can read 'events' information at www.iacr.org, but I cannot cut and paste those into my scheduling tool. And I can't access my scheduling tool on my PDA, desktop or mobile phone.
The existing office type applications are already 'old world', what counts now is integrating the distributed application that the web is rapidly becoming. What Sun is doing is great and should be applauded, but take a big picture of how application technologies are evolving, and make sure that the development of the open-source heads into the right direction - otherwise the open-source community becomes just as bad as the commercial community. I am not down on open-source, but just trying to make sure that positive and negative aspects are covered - you need to take a realist/objective view of the situation.
What the open source community should do is take StarOffice and pull it apart, and turn it into a distributed application, so that parts of it can be run on the desktop, and other parts across the network. Money can be made from running data exchanges, and selling computational resources and services.
What I'd really like to see is hypermedia and information structuring research and technologies used to rebuild the application, that would be cool. Then the concept of spreadsheets, documents and everything else melds into a generic hypermedia style system. That would be making the right step towards where the internet and information technologies are heading.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
round these parts many new shop bought systems bundle Office as part of the VAR package.
.oO0Oo.
It's a very attractive method.
People who use MS Office at work want MS Office at home and if it's bundles with your overpriced PC (like the one's they sell in my local Sainsbury's food supermarket) then it's smoke and mirrors for the casual purchaser.
This is it's power.
oh and it kicks the crap out of StarOffice time after time.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
By Freeing SO, and hence easing its distribution, a large number of network-able plugins could be developed. I can imagine a sniffer that would pop a window with web links associated with the text you are typing. Sun would glean ideas and new employees from plug-in development and then be able to provide more solutions to web content providers. It could be beneficial to hail Sun both as a Solutions provider (IBM style) and a hub for web content.
The moment I read the headline, I recalled an article on slashdot some time ago, wherein was referred to an article on LinuxPlanet. The FSF had announced that there would be a lawsuit or a major softwarehouse would have to open up its software.
Could this be it?
Onet
Get rid of that damned intergrated desktop/worktop crap. I want to launch the wordprocessor? - I get it, I want to launch the spreadsheet? I get it.. no damned net intergration/ clobber my desktop stuff..
you guys have a winner here, just get rid of the useless fluff and you'll win big!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've been using StarOffice for close to two years at work. The next "killer app" that Linux has to overcome is being able to read and write Office files. So far, Star is the only application that can do this with any sense of quality. Sure there are problems, it's bloated, slow, and has a nasty GUI. So what? It does the job that I need - read and write .DOC and .PPT files.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
I'm surprised it took THIS long for Sun to finally make StarOffice licensed under the GNU General Public License.
After all, by definition the GPL should include the source code; given that we're seeing StarOffice included as part of a number of commercial Linux distributions they should have done this months ago.
It's going to be very interesting to see how well StarOffice does against WordPerfect Office in the Linux market.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Preferably somebody working for Sun on Star Office right now (maybe even appointed by Sun?).
We need to get staroffice.sourceforge.net (or equivalent) and get lots of people downloading and patching the CVS code.
So, any volunteers?
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
I read through a far portion of the posts here and I have to say I'm disappointed. It's quite clear that no one here has ever gone deep into either MS office or StarOffice. Using MS Office in a global enterprise fashion is nearly impossible. I'm a Office Engineer for a Fortune 500 company that makes its money on R&D. That means documents are the life blood of the company. Getting into the nitty gritty with MS Word and it'll nearly drive you insane. MS had a philosophy of using "styles" in its documents but didn't stick to it consistantly making it nearly impossible to control some aspects of formatting. As 3rd support I'm often getting the "seriously fucked" documents to repair. Ever hear of Style Corruption? Neither has Microsoft. It's a problem I have to fix everyday but MS won't admit it exists. Why? It's a basic flaw in the design of the product. To admit something like Style Corruption can happen means that MS Word is a piece of crap from line 1 of the code. The reason I say this is because I have been seriosuly looking at StarOffice as a alternative product to use. Any Office Engineer will agree with me, MS Office is not a viable product for global enterprise use. It's the defacto standard because it's what everyone else uses. If StarOffice goes opensource then I can use it and provide a solution that will work for this company. If I run into a problem like Style Corruption I can try and work with the community to fix it. I'm sick of Microsoft plugging it's ears and screaming "NA NA NA NA NA" when I try to explain what is Style Corruption. For all those saying StarOffice is bloated and slow, shit man, at least with an opensource version you can make it work! I'll take slow and bloated anyday over impossible to make it work.
*You Said I Won't, I Said I Don't, But I Just Might*
As a user of LinuxPPC as well as Linux on an Intel box, I would love to see StarOffice GPL'ed. Currently there is no port of star office to LinuxPPC, although it should only require a new compile. Fortunate for me, I don't use office applications much in my job, I do all my technical writing in framemaker and LaTeX. Sheldon
Now I'll finally have a half decent office suite to run on my SGI. :)
Maybe.
-Chris
This is not really fair. Every fucking computer comes with IE, and Windows ruthlessly defends IE if you try to install another browser. (when you reboot it makes IE the 'default' broswer).
If Netscape had bullied OEMs to install thier browser on every computer, then would you be singing the same tune? Browser dominance means jack shit to me because of this. Some people who see Netscape on my computer ask me "What's that?" because to them, because of Microsoft, INTERNET = WEB = INTERNET EXPLORER, and for that, I will never forgive Microsoft.
Lars -
Unless you pirate your software, you just paid several hundred, if not a grand, more than an intelligent computer user who runs a freenix and star office.
Lars -
i think it's a good thing. Even if StarOffice for Linux jumps light years ahaid of the version for Windows. Thats all fine with me as long as it gets better compatibility with the Office products. I think Sun is doing a great thing, maybe it'll GPL more stuff!
[Umm, how to phrase this as politely as possible?]
Are you really this STUPID? By placing code in the public domain, the original author has disclaimed all rights to it, probably completely by choice. If it happens this code is used by someone (anyone, even for the ungodly purpose of making money), that's probably exactly what the original author intended.
What's really sad is the victim culture that seems to be growing up around the GPL, where any trivial offense, real or imagined, is portrayed as evil business preying on the innocent. Quick, recruit Jon Katz.
As for the topic at hand, the GPL and StarOffice deserve each other. Add it up: One huge, bloated, probably very ugly codebase. One license that discourages late-term involvement. Result: Another flood of "Failure of Open Source" articles.
StarOffice sucks worse than Windows? Huh? Windows tries forcefully to be an OS too, in case you forgot. As for the mandatory Web browser, did you know that StarOFfice for Windows uses MSIE as its browser?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I don't know what you're talking about, once you install netscape and check the "make netscape my default browser" box it stays that way. Yeah its nice to use netscape instead of the evil IE, but I don't want a program that segfaults at least once a day. You can say the same thing about people who think AOL=internet.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Since Microsoft's whole approach to a future Office suite seems to be as an Application Service Provider, could this seriously hurt thier future office strategy?
Monkey lover...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I want a native version for FreeBSD(no more emulation)Right On SUN!!!!
Lawd, get this Pac some soul, clarify what's what!
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WWW.TETSUJIN.ORG
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
WP worth a Second Look. :)
/. are opposed to WP is that it isn't opensource. Uhmm...lame excuse. It is worth paying $90 USD for a product that works.
After carefully reviewing the post on this article, I have determined that nobody here likes WordPerfect. Why? Before you answer, read this.
* WP is the most compatible worprocessor with MS Word files around (more so than MS itself in most cases).
* Lets face it, WP is the only alternative word processor for most folks.
* It is very inexpensive for any platform. Corel is even distributing it for free for Linux, for crissake.
* Corel has markedly improved the acceptance of Linux for the average user, both with WP and with Corel Linux.
* It works.
* It's relatively fast.
* It doesn't crash.
* It's small.
* It has excellent capabilities for publishing and maintaining long files such as novels, and is regularly recognized as better than any other word processors for those functions in particular.
Now. The only thing that I can think of to explain why so many on
Similarly, people with a conscience use Opera rather than IE or Netscape, or even Mozilla, even though it is not free. But it works!
Rather than trying to kill of Corel, a small Canadian software company with good products, instead support its linux efforts by paying for its software, both open and closed source. That way, you can assure that in the future, even if SO doesn't pan out, you know there is one good wordprocessor out there.
BTW, what's the obsession with free software? Yes, its fun to play with, and sometimes its very useful. But it shouldn't be a religion. You pay for hardware, don't you? Sunlight is free, but most of us don't build a forge to make solar panels to power our computers so we don't have to rely on the evil power/utility companies.
Lets not talk about 'oh we can't rely on Corel, lets destroy their market share.' Because they haven't done anything wrong, and they've done a lot to help the Linux community. Star Office is OK, but nowhere near as mature as WordPerfect, and with nowhere near the transparent ease of use. And by the way, you would have to be a psycho to use Vi for general wordprocessing. Maybe if you really needed the precise formatting control it would be worth it. Otherwise, not.
PS: for another example of a product worth paying for that isn't Free with a capital 'F,' check out http://free.beos.com.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Most importantly, I agree that developers should be free to determine the disposition of their work. BSD or GPL licenses are valid choices that I am myself likely to be more comfortable with as a software *user* but sure, if a programmer / company prefers a proprietary license, that's up to them! No argument from me on that point. I don't believe in coercion -- doesn't mix well with creativity!
...
... since it ran on NeXT machines before the Mac, that doesn't seem so outrageous ...)
But since I neither want to use software against the legitimate wishes of its owner (though I have on occasion) nor do I want to spend my Hershey Bar money on software I'm not free to pass around myself. I will if that's the best option I see, though
I like open source projects because I know they can / will be furthered as long as programmers are interested enough in them to work on their guts. Some of my favorite proprieatary programs, though, didn't succeed very well, because *my* mindshare wasn't enough to support their continued existence;) (T/Maker's WriteNow word processor for the Mac, for instance, I wish was Free / open source, so it could be updated for Linux
And anyhow, I'm personally more concerned about open / unobfuscated *file formats* than ridding the world of proprietary applications. So, really, I hope that if file converters *do* come out of the StarOffice thing that they are mostly in the direction of Word --> (XML / html / other documented format).
That's my take,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I can save documents in Word 97 format, but SO 5.1a won't load them back in again!
I guess that this ought to be a good thing. People who disagree with this, rather than flaming me shoudl possibly get into the loop and improve on what is out there. The Microsoft product is not that brilliant, and I have kinda been hoping that "the-world" would come up with a better offering. By making this open, we get to do something about all of the things that we dont like about it.
Come on. Go back and look at my post. His lab was using straight-out Bell Labs UNIX in the seventies. Linux is mentioned only in the context of switching operating systems NOW. Before you get snarky, make sure you have a leg to stand on, l0ser.
"It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to the german Heise Newsticker StarOffice will really be released under the GPL on October 13th at www.openoffice.org
Haha you guys crack me up.
Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
The above statement has been posted, verbatim, but probably at least half a dozen stories in the last few days (probably all of them for all I know).
I thought maybe it was a bug, but most of the replies are verbatim as well. Take a look at this guy's posting history and this guy's history and this guy's history and this guy's history as well.
If if is a bug, it's a pretty serious one. If it's a campaign for trolls to harvest karma points, you people really need to get lives.
Jay (=
StarDesktop drives me sick. In the Windoze version, it's not so bad (except that it's not quite intelligent enough to replicate the actual Start Menu, which could drive newbies nuts). On Linux / Solaris, however, it is totally maddening. Without virtual resolution (am I the only one who actually uses that feature?) it seals off access to your desktop (though, to their credit, they do replicate the KDE menu pretty well), preventing you from launching new apps using KPanel, Gnome Panel, XFCE or CDE... It was a good idea back before KDE, GNOME, XFCE and CDE caught on, but now it totally gets in the way.
If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi