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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 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).
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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
whot?
AFAIK, most of SO is written in C++.
I tried running SO on Linux about three years ago, when the JVM pickings for Linux were rather slim, but it ran and the performance was almost acceptable.
I seriously doubt any major portion of SO is written in Java.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
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.
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.
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.