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Star Office 6.0 Source Code GPL!

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the still-waiting-for-the-license dept.

jjr writes "An article over at TechWeb states the date for the release of the source code Star Office 6.0 is on Oct. 13 and it will be released at openoffice.org." We've been hearing rumors of this for some time now, but I'm still looking for confirmation of the license, but the rumor is that it will be Open Source compliant, and hopefully GPL (especially considering the (well deserved) heat they took over their previous license). Rumors about the license in German. I've also heard that the among the major goals is a GTK port of the suite. Update: 07/19 01:31 PM by CT : It's apparently official: Finally a story in English proclaiming that it will be released under the GPL!

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  1. Official Press release!! by ChrisRijk · · Score: 5
    Source Code Offered Via GNU General Public License and to Reside At www.OpenOffice.org.

    • PALO ALTO, Calif., July 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Monterey, California, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - news) announced it will release the source code of its StarOffice(TM) Suite, a leading, high quality, office productivity application software suite, to the open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Sun also announced OpenOffice.org will be formed and managed by Collab.Net and will serve as the coordination point for the source code, the definition of XML-based file formats, and the definition of language-independent office application programming interfaces (APIs).

    btw, the GPLd version will be v6, which is a complete re-write according so some things I've heard. Apparantly, since the takeover, Sun have quadrupled the number of developers! btw, Sun reps have also clearly stated recently, that even with StarPortal, they expect people to be using the normal StarOffice product for many years.

    Also, Sun actually have about 4 'source available' license in use - SCSL, MPL (mozila public license), the "Open Source (tm)" certified one they're using for 'technical' things like the NFS 4 release, and also the license for Solaris. This makes 5. Quite a wide range.