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Sun to Charge for Star Office 6.0
biwillia writes: "According to
this
heise article (in German, or Google translated), free versions of Star Office will now only be available to Solaris users. Free versions for Linux and Windows users will no longer be offered. A homemade translation of the first paragraph reads, 'With version 6.0 of Star Office, scheduled to be released in May, Sun has changed the product politics of their Office package, which had been freely distributed since the aquisition of Hamburg-based Star Division. In the future, Sun wishes to charge license fees for usage of the Windows and Linux versions. Only the version for Sun's own operation system Solaris will remain free.'"
Is it free if you roll your own?
Open Office will remain free though.
Open Office will be the winner here then.
Wow, this is a major suprise. No more free versions of Star Office will probably mean less reason for your typical Joe Schmoe to use Microsoft Office. Does that mean progess for Linux on the desktop is going to come to a screeching halt? (I hope not!) Are there any other viable alternatives to Office?
.. OpenOffice is LGPL. StarOffice is the proprietary version of OpenOffice. Are there any differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice (applications)?
Alright sun just took some awesome software, made it only available by cost and is now running it up against a free version from the same orginal tree. I like this, I'd like to see who ends up better... star office or open office. Of course star office seems alittle more polished but... how many non geeks used it? i use it because it was the best alternative to microsoft office (it had all the feautures... even the massive ram needed). This seems kinda like mozilla vs netscape 6 now... personally i don't like netscape as much as mozilla.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Not.
I would not mind paying for Star Office 6.0 (since 5.2 was about 50 dollars at wal mart) if 1)it's price is the same and 2) there are new and better features. I have played with the 6.0 Beta and I found it to be much like 5.2 so what has changed since 6.0 beta? what features/ bugs have been fixed and how did 6.0 change from 5.2 (which is now free)?
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I don't use either - was looking forward to trying Star Office 6 as I'd heard it had removed the custom desktop. Now it looks as if I'll be trying out OpenOffice instead.#
Cheers,
Ian
There goes the best free competition of MS Office. Guess thats one less reason for offices to switch to Linux as a desktop OS.
Ok I will admit to posting before looking up the facts but I think Smoothwall went this way and this resulted in IPCOP. If Open Office/Star Office has a GPL License then its quite possible that it will fork, someone else will implement the other changes and .... then so what. Charging is Good. Giving away the Code is Good. Charging for Support is Good. Getting Free support is Good. There is nothing in the actual story that will actually affect the product. But theres quite a bit in here that affects how people will view Sun and other companies that take on Open Source projects for their own puposes....
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
who needs spell checking and databases anyway :)
I have a colleague that's a fairly heavy wordprocessor user. For a while she used Star Office 6.0 beta and liked it. After a minor disaster (crashing HD), we helped her get her machine reinstalled. Just to try it out, we installed Open Office instead. Turns out it's at least as good as the 'real' StarOffice, and she has been happy with it.
So, StarOffice for a branded package with support and feel-good factor for people unsure about this newfangled OPen Source thing; and Open Office for all the rest of us. Fair enough.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I guess there is always Abiword...
I didn't understand why Sun was removing access to StarOffice 6.0 beta in December (I think). They had some reason like they've gotten enough feedback so they are closing down the beta. I found the beta to be very stable, so perhaps they were worried that the beta version would compete with the final version.
This was doomed to fail from the beginning. It's just not good enough. Never was. Sad but true.
Read as : Sun decided to abort StarOffice. For futher Wordprocessing needs, please refer to openoffice.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I'm a microsoft employee and I think that this is the best decision sun ever made. I'm watching my MS shares rise now. Steven is right, we'll crush these suckers.
Sun has said for some time "Linux is Unix, and we're a Unix company". However, that only really extends to how much Linux can damage Windows NT or boost application support for Solaris. Sun still has a vested interest in making Solaris on Sparc the preferred platform.
Anyway, we'll always have OpenOffice.
Regards
I like teamwork. It's easier to assign blame that way.
I can see why they might want to stop giving away Linux versions of Star Office, but I'd think they want to keep the Windows versions free. Think about it: If the Windows version is free, it gives more people the ability to use Solaris as their workstation, since they can now give documents to Windows users, and the Windows users really don't have an excuse not to read them. And you're sure they'll be able to see them right (as there are still some issues with saving to MS-Office format in Star Office). Besides that, it gets some Windows users using Star Office instead of microsoft office, so if they're ever able to transition to using Solaris, the switch won't be hard (yeah, there would still be a lot of other problems, but if you want regular secretary/office worker types using your system, that's a good thing). I can't imagine they'll make any money selling Windows versions of the software, will they??
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
5.2 already cost $40 for business use. Compare this to MS Office which is over $200 for any use. Charging say, $40-$50 for StarOffice isn't a bad thing, particularly if doing this means they are able to place more copies of StaOffice 6.0 on the shelf beside MS Ofice XP. I believe the only reason 5.2 isn't on %25 of the business desktop in the windows world is because everyone sees MS Office, while mostly the linux community only sees Star Office.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
http://www.rense.com/general20/truth.htm
So now people will begin using OpenOffice. Why did Sun decide on this? It's stupid, let the OpenSource community do most of the work for you, and THEN charge for it; don't waste your own resources to do it. They will NOT make enough money to keep that project viable. They're trying to pull an Apple. Give them good software for free, only available on your OS, and they will come. Sun maybe had a shot at this before pulling the plug on Intel Solaris development. Not now. Apple is the only company that seems to get away with things like that.
How is Sun supposed to make money from Star Office if they don't eventually charge for it? I, for one, would be willing to pay a small fee to use Star Office on my two desktops. $35/computer seems reasonable to me. The license shouldn't be tied to an OS, but rather a computer.
Given interoperability, I may purchase one commercial copy of Star Office for my main desktop use, and use Open Office on every other computer, it depends on how well each is distributed.
In some ways, charging for Star Office may be a good thing. Charging for software in the business world gives it some degree of credibility - that software has value if one must pay for it. I'd be even more happy if Sun offered free education and/or personal licenses to try to gain market share, while charging a fair fee to businesses.
I eagerly await Star Office 6 and Open Office 1.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
OK, I know you're a troll, but...
Without a WYSIWYG document editor Linux is in big trouble.
There are several other WYSIWYG document editors for Linux - both free, Free and commercial. Star Office seems to be destined to become closed and commercial. It will still be available though and Open Office is basically Star Office.
What advantage does Linux have over Solaris?? None, they are both free Unix
Solaris is neither free nor Free.
Gnulix - the choice of a Gnulixed generation.
is said to be one of the differences between OpO and StO. No spell check? Aaargaarghaarg...
Everything is mainstream now.
It's a pity. A lot of companies were looking into migrating to StarOffice because "it's supported by Sun, so that means it should be better than OpenOffice".
I know my employer, for one, was actively considering making the switch. They had acquired several copies for Windows and were testing them out.
I'm not sure how this will influence their decision to dump MSOffice, if any, but it makes it a lot more expensive than they originally thought.
I paid for a shrinkwrap verion of StarOffice for
OS/2, and the hardcopy documentation was a joke.
I'm not about to give them any more money unless and until they demonstrate that I will get value
for my money. The message that I get from the
announcement of the charge for Linux StarOffice 6.0 is to start learning KOffice.
I wouldn't mind buying a copy if it's reasonable - considering that OpenOffice *IS* a good viable alternative to StarOffice, they'll need to bundle some good 'value-adds' but keep the price reasonable. $25/seat might be a good price point. $200 won't be - I may as well just use MS Office at that point. I'm just throwing numbers out as I haven't seen anything at all re: pricing on this.
Value-adds I wouldn't mind paying for if they're bundled: Professional clipart, professional templates, multiple language dictionaries - all those would be a good start.
creation science book
I thought the reason StarOffice was made freely available was to encourage users to use non-MS software and reduce the stranglehold that Office has right now.
Is Sun doing this because of the threat that Linux is providing to Solaris? Personally, I can't stand Solaris, and could never see myself installing Solaris on any of my machines. It looks like I'll simply drop StarOffice and go another route, possibly VMWare or some other alternative.
Linux already has several free WYSIWYG editors and can live quite happily without Star Office - we got open office remember.
I completely disagree that Solaris will steal anything from Linux on the desktop. What advantage does it have over Solaris? For a start it can run on any machine known to man - can Solaris???
Solaris has a billion dollar company - only one? What about IBM, Dell, HP, who are supporting Linux? The list goes on...
Does this essentially lead to a Mozilla-like 'split', where a commercial derivative with extra frills is available on top of a free version (both senses)?
:).
Not exactly. Although this is a good comparisson, the commercial version of Netscape is still free. The main difference are testing (Netscape stick to a mozilla version and do a lot of QA testing before moving to another, while mozilla keeps going), features (like that spellchecker) and some 'AOL integration'
In the case of Staroffice/OpenOffice, it seems to me that real reason behind the split is to 'force' people to use Solaris instead of Linux. If that's the case, I don't it was a good idea: people will still use Linux (as long as OpenOffice is still available), and the anger against Sun will increase with this move.
Linux can run on x86, ppc, sparc, itanium, 68K, alpha, os390, and other processors, while solaris can only run on sparc and x86, with x86 support going dead.
What are the major differences currently between OpenOffice and StarOffice?
I remember a DoD procurement elated to StarOffice, has the price remained the same? (Are they running it on Solaris anyway?)
e4 e5
Is anyone up for writing SINE (Sine Is Not an Emulator)?
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
At least we now know on what side SUN is standing. Sun is not a friend of open source - I'm no longer a friend of Sun. Let's start supporting Open Office!!
just thought you would like to know, Solaris for intel and SPARC is free via Sun's web site.
Let's face it, other than dorks and geeks, very very few people use Star Office. M$ owns the office productivity market.
In all the places I've done work for, I've never seen a Solaris box used to run Star Office. The same applies to Linux. I've only seen Solaris and Linux used to act as servers not personal workstations.
For the price of one Solaris SPARC box, I can buy 3 Intel/AMD machines running Linux that are just as fast.
M$ owns the office application suite market, so this change is pricing is meaningless.
Bearing in mind that there is not exactly an overwhelming demand for Linux on the Desktop, charging for the Linux version will mean that they will basically get no money from that direction.
Given that they will make no money, and they won't be able to persuade new Linux users to use Star Office in future; and Linux is looking like it will be popular in future; they're losing lots of future profit.
If they had waited till it was popular then they would have been able to do the switch THEN, and have a way of screwing money out of most of the Linux users from that point on; they'll lose this.
Also, it's a bad idea because Sun is a competitor of Microsoft, and Linux is challenging Microsoft for the desktop, and your enemies enemy is your friend.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Do you read the minds of sun execs? Unlikely.
He is probably from Canada
Not all Americans are sad they lost, it was a great game and exemplifies why the sport is great.
You're seeing the 'academic' version of Office XP all over the place for relatively cheap? Businesses actually might take a shrinkwrapped SO with a bill attached seriously, so MS is low-balling (for them) Office to keep their hooks in the population.
Just a thought.
Is this Scott McNealy's revenge for having to wear some stupid penguin get-up?
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-832463.html
I'm very suspicious about the accuracy of this article. Sun have just announced that they'll be releasing their own Linux distribution (I think that they should call it 'Polaris'). My guess is that they'll provide a free downloadable version and charge for boxed CDs with documentation.
HH
Why not adopt RedHat's marketing model?
By selling it at the store for $$ and making it available by download for free.
I'm still buying RedHat CDs despite downloading various rawhide. I can't be alone on this.
Solaris (intel version) is no longer available for a free download. Sun did the same deal with that, just quietly shutting them down one day. At the same time anouncing all further dev for intel was kapput.
While I like solaris and actually got a free sparc box when I was laid off my last job, I think they have some serious changes afooot.
No longer will any one company determine what is best for the market or the user, but the market will decide and users will choose.
No longer will files and documents wear the cement shoes of a single vendor or operating system, but standards will flourish and compatibility reign across platforms.
For the first time, a commercial grade, full-featured office suite will be opened up to the innovative input of the global developer community.
Free to be changed. Free to be improved. Free to adapt to meet the needs of any situation. Free.
Wait, I can't make money from free? Nevermind, we're gonna charge for it.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
sorry for being a n00b, but couldn't one emulate Solaris binaries an another *ix system?
The Windows version is expensive for Sun to support. Because of all the different forms of Windows suckage, Sun is spending mucho trying to put out anything that doesn't make them look like beginners vs the competition. This thing is not that good, so far, and I guess they figure that it's going to cost plenty to make it good. But in the shape it's in now for Windows, it's way behind Office 95, so not much likely sales, and they will let it die.
I don't mean this to sound nasty, but get out from in front of your LInux box and spend some serious time side-by-side with mainstream Windows users. Watch how they use Windows and talk to them about what they do and don't like about Windows, and what it would take to get them to switch platforms. I guarantee you it will be a very enlightening experience.
I wonder if this is really a bad thing... when we look at the big bad Microsoft, it's amazing how much copies they sold of Office, especially when you look at their price.
If some Linux distributions started shipping with the full version of StarOffice (official of course, including books etc), I think people won't really care about this move. I mean, even $50 for a fully-fledged Office suite isn't much, is it?
The true 'geek' users among us (you know who you are) can then in turn use OpenOffice, which is probably less foolproof than StarOffice will be.
So, the bottomline is, do we really lose anything? If you want the top of the notch, just pay those $50... but if you will settle for the same without very fancy booklets and such, OpenOffice will be good, and it's free...
Sun offers Solaris 8 on x86 at no charge for non-commerical and educational use. It does not offer Solaris for free for commercial use. Also there isn't going to be a version of Solaris 9 for the PC, meaning users are being hung out to dry. I shouldn't even have to mention the fact that the source code to Solaris is proprietary.
Linux on the other hand is FREE in every sense. It's free to use, free to look at, free to change, and free to redistribute.
I don't know if you're just trolling or if you're seriously deranged. If its the former take some grow up pills. if its the latter take some happy pills. Of course if you're already on drugs JUST SAY NO!
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
"If you disagree with me then you are wrong"
No, look here, if you were right I would agree with you. However you are not and I won't. But I still am and still do.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
"For a start it can run on any machine known to man"
Thank you for that tip. Can you please assist me in locating the version of Linux for the Z80? I've got a ZX81 here that is just itching to be used again and Linux would be just lovely on it.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Sun says that the background of this decision is many customers' desire to receive professional support as part of their software licence. This includes for example distribution in a package with CD-ROMs and manuals, corresponding agreements as to the number of licenses, as well as continual software maintenance and upgrades from Sun. In this case, corporate customers will receive an Enterprise Edition at "cost-covering prices", the height of which has not yet been released by Sun.
... simply, to each his own.
Director of marketing Martin Häring declares: "With this decision Sun is emphasising the strategic significance of StarOffice for the company. Licence fees guarantee our continued development and support for this product, and are at the same time a reaction to the stance of many customers take, who out of principle do not allow free [as in beer] software to be used for mission-critical applications."
... sounds sensible to me. OpenOffice stays free, and PHBs have far less of a reason to nix the switch away from the evil empire.
Sun can hardly offer professional-level support on a free product. They might offer just the support, but then the package would be missing (with the doorstops, eh, manuals, and the coasters, eh, CDs). Sounds great
yes, we have no bananas
I don't know anyone who does.
So they could charge 10 times the amount they are charging now and still not make a dollar.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
I heard a talk with McNealy where he was frustrated that businesses wouldn't take up Star Office. He talked to some hot shots at other companies and heard the same thing a few times - We love it, it does what we need it to for most of our users but we just don't trust something that's free. Well, now we get to see if businesses will take a product more seriously if it costs some. I'm willing to bet that it will be very very cheap compared to MS products. This should be interesting. Oh, has anyone seen any info on how much it might cost?
What they want to make money now?
Well, I think we can predict that unless there's a change in this policy, we'll see a fairly rapid death of Star Office on platforms other than Solaris. Sun must be confused: do they really think that there's some compelling reason to use Star Office other than the fact that it's free? It would be interesting to see whether the resulting decline of Star Office on non-Solaris platforms actually leads to a decline in its use on Solaris as well... I would expect it to happen, actually.
If I were management and I wanted to pay for an office suite, I'd use MS Office -- why bother with this silly Star Office thing, especially after seeing those past versions that took over the whole desktop?
AWESOME game. Canada was on fire, but the Americans were more aggressive so major props to them.
Congrats on the silver, eh?
Actually, this is a bit of a disappointment. While the general idea of setting a goal of getting to 1.0 is all good - witness what happened to the quality of Mozilla when they stopped feature creeping - I can't help but feel the Open Office crew are letting the side down a bit by admitting that their 1.0 release will really be about an 0.8.5 level release and will still contain bugs. It's all a bit, well, Microsofty.
:)
Still, I can see some interesting projects about to kick off - The Open Office wordprocessor as a KPart, for example
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
When you go to a manager and try to argue for free software over MS stuff, they can't get their heads around the idea that the one that is free has value. Managers just don't get it.
The only way to convince some people that this is quality software, is to charge them money for it.
Reality has a liberal bias
"M$ owns the office productivity market."
I think what you mean here is that M$ sells more "office" software than anyone else, and in that you woulc be correct.
However if you look at productivity in the office I don't think that you'll find the most productive and efficient office workers use M$ software. M$ office software is bloated and inefficient and contains a lot of "features" that aren't needed for day to day office production for most users. The same can be said for StarOffice.
The point is that if you're going to deterimne who "owns" productivity, I think you're going to have to count out these fat boys.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Can't this be construed as anticompetitive practices? Everyone is blaming Microsoft for using their position in the OS market in order to leverage themselves into other markets. By offering their software for free only if you have their OS, and charging for it otherwise, they are doing something for which MS would be burned at the stake.
Imagine, for a moment, that MS decided to offer Office for free for Windows users, but charged several hundred dollars to use it on Mac or on Linux. What would everyone say? Would anyone say that it's a good thing for the company or for the users? Would anyone say it is fair? Obviously, they would be using their position in one market in order to gain easier access in another.
Laws, and opinions, should be applied equally to everyone, regardless of name, rank, or serial number.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Do we rock or what?
For THE BEST National Anthem, check out New Zealand's!
Hmmm, let's see... Structuring the pricing of a product to promote your own operating system. Somebody explain to me how this kind of linking of products is any better than Microsoft giving away Internet Exploder to promote Windows. StarOffice has just be relagated to another bloated piece of crap office "productivity" package to avoid.
Well I guess its back to the pirated copies of Ofiice!!!
I use SO 5.2 and it works fine 99% of the time. I tried a SO 6 beta and it was crashing every minute.
Have you had better luck with it? I liked the return to the separate programs and no "desktop"
but it just wasn't stable when I tried it.
Argh! I can't STAND it when I read things like this. No price has been mentioned, yet here's a knee-jerk reaction that, "Oh, I might have to pay money for software that I'll use every day." What if it was $80? $60? $20? $5 shareware registration?
It's people like you who ensure that there will not be any viable option to MS backed up by a company with the cajones,the pockets,and the motivation to see it through.
Strange that nobody has taken this issue up.
But are StarOffice going in another direction than OpenOffice?
Will they continue to work on OpenOffice?
MS Office, that is... ;)
just thought you would like to know, Solaris for intel and SPARC is free via Sun's web site.
Just thought you'd like to know; not any more it isn't!
Gnulix - we got you Gnulixed
Most people only used it because it was free. I don't suppose they'll get a significany market share and will decide to drop it soon enough.
Sig is taking a break!
You bastard. It's like 15 minutes after the win and you're already on slashdot. We should all be on our knees for at least 20 minutes preying to the Canadian gods!!
If it's good and it's something I would use, then yeah I'll buy it. Hey don't get me wrong I love free, but I also think people need to get paid for there work.
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
Probably the biggest difference will be the lack of support for the Sun ONE WebTop(whatever, exactly, that is) in OpenOffice.
I understand the comments about charging for a product and therefore making commercial outfits see it as "good".
But why not just keep it free, but also have a pay version which is the same thing? If you want to pay, you get a "high-quality, commercial-grade" piece of software. Or you can download the "freeware/shareware/open source", shoddy version which is actually the same thing, except the perception is different.
It seems that those in the position to make purchasing decisions often are victim to the "you get what you pay for" philosophy.
In a weird way, I think it's possible that charging for StarOffice may signal to managers that StarOffice is now worth something, so it might appear on their radar as a viable product.
I assure you that there certainly is one :-)
Can't help you find it though... never looked.
I'll admit to being concerned about a charge for SO 6.0, but I'm not too upset yet.
If the charge is reasonable, and I get appropriate value / support, I will be willing to pony up. I rely heavily on my Office software and don't begrudge Sun the chance to make a few dollars -- if they are making my life a little better.
It's hard for me to get too upset knowing that Open Office remains free and available if I don't like the deal Sun offers.
Nope, only for SPARC. They've taken down the x86 ISOs (but dropped the cost of the "media kit" to $45 from $75).
On a (slightly) more serious note:
I wonder if anyone has run any *nix on a C64.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
If we want Linux to become main stream then we have got to be willing to allow companies to make a profit by supporting us.
One of the main excuses that I hear for not running Linux on the desktop is lack of professional quality software. Sure, there is a lot of good stuff for Linux but it has a low visibility. No ads, not sitting on the shelf in software stores.
I would think that $40.00 for a quality office suite would be worth the money especially if the product gets advertising that mentions Linux.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The most important feature will be gone :/
I was really looking forward to SO 6.0, because it would be more localized.
SO 5.2 was in a nifty danish version, with danish menu's and spell-checking.
I don't think Open Office will have these features. Anybody knows how far they have come in this?
I just think this is kind of discriminating, that you can get a free version (with a capital F), in english. But you have to pay to get the same version in danish.
Its not like this was a succesful product on either windows or linux, and the windows population (which doesnt even know this program exists) wont buy it, and with free solutions that are much cleaner and feature rich (AbiWord, Koffice, Gnumeric) why would a linux user (who doesnt like to spend money on software anyway) buy it? I am sure that Sun knows this and are essentially pulling out of the mainstream office suite market.
I'd bet that way more people use Star Office on Windows and Linux than use it on Solaris. It's not very profitable to start charging the people who use it on Solaris since these are so few. They're also Sun's most loyal customers so it doesn't hurt to give them the occasional freebee.
People are willing to pay for Star Office on Windows and Linux. It would be nice to make some money so that more money could be invested in advertising and marketing. Maybe you could hire some new developers with the cash as well. Then maybe SO could be a real competitor to Word.
Basically, it's nice to work at a company where customers buy your products and the executives really care about making money.
yes. L-Unix is available for the C64 series and C-128s. Its based loosely on linux but it runs fine on commodores.
"it seems to me that real reason behind the split is to 'force' people to use Solaris instead of Linux"
I read it was cos big business was questioning how Sun could make a business model out of giving it away monetarily free, so were wary of committing to switching from MSOffice to StarOffice
A pasted translation from the German page above quickly points out that Sun is doing it so they can provide a supported product to businesses.
I can confirm that my organization (Fortune 100) didn't give StarOffice a first look because it was "free". They don't trust free s/w and need to hold someone accountable if there are problems (I should point out that we don't really hold M$ accountable for much, but the exec$ feel goo about the possibility of maybe being able to hopefully do so if there are really, really, major problems).
I can also confirm that we would like to save megabuck$ and provide some productivity suite competition so we can stop getting royally soaked by mr gates & co.
And I can confirm that other large organizations expressed the same feelings directly to Sun (with us).
HOWEVER, Visio is the "killer app" that will stop us from using StarOffice. Without a Visio-killer (open source or otherwise), M$ will continue to dominate. Buying Visio was a very strategic move on Redmond's part and it will prevent alot of places from switching since they would be fearful that it would not "integrate" properly with StarOffice (ever try to embed a complex Visio diagram in a Word file? there are integration problems enough within the suite, let alone outside of it).
So, Sun will make some money in the small-to-medium sized orgs, but M$ will continue to rake in the dough from the big boyz.
Mind the gap...
I think Polaris is a clever name for it. Sun really ought to do this.
Timemto start looking at AbiWord and KOffice
Sorry, but the US has more hot chicks. YOU LOSE!
This is a nasty bait-and-switch tactic if I've ever seen one, especially after all that beta testing they had everyone put in.
In the case of Staroffice/OpenOffice, it seems to me that real reason behind the split is to 'force' people to use Solaris instead of Linux.
Bingo.
It seems to me (though I don't follow this too closely) that Solaris has been losing to Linux for quite some time now, and that Sun is very worried about that. So I suspect they are using StarOffice as bait to get people to switch. It's a real act of desperation. Fortunately, it won't work. StarOffice is nice but it's no killer app.
I would have been willing to pay a reasonable fee for 6.0. $40 or so for a quality program that's comparable to MS Office is quite a steal. That Sun realizes this is a good thing.
However, not charging for the Solaris version is just plain low. It's Microsoft low, to be blunt. It's an attempt (though futile) to manipulate people into switching to Solaris. I won't stand for it. So I guess I'll stick with 5.2 or maybe try OpenOffice, and hope that Sun comes to their senses soon.
You can download StarOffice 6.0 Beta here
Mark this as troll if you want, but Sun is just as twisted as MS when it comes to dreams of world domination.
Sun would love to own the desktop, just as much as IBM or any other company that could make a buck doing so, greed is an inherent flaw/feature of capatilism so I won't fault them for trying.
What frustrates me is an unfair licensing scheme that favours their past hardware customers and penalizes any future software customers.
If the tables we're somehow turned, and StarOffice had a lock on the productivity market everyone else would cry foul, they would in effect give the software (StarOffice) away to suck people into their hardware (SPARC) platform.
This would be an equivalent to Intel buying MS, and give away MS Office for the Intel platform, and charge for MS Office for the Mac.
Think about it!
... but it works:
"First, let's clear up some major misunderstandings: OpenOffice.org build 638C does print, does save to PDF (*) , does have online help, and does have a working spellchecker. Having said that, let's see now in detail some of the major features."
Its on the Features page. Im downloading it now to check it out, and because i figured id try to prolong the slashdot effect.
Did you just grab my ass?
Not at all. Read again. A commercial split - if you want the extras Star Office gives, pay. If you don't, use OpenOffice. Same for Netscape and Mozilla. My comment was actually to head off such hysteria - seems to me that Sun have taken a reasonable course of action here, promoting their goods to their customers, but leaving a free alternative available for everybody else.
What if it was $80? $60? $20? $5 shareware registration?
Possibly alone in the Slashdot universe, you will find that every piece of shareware on my PC is registered, and every commercial piece of code I use is paid for. I run a one-man company, and license fees are really the last thing on my mind. If code is worth it to me, I pay.
Still, if a free version exists that satisfies my needs, I don't see why I should shell out for a commercial thing instead.
Cheers,
Ian
However they are missing a critical observation in deciding to charge Linux users: There are very strong complementarities between Linux and Solaris. Furthermore, Linux does not now own a substantial portion of the desktop market, though it certainly has a substantial advantage over Solaris in this arena.
So if the Sun executives were a bit more farsighted, they would continue to make StarOffice free for Linux, FreeBSD, other free Unix-like operating systems users. (At least until they know whether or not Linux will capture a significant portion of the desktop market in the future.) After all, it will be far easier for them to take market share from a large installed base of Linux users in 5 years than it would be to steal market share from Windows users.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
Yeah, the x86 version is being phased out. But not quite abandonware, because it has a sizeable codebase shared with the Sparc version. Hmm.
Maybe now someone needs to think seriously about making a GNU/Office program that is open sourced under the GPL because I aint paying for no software because like rms said that shouldn't have to be commercial!
Good job, Canuck punk, you have made me rethink the thoughtful message of congratulations I put on my web site immediately after the game. You're making your country look fantastic.
Solaris is very popular for engineering workstations, e.g. for VLSI design. There are a lot of proprietary tools developed by users (engineers not working as programmers) to go along with the standard tools. Unix is a more convenient environment for this than Windows, and it would be hard to port all the little bits and pieces. However, I think Linux has a bright future for engineering/science/cad desktop workstations.
There are other free or pretty damned cheap office suites on the market today. Koffice and 602 immediately come to mind. These days nobody is able to sell office suites because MS has a chokehold on the market. Wordperfect suite and lotus smartsuite cost less then office yet they have a miniscule percentage fo the market. Staroffice is MUCH cheaper and still nobody uses it. Openoffice is free and still not even the smallest dent in the MS stranglehold.
No matter how cheap your suite is, no matter how good it is, no matter even if it's free. Businesses won't use it because the PHB's are all stupid and people won't use it because they want the same thing at home that they have at work.
War is necrophilia.
Yes it is actually. I'm running Solaris 8 on my SS20 right now. The half baked x86 port has been dropped, and they try to sell you a 'media kit', but the isos are still gratis.
you wish man.. get yer head out of the sandbox you call usa
And SUNW share value shows that.
.Net for the sake of future employability, play with GPL'ed software for my own enjoyment, and forget about Solaris/Java unless someone pays me really well to work with it.
The business wonks that run all of these shows now hate giving anything away for free, even if there is a real necessity win over any portion of the Microsoft-captured office productivity application market. Not that SUN would have ever had any altruistic motivation...
Personally, I believed in Java, first applets, but it was quickly clear that they were unwieldy on any thing less than a 10Mbps LAN, then server-side, but the oft heard rhetoric about portability and platform neutrality failed to materalize and what exists today is rapidly being erroded (e.g. the Sun-Apache dispute, consolidation of J2EE vendors, lack of support for MacOS X, etc.)
I would have been better off, if no more employable, had I spent the last 4 years learning and programming PERL, or even TCL, my first true love, which had most of the features Java had(e.g applets, "sandbox" like safe slave interpreters, but was open-source... having been born in an academic/research environment.
As soon as Java-hype took hold, sun dropped TCL (which they had called "SunScript").
What I did like about Sun/Java shops during the dot.com boom is that they hemorrhaged money, and salaries and hourly rates were high, in parallel to the cost of hardware and application servers, and employee performance and conduct expectations were relatively low (compared to that of the academic/government work world).
The fact is that most of SUN's enterprise class hardware has been designed by other companies recently acquired and rushed into production with new SUN branding (e.g. Maximum Strategies' T3) there isn't as much forethought to longevity of the product line(obsolete already, everybody else is shipping 2 Gbps fibre channel and 10 Gbps is almost here), integration with heterogenous environments, etc. If it can work, even just, with the latest and greatest Sun server, its ready to go out the door. What they have built in house is a host of stupid hardware products around java which are very closed and designed to get you on the hook for larger Solaris/Hardware dependencies, e.g the SunRay,
which are touted as internet appliances, but require seperate networks with Sun Hardware between it and the real world.
Imagine if Microsoft got into hardware like this: MS Office documents can't be manipulated without a MS Mouse and Keyboard combination that costs $750.00. They could give Office away for free too.
So, less naive, wounded but not ready to give up on making my living in programming and network/system administration, I will causually investigate
I was looking back at previous Star Office related stories on Slashdot and found this one Link. It seems funny that Sun was trying to promote itself as the leading open source "corporate" company, and now, just 8 months later, it is changing the licence back.
In one hand we have Sun Increasing [its] Commitment to Gnome, and yet on the other it's abandoning a critical product in its battle against MSFT and professing that Linux on the Mainframe [is] Not a Good Idea. Microsoft are regularly raising the bar when it comes to talking to their client operating systems from non Windows Servers (eg the infamous Kerberos PAC), so surely having your own office suite appearing on Windows clients can't hurt, especially as everything starts to look like a big (.NET centred) communications network. I wonder what IBM thinks about all this? I get the feeling they're closer to the mark than Sun, and if nothing else they've decided their direction and are throwing their whole weight behind it, which is commendable (certainly preferrable over this wishy washy floundering from Sun). And what's with bashing Linux *and* pulling Solaris for Intel architectures. Ok, so you're a hardware vendor, but how's anyone meant to know their way around Solaris with uni labs migrating to Linux left right and centre and with you revoking any chance a hobbyist had of playing with it without parting with arms and legs for Sun hardware? Why don't you just let go of Java so we can stop concerning ourselves with what direction you've chosen for today and get on with ensuring J2EE retains its position in the web services market.
StarOffice didn't fit in my KDE anyway. KDE should be made Linux (or even UNIX) wide standard, so we can start to see some more software in somewhat normalized appearance early, software like Netscape or Acrobat Reader, and come commercials. Don't get me wrong but Motif widgets just suck.
How dare they?
Charging *money* for end result of the work done by their employees?
What's the world coming to?
For hobbiest, a limited license is free. So, if you are sitting at home playing on your Solaris box, you are OK.
If, on the other hand, it is for commercial purposes, it is not free.
I didn't realize that this was news. At the NYC Linux World Expo in January, a Sun representative told me that Star Office 6.0 would not be available for free.
What many people who use the 6.0 beta do not know is that it will expire at the end of March, by which time 6.0 final was originally estimated to be out. Check the EULA. Sun will release a patch to extend the time limit for the beta, but only until the time when they expect 6.0 final to be released.
I have no problem with Sun charging for StarOffice. What bothers me however is the fact that Sun keeps changing strategies and never sticks to anything. This company will bite the dust sooner or later if it doesn't wake up.
It's really quite an old tactic...
Now, there's not even an Office papercut. What the HELL is Sun thinking?
Congrats to Sun for now alienating anyone who uses Linux.
Exactly three people will be using the free version on Solaris and no one of the Linux and Windwos versions.
Java's next... just wait and see.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I presume people will switch from Sun to OpenOffice, once OpenOffice proves it itself, which hopefully won't be too far away.
I always thought this was Sun's Staroffice strategy - deprive MS of income from MS Office, which provides around 40% of their revenue, by providing a quality (quality is a new feature they added in StarOffice 6 beta and up) office suite for $free on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
This also makes Staroffice a gateway to other platforms - customers using StarOffice 6 on Windows can install Linux desktops or Suntone's and not be without their critical productivity apps.
I don't know of too many office suites that are truly cross platform and usable. Koffice is OK, but KDE is painfully slow relative to a Windows box (same hardware). I can't force myself to use Linux/KDE/Koffice for everything all the time - I need to use both Linux and Windows. I also need to read MS Word and Excel files. StarOffice6/OpenOffice is the only thing I've used that is
:)
1. Pretty stable
2. Doesn't completely suck
3. Is cross platform
4. Can read the basic MS Office files I need to
Yes, MS has a stranglehold, but they don't have ANYTHING that competes on Linux or Solaris. Yes, it's a miniscule desktop scene right now, but I see it changing little by little.
I think I tried 602 once, but haven't heard much about it, and it's still not a cross platform product, so there's not much point. If I'm only EVER going to use Windows, I'll stick with Office. Since I use both Linux and Windows, I need something that works on both platforms. A Mac OpenOffice would be really nice too, but I digress...
creation science book
Not without Solaris libraries, which you'd need to get from an actual Solaris system. You can't just take the binary and run it in isolation.
Likewise, you can't run Windows binaries without Windows libraries, which you'd need to get from an actual Windows system (were it not for these people). You can't just take the binary and run it in isolation.
If enough proprietary Solaris/x86 software is released, you'll surely see a Solaris-compatibility project called "SINE Is Not an Emulator".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ten bucks says sun will do the same thing to the now mit licensed mono project...
.net framework all thanks to open source developers that where to weak and/or naive to say no to lame licenses.
You think they just gave gnome 50 developers cause they're nice guys?
As soon as mono gets half way decent they will break off a closed version and dedicate the 50 developers to that, which will of course blaze past the cheesy free version.
Then solaris has it's own closed source office suite and
hahahah.
Canada = America 2. As we all know, THE SEQUEL ALWAYS SUCKS.
And imagine StarOffice running on it!
Oh well, you know the old ZX-81 and tape drive loading was still far more reliable than any PC hardware and Windows combination I've ever seen. IMHO.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
seems like nothing to get worked up about. cool by me. heck maybe other companies might do something like this. open something then close it. we get source for some great software to start from (why reinvent the wheel) and they get to make money down the line.
-
Is Sun going to consider making this free for students? At my University and many others, MS Office is given away for free. Sun should really consider giving it free to poor students if they hope to make inroads into Academia.
i use and appreciate star office, its fantastic... for a free product.
the numerous office documents it opens all screwed up is far too many for a commercial product, i would be reluctant to shell out 1/4 the cost of office for something that, in some cases, doesnt work at all.
I don't know about building it, but I've been using their binary release builds for the better part of a year now, and have been quite pleased.
As any project in active development, it has crashed a few times, however every time the crash recovery reopens every document I had open, right down to where the cursor was. Pretty damned slick.
Not to mention it's opened every MS Office document I've thrown at it without a problem. Definitely not complaining.
I'm really convinced you're "committed" to Linux...way to go. I'm sure you'll make tons of money on StarOffice, since it's so wonderful.
What are you bastards thinking!!??
(yes, I'll still use OpenOffice.org if it's free)
Wait, I guess you can't really call it a victory since it's no longer free. I'll bet Richard Stallman would be rolling over in his grave right now if he wasn't still alive.
:)
Prediction: Within 2 years Sun will drop StarOffice from their lineup. Most likely by abandoning it to the Open Source world(see Netscape) and then suing Microsoft to try to recover their investment. (see Netscape)
This prediction is entirely dependent upon an assumption that Sun is not bankrupt in two years... Of course it's possible Microsoft will bail them out, too.
Humm... maybe we should charge Sun for using GNOME - that'd teach 'em!
Fortunately, OpenOffice ditched this very bad idea. I don't know if it's still in StarOffice 6, but OpenOffice is Just the Apps, the way it should be.
The understanding that some very good programming is available free is so pervasive that I actually don't believe you and I think you are extrapolating what you think is an "interesting" argument into a series of imagined meetings. If not, give me specifics to disprove me.
"Oh well, you know the old ZX-81 and tape drive loading was still far more reliable than any PC hardware and Windows combination I've ever seen. IMHO."
Oh, really? Like the 16K RAM pack that crashes your computer if a speck of heavy dust falls on it the wrong way?
Like the tape speed loaders with checksums that would load all the way to the end and THEN crash?
Your memory is faulty. I'll buy you a new one for Xmas. It will be a surprise. (!)
graspee
Of course it will be worst than StarOffice 6.
Only if you consider Mozilla "worse" than Netscape 6. Because that's really all we're talking about here. The same codebase, but a commercial version that has extras that, when you get right down to it, just aren't necessary.
It seems to me (though I don't follow this too closely) that Solaris has been losing to Linux for quite some time now, and that Sun is very worried about that. So I suspect they are using StarOffice as bait to get people to switch.
Oh balls! Linux and Windows run primarily on x86. Solaris now runs exclusively on Sparc. Do you really think people are going to buy a Sparc station just to save a few bucks on Star Office? I don't think so!
I work for Sun, and submitted this story more than a month ago when we received internal email about the plans to charge for StarOffice.
FWIW, here's the original email that was sent out on Friday, January 11:
New Business Model for StarOffice/StarSuite 6.0
I am pleased to announce some significant changes to the StarOffice marketing strategy and corresponding business model. Along with our top goals of enabling desktop sales for Sun and being a critical component of the Sun ONE software stack, StarOffice is moving to a revenue based model. The major changes to the business model are:
Two products available to the market: (1)StarOffice/StarSuite 6.0 (Enterprise Edition) -- Sun sells & supports, (2) OpenOffice (Community Edition) -- free from OpenOffice.org and other sites outside of Sun
Other changes will include:
- Removal of the full function, no-charge downloads from Sun
- StarOffice 6.0 and service offerings available on GSO prices list at FCS (per copy, site license, OEM and channel pricing)
- Global distribution channels: GSO, OEMs, Retail, Sun Store
The goal of this new business model is to generate revenue by providing a low cost, full featured office productivity alternative to the market place. Feedback from the market validates that customers are placing an economic value on StarOffice that is significantly greater than zero. This model allows Sun to generate new revenue from these customers willing to pay for StarOffice as well as creating pull for new systems, software and services revenue.
For those customers that would like to use a basic office suite at no charge, a "Community Edition" will continue to be available via the OpenOffice.org project and other download sites outside of Sun.
This is an exciting time for StarOffice as customers, partners, press and analyst community are eager for a viable alternative and highly supportive of our efforts.
Over the next 90 days, SSG will be focused on delivering:
Stay tuned for more details on the specific programs and pricing to be available soon.
Pat Sueltz
EVP and GM, Software Systems Group
Well that's just dandy. I reformatted my drive the other day. I thougt about burning star office to a CD. Then I thought "Nah, im not wasting a CD. Ill just d/l it again". shit
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Yet another sign that Linux has come of age for desktop users: Pay tools.
It's a curse of the success.
As I understood it, Sun's reason for acquiring Star Office was to attack Microsoft's cash cow - MS Office.
I know alot of people who'd start using Star Office 6 right away (I was planning on migrating them as soon as it came out) because, what the heck, it's FREE and the compatability is good.
Thus, several dozen people that I know will probably keep on using MS Office 97 for a few more years before biting the bullet and buying Office XP...
Open Office is still available, but what makes me curious is the "lack of file filters"... I'd suspect that these filters are the all critical MS-Word filters.
This, then, shoots my whole migration plans in the foot. Now, at $40 per copy, I have to get these companies to agree to spend money they don't want to.
Perhaps when Sun can't sell it, they'll wise up and go back to giving it away?
Sun can be frustrating - half the time they "get it" and the other half they are CLUELESS!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I swear, if it weren't for trolls like you, I'd stop coming back to slashdot.
(And for the record, I think this is great. If you aren't happy with OO, then pay your $35 and get a supported version. As long as SO and OO use the same code base, like Mozilla and NS, I think it's a good move by Sun.)
i'm really tired reading sun this and sun that. fuck them. lateley they have only been asses. who cares anyway? Open office is still available. ....
What are they hoping to accomplish with that anyway? make me move to solaris to use their freakin office suit? thanks i use windows whenever i want to write some sort of a document.
life goes on
I'm deploying computers at my school for kids who cannot afford computers normally. Unfortunately they will not let me install Linux (which I don't get because most of these students used computers THAT much that it wouldn't be hard for them to use linux as their first OS anyways) but I am installing the computers with Star Office 5.2. Is there any improvements to OpenOffice 641? Or is their any limitations to it compared to StarOffice 5.2?
I would try it myself, but the server I'm downloading OpenOffice is downloading at something like 16.6k. And I would like to know other people's experiences with OpenOffice. Thanks.
Amazon's current price for StarOffice 5.2 Deluxe is ~$37 and for what I get out of StarOffice that I downloaded from Sun $37 is worth it... (6.0 Beta and 5.2 on my laptop) I'd even say $50 is fine... But if they intend to make this a $199 package... they're not going to get a second look from anyone in the Windows world... To pay 1/2 the price and get even 90% of the features and compatibility isn't going to sway the typical decision makers... To pay a tenth... Now we're talking! Best of luck to Sun, and I hope a lot of this money can go to helping OpenOffice... Which I'll probably have on the laptop while my business runs with Sun for documentation and tech support reasons.
MS in the Open Source offerings, I guess I'll just have to
stop programming in Java and use C#.
Will C# run on Mono? Don't know much about it.
-J
People (especially business people) think that high cost = high quality. Package the same product two ways: one all glitzy and expensive, the other in a plain box and cheap, and the glitzy one will outsell by a high margin. Don't believe me? Go to the grocery store and start checking the generic foods against the 'good' stuff. Same ingredients. Same order. Same nutritional info. Same patent numbers. Same parent company. If Sun charged $200 for StarOffice, it would sell to the business people.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I have seen business analyses of StarOffice. It was rejected because they figured that since it was not a money-maker, Sun would drop it as soon as Sun ran into financial trouble. I understand people not liking the change, but I think they are wrong: step back and think. Would you pay a small sum ($50 probably) for a good office program that ran on linux, windows, and solaris, tell your friends about it, and add one more brick in the Linux wall against MS? Office is 75% of hte reason a lot of people run windows. This, in my opinion, can only be a good thing - provided Sun doesn't charge $300.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Anyone contacted Stallman yet? ;)
42 + 1 = 42
Can you imagine the outrage people would have here on Slashdot if they waited until everyone was using it and THEN started charging? Few use it now. it doesn't affect many people. But if every geek here was, and they then wanted to start charging, wouldn't that cause just a bit more of an uproar then changing now when no one cares?
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
"Lunix is not an operating system for idiots or women."
Anal Cox, #2 Lunix hacker
But then again people who advocate BSD style licenses really want to get raped by big business, why else would they bend over and spread their anus crack in such a way?
It could have happened, even IF it was under the GPL. Look at sourceforge 3.0 enterprise edition, that the parent company of slashdot owns. You cannot download the source, and the price is "call for details". Kinda makes you wonder....
and why it needs a database? Some info please.
Is it just me or is SUN shooting themselves in the foot?
The only competition SUN has is themselves and they can't evem compete with that.
tsk tsk.
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
Everyone in my office raved about how staroffice was so kool cause it was going to be free forever just to tick microsoft off, so what now suckas! LOL! That just goes to show you that things in life are not free (well except for love, yes I am cheesy!) and that all companies big and small will try to make money out of you. Napster did it, yes you can say they were forced, but I believe it was the plan from the get go and now sun, I think it was planned. Yes, I do agree that $35 is pretty cheap (or whatever the price will be), however I do warn you that in the upcoming years te prices of staroffice and ms office will start coming closer to each other. The good thing, maybe some will start seeing that sun is not our savior from ms. The bad thing, I have -1 karma so most of you will not see this. I guess that is the price of freedom! Semper Fi and good night!
Umm, unless I'm mistaken - isn't OpenOffice missing an Access database clone? I recall a database being included in StarOffice.
That, alone, might make it worthwhile for some people to pay for StarOffice.
som of us dont' ever need a spel-checker, althogh I'm obviusly in the Minority of users. Spel-checker(s) are a tremdous waste of resources.
That said, I believe that the open Office spel-checker does work, but is not fully perfected. Knot that I care ether way...
Do they have meetings over there? Does one group know what the other is doing?? Do they plan **anything** or just react to everything.
Is linux good (e.g. penguin suit McNealy rah rah - they buy cobalt rah rah) or bad (witness their idiot VP's article slamming Linux instead of IBM)
Is Apache good or bad??? Is Java open or closed.
Oh by the way what color and logo is associated with Sun now?? Does Sun == purple or that puky brownish green stuff on their home page these days. Perhaps it's time to scrap the old logo and introduce something unrecognizable
Is the stress of constantly playing reactoid marketing to MS catching up with you? What does Sun stand for? Have a meeting people and decide for gawd's sake?
Maybe they could have had a "Business Version" or something that cost money and had extra business features or something. Maybe :).
KOffice.
I haven't worked too much with the other components yet, but the word processor is a lot more powerful than its StarOffice equivalent.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Amen ...
However SGI retains its dignity (and has a nicer web site) - or at least is regaining it after commiting to NT and becoming an expensive version of Dell for 6 months.
It is only a matter of time before the only free Java virtual machine will be the one running on Solaris. They will certainly start charging for the use of Windows and Linux JVMs. The free ride had to end sometime - Sun is business, not a charity.
Time to dust off the GPL'd Transvirtual Kaffe JVM!
Suck on that, Slashdot!
Anti-competitive practices are only illegal the USA when a company abuses monopoly in a concerted effort to squash competition - AFAIK Sun isn't a monopoly, and they haven't introduced this pricing schedule in an effort to destroy competiting platforms. Contrast that with the Microsoft agenda, please, for I cannot see the parallel that you are hinting at...
Yes, exactly. I just had to bite the bullet and advise a client to have me develop his new LAN with Windows 2000 Server and Office XP simply because he needs an office suite which has an integrated database. Although I'm developing a web database for him with Perl/MySQL on Apache/Linux, MS Office with Access is presently the only real option for the LAN. Open Office will never get beyond the starting line until it gets itself a decent database. Furthermore, if the database isn't as good as, say MySQL, it will fail to solve the problem web developers face when trying to build a web databse which integrates with the office suite. If the Open Office team could reach some kind of deal with MySQL then we could start talkinhg about a REAL alternative to MS Office.
the average slashdot user would be screaming bloody murder about how evil and money hungry they were.
Where's the outrage?
The new arrangement is the same one that they are already using with NetBeans, as far as I can tell.
Sun will support a "commercial" version of OpenOffice called "StarOffice". The purchasers of StarOffice will get benefits (support, additional features, etc) that the users of the free OpenOffice version won't get. That seems fair and it provides an incentive for customers to help support OpenOffice financially.
Some people might be cynical, but I think that the NetBeans/Forte arrangement has worked out pretty well. The Sun developers working on NetBeans work hard to make NetBeans great. They have to work on the Forte-only features but I think that the development of the Forte-only features benefits NetBeans as well (any architectural improvements in Forte must get pushed down to NetBean in order to keep them interoperable). I think things will work the same way with StarOffice and OpenOffice.
Then I guess none of the managers use IE (or condone its use in the office because its free...or any IM clients.
They buy it for the Visual Studio development tools, not simply the compiler itself.
If 6.0 is as good as the beta reviews I've read, I would be more than pleased to pay a reasonable price. As a 5.2 user, I'm just grateful to have a decent alternative to you-know-who. The people at Star Division have done a masterful job up to now of emulating Office file formats. You can't blame Sun for trying to earn an honest return on their investment.
That would make:
Step 3. The world transitions to the .net CLR.
I don't think Sun is that dumb.
(1) whether Sun is actually going to charge for StarOffice, and
(2) if so, how much?
let's face it, StarOrifice 6 beta has been pretty successful (I like it, anyway), but I wonder if someone is just spreading FUD.
I guess you didn't have the ram expansion to take it over 1k then?
OpenOffice is the biggest "open source" scam that Sun has pulled to date. I would be tempted to put it in the same fiasco category as Netscape when the unbuildable source was first released to the public, but I just can't believe that Sun dosen't know any better, or that they wouldn't allocate developer resources to making it work.
This is flat out FUD.
-- MarkusQ
Sun is just as anal-retentive/control-freak/lawyer-driven as Microsoft, only less successful. Both of them are rather pitiful.
the really odd thing about this development is that Sun inexplicably thinks that the enemy of its enemy is yet another enemy. well, I guess it's also mystifying that they think anyone gives a damn about Solaris or their hardware. as if the freeness of SO6 would make anyone pay good money for Sun's crappy hardware.
You made a really strong point there but I would say that mozilla is actualy "best" then netscape 6... hmm...
a. There is never any tag along software that I didn't want. It has nearly all the same features (and will have a spell checker soon), has been consitently more stable, and bugs are fixed and new versions released nightly... I don't know why we would complain.
It's not an Office killer and Sun knows it.
What it is is a margin-killer.
Microsoft is using its HUGE profits in the Office arena to fund their drive into the enterprise OS market - which is scaring the bajeezus out of Sun's strategic planners. Sun must do something to level the playing field.
To win this battle, Sun doesn't need to capture much market share, all they need to do is give consumers a credible alternative. The bumper-sticker version of this strategy: If you can't beat your competitor, screw up his margin.
I've heard that Office makes up about half of MS's revenue - about 4 billion in the last quarter of '01, that would be about 16 million copies if they're going for $250 on average (I don't know this, I'm just speculating).
If Sun succeeds in forcing them to drop their price by even $10, they've scored a major victory - to the tune of $160 million per quarter. That's not chump change, not even to the beast of Redmond. Remember, Microsoft's profits are somewhat tied to their stock price (they pay their employees largely with stock options) and their stock price is sustained by GROWING REVENUES - which they won't have if they have to drop the price of MS Office.
If you read the preceeding and substitue IBM for Sun, you'll understand IBM's committment to Linux.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Are you a total dumbass? Did you not see that they are also charging for the Windows version too?
BSD AND LINUX SUCK ASS!! Windows Xp Pro OWNZ YOU ALL !!
Damn! I proved it! I make a statement that is against the Slashdot-way and I am penalized for it. Fuck you Taco. I know you're a homo.
Ironically, perhaps this will increase corporate adoption because the management that couldn't comprehend the fact that good software is available for no cost will be willing to spend *some* money on a better alternative.
> The same codebase, but a commercial version that has extras that, when you get right down to it, just aren't necessary.
Not really, Netscape is not commercial. It's free (as in beer). Proprietary as it is, it's still not for charge like SO Is now.
Sun suckered you guys but good. I bet whoever concocted the whole 'sun open source' thing at Sun is sitting pretty in his cushy office now thanks to your labors.
Get them hooked, then raise the cost.. ( or in this case, license ). And no, its not the $$, i actually bought 5.2, for the principle of it. Its the idea, of lets change the rules during the game that pisses me off. ( just like M$ does.. noones exempt it seems )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ha, I knew it. How could they sustain development of their Office competitive package and not charge.
Send in the clowns boys! The party is over for yet another "open source" type project. The king (well, bitch anyway) is dead... long live her.
Sun has dibs on key components and a report here on slash dot just a few months ago indicated they were optioning them. Further, CNet has an article going up monday morning about Sun serving the OpenOffice project team legally with a cease and desist writ.
Sad day indeed.
This should give microsoft some peace of mind. A good office package that now has a price tag to keep the market status quo. The sad part is the duplication of effor to keep the GPL and Sun versions up now.
bo
I think this says it all:
* Phaedrus wishes he could get a machine that consists of Sparc IO, Alpha Processors and sleek design of an SGI And intel prices -- Seen on #Linux
Make your crap afforable and people will buy it. Start charging an arm and a leg and become a niche.
Isn't that kind of like giving a wealthy person preferential treatment that a poor person would not get in a similar situation? Or letting a white guy off while you put a black guy in the slammer for the same crime? Shouldn't the same rules be applied all the time?
The agenda I'm hinting at is not Microsoft's but yours: in your calls for "freedom," you do nothing but attempt to take it away from others, rather than giving it to those who are lacking. As the underdog, people may root for you, and people may sign on to your cause, but does that make you right? Does that make success wrong? If so, to what end are you endeavoring?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
That should be "Microsoft and I do!"
Windows XP and Microsoft is the only OS were any serious and productive work can be done. Losers using BSD or Linux are only doing so becuase they have no lives!! Microsoft is were it is at and will always be! So yeah go play with your fagget ass BSD or Linux boxes but just remember that in the real world where money counts no one would use those crap OS's for any serious work. Microsoft/Money talks Linux/BSD/Bullshit walks you fucken losers.
30 years from now, the USHL (formerly the NHL, since all of the Canadian teams will have either folded or moved to the US) will be predominantly black players. People will speak of Wayne Gretzky and say "Gretzky? he wouldn't even make into the Juniors today."
Don't believe me? Think of this scenario. Wait until Mario Lemieux, Jr. cames across the blue line & meets Ray Lewis, Jr.
Really sad. Leaves not very good impression of Sun.
Actually, the one thing that will prevent StarOffice from being adopted is Outlook, specifically the scheduling and calendering features.
It's not Visio. Kivio is almost as good as Visio for all but the most fanatic Visio power users. And Visio user usually make up a tiny minority of corporate users. Outlook is the one thing that everyone uses and the only way to get it is to buy Office....
Chris.
-- I don't have a cool sig.
Wouldn't it be great if a large left shifted country took and started demanding Open Sourced Software on every computer in their governments... Abi-Word is ok already, so is Gnumeric... if only Open Office were as light on the ram.
I'm the admin (among other things) of a 400 Sunray instalation with 1200 users in an high school and belive me student and teachers a lost with the crappy CDE. The CDE file manager is not really good, so star office's one is really a good thing. They have SO at home and at the scool so they basicly have only SO to learn and have no concern about the OS they are using to run it.
I just hope that Star Office 6 will have the desktop has an option enable by default. All the power users could remove it quickly and beginners could keep their SO 5.2 habbits.
Screw it!!!! for that price I need FULL compliance
Rock stable win emulators goes a for a lot less, and I already paid for my M$ Office97
20$, for download, for private - thats it!!!!
Why is it that Netscape is so promoted as "the great thing" because it supports Mozilla, and then does Netscape as commercial (and makes BIG money modifying it internally for specific corprate needs).
Mozilla is a MONEY MAKEING MACHINE for Netscape. They know it. AOL, the parent company knows it. The code base grows, and users benifit. The code base grows, and serves as the BASE for future Netscape and AOL ventures.
Yet, Netscape is a HERO, and SUN want's to do the same with an OFFICE SUITE, and everyone is pissed off? It seems like the same thing to me, only differance I see is that for some reason SlashDot Loves Netscape and Hates SUN.
It is always hard to pay for somthing that you have always been getting for free. Kinda like "paying" for private school when you have been getting free education. You get what you pay for. Free sofware is a act of charity and leads to a dead end. but if you pay for software your wallet has a say in how it should be developed.
look my sig changes!!! nrrt mf oci jdabi.o!!! z..a ir kot gh-ntbk{{{
"Star Office 5.x sucks compared to MS Office."
That said, I have being using Star Office since
version 3.x and many, many people have being using
it as a replacement for windows and even moving to
Linux because of it.
However the #1 reason is its costs,
the #2 is because it runs on Linux (for those like
me it is the #1 reason).
However it have many problems, it is a memory hog,
slow and fat program that badly do what MS Office
does.
Star Office 6.0, OTOH, is the turn around of
this issues. It is based in gtk+ (in Linux),
each application __is__ a separated application,
it is fast and more confortable for a M$ Office
user.
This is the biggest chance for Sun to take a
big piece of the market share from M$ regarding
Office suits.
How ever this will be blown away if charged for
use as a commercial app. Most people still afraid
of what will come out of it because of bad
experience with SO 5.x. And they will not pay
for it.
Sun should wait for the 7.0 version to do it at
least.
yes, I am glad I can keep using Open Office builds.
I've had enough of this hippie shit!!!!
> I don't think Sun is that dumb.
I disagree, Scott McNeally.
It has nothing to do with dumb - it has everything to do with profit.
While the hard-core tech community may understand the value of 'free', the rest of the world often believes "You get what you pay for".
By way of example, my folks once tried to get rid of an old refrigerator. They put a classified ad in the paper that said, "Refrigerator w/ freezer. Works well. Free." Nobody even called. They ran a second ad that read, "Refrigerator w/ freezer. Works well. $20"
It was gone the next day.
This
(no more to say)
OpenOffice is unusable
I use it DAILY. That IS a troll and a half! Come on, anyone that goes to OpenOffice.org TODAY and downloads it can install a binary and use it. Is someone afraid of Sun here? This is SUCH a LIE, SUCH A TROLL.
*BANG!*
Duh... Where's my foot?
Free IE Browser (IMHO the best version of IE out there, but not as good as the latest Mozilla) without paying MS for the Windows License!
Go out and get sailing!
Sun is serving cease and desist writ papers to the Open Office Team so say good bye to Open Office!
ROFLMAO!!! AHAHAH You dumb ass BSD/Linux losers think you can still use Open Office ? After Monday when the shit offically hits the fan and Sun servs cease and desist writ papers to those dumbasses you will be getting a rude awakening. Microsoft will and shall always be the only choice people when will you learn!?! Reformat those BSD/Linux drives kiddies because yo daddy Billy G and his friend XP is coming for dinner and ain't leaving anytime soon!! AHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
I can easily imagine Sun diverting its developers to improve StarOffice only, and leave OpenOffice to the rabble of volunteers. If this had happened with Mozilla (say, when Netscape got bought out), it wouldn't even be a contender today. I know that the GPL prevents blatant variants of this strategy, but it still allows them to add closed-source "modules" which could eventually become a big chunk of the whole system.
The fact that Microsoft will later leverage the monopoly they gain to extract even more money will be lost on those running to the CLR if Sun starts charging.~~~
Is it possible (legally) to port from Solaris to Linux/Windows? If so, it will remain free...
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Star Office won't never become main stream. You get MS Office almost for free with a PC (when you work at a company, it's licensed in bundle, when you buy from DELL, it's not much more and usually people select the option.) So why on earth, should people pay to obtain something they don't need?
Don't get me wrong, anything I can use that doesn't have an MS logo is fine. But people will need more than the anti MS mind and will want to see some sort of advantage to shift to something else. Price was a big reason until now, that is.
Also, does that mean that volunteer work from the open office developers will get converted to $ by Sun? It's not a secret to anyone that open office source base gets heavily used by the Star Office dev team. Come on, that doesn't sound right. Even MS have the decency to pay for their development team. It would seem really dumb for people to put efforts in a project that is used for profit by a corporate which recently licensed a bunch of people including friends developers of mine.
I don't trust Sun. I don't trust MS. They are both evil. So is Oracle and IBM btw.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Sun has shown it's true colors and I suspect that they will block any attemp to port over the Solaris version. Sun has never had any good reason to support Linux because of all the work done on their own OS. I suspect all comments made about how they were going to switch or start using Linux to be a complete lie inorder to gain some code and the appearance of "being Linux friendly".
These people have a port of Linux for the Zilog CPU (Timex Sinclair), and I'm pretty sure NetBSD has a port (The GameBoy uses that chip, and I know they have a GameBoy port of NetBSD!)
http://www.q40.de/
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Because I really wanted to read this thread and make a couple of comments myself. But because SO MANY IDIOTS have flooded this thread with crap, that even browsing at +1 doesn't allow me to hide the shit. Fuck you idiots.
Kpresenter works very nice, but I have not used it while importing PP files. More clipart would be nice. The current open office presenter fails to load for me.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
It's also different because the Netscape and Mozilla source trees remain synched up -- each time the want to make a new version of Netscape, they take the current Mozilla sources, pass it through QA, rebranding, etc, and release it.
Here it looks (to me at least) like we have two separate, divergent source trees. Any cool new stuff that Sun comes up with will not necessarily make it into Open Office (unless re-implemented). That means as time goes on, the products will diverge more and more to the point where they are very distinct.
Word processor: VIM
Spreadsheet: VIM
Presentation Software: VIM
etc...: VIM
...
bkr
The KDE developers had more foresight than we'd guessed. Cheers to them for creating a truly Free office suite right from the beginning. I think it's time for me to join them.
I think that Sun sees that Star Office has the potential to compete with MS Office and hence is providing a business model that corporations accept and consider a possible replacement for MSO. It seems highly unlikely that companies would ever rely on a free (as in beer) piece of software (without tech support, yada yada). While i prefer Open Office, i think this is a good move to create some competition in a market segment that needs it badly.
Of course Solaris is Sun's baby, so why wouldn't they want to give people a little incentive to use it?
I don't care for some of the (dis-)functionality, so if I gotta buy something,(KOffice, notwithstanding, and ABIWord works fine...), I would rather spend my $40 on Hancom office, it's shiny, has cool icons, and doesn't give me that bloated JAVA feeling...:}
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I remember reading an article back, (one linked to from sun.com) that said they liked to call staroffice a "no-cost" download, not a free download, basically meaning that it's costing sun mega bucks to even offer the download (and we all know that sun dosent like to mirror stuff, they want everything to go threw them so that they can control it)
anyway, in the article they said they were thinking of chargeing a small fee for staroffice 6, mostly to cover their costs, not to make a profit.
so i would expect maybe $20 for the download version, and $50 for a box set?
not really that big of a deal
This looks like the sendmail or covalent approach to profiting and i find it very encouraging for Open Source in general. It's a Good Thing(R) to have a paid version with extra support and backed up by a real company. I mean, some people just WANT to pay and have something BETTER than average, even if it's not worth the price.
I like it. If i could have a GIMP as good as Photoshop and a Pantone + CYMK plug-in at $100, great, for example...
Software is fine as long as i am not locked into it. I don't feel locked if i can have the source and have the right to modify it myself and sell/use/extend it...
unfinished: (adj.)
So StarOffice is now going seriously commercial. No more free StarOffice.
Good!
This means that from now on, I can try to convince people to switch to StarOffice because it is less expensive. No longer do I have to worry about management taking me out of the bonus pool because I suggest switching to that free stuff, which is always:
- Unsupported (Not that Microsoft's pay-per-incedence support is any better than Ms. Cleo.)
- Promoting communism.
- Hurting the economy by taking jobs.
Seriously, Sun tried very, very hard to give StarOffice away (Though it could have done better.), and people just didn't catch on. Maybe now that StarOffice is the product of a big-name American computer company, and not just a free app by a little german company, I can finally convince all those asshole PHB's to switch.
5.2 already cost $40 for business use.
Nope.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
from http://www.softwareforresellers.com/productivity.h tml, for the naked OEM CD. While this is grey market and there's no support included (but as with most software these days, you'll find better support in the newsgroups anyway), you can't beat the price for a full-blown, fully-mature office suite. (Minimum order from this supplier is 5 units -- sell the extras to you friends for $20 each and you're still ahead.)
Run the WP Suite in M$ mode, and it looks/acts/produces document formats just like M$Office. Minus some of the more annoying bugs, like the "nuke your file because we forgot to close it on disk" problem that Word/Excel has had since the DOS4 era. (As of Word97, bug upgraded to the ability to nuke the entire partition.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I think a better parallel might be the early days of Netscape, where it was free to home users but corporations (supposedly) had to pay for it. "Open Office" seems to do the former, while Sun is wagering that the quality of Star Office gains corporate market share.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Like Netscape/Mozilla, I wonder if the open version will grow to be better than the free one!
Sun intentionally terminated the free version of Star Office for all OS's except Solaris. You don't need an MBA to understand the rationale. Sun is trying to pump up Solaris and destroy Linux.
Sun knows well that the major threat to Solaris is not Windows. The major threat is Linux.
It is becoming immensely clear that Sun is intending to hijack the open-source movement by seizing control of Linux. I fully expect that Sun will create its own version of Linux, say "sLinux".
No, it's completely different. It is like giving preferential treatment to a poor person (less than 60% market share) while you convict a wealthy person (more than 60% market share) for the same crime.
STrategic? No kidding! I was *pissed off* when I heard Microsoft bought Visio. And Great Plains (MAS accounting software, the industry pro standard). I just hope they don't get Autocad!
There are actually many viable alternatives to Visio, they just don't get much press. So little, that I can't even remember them right now...
???
Entice.
Addicat.
Exploit.
letting a white guy off while you put a black guy in the slammer for the same crime
There is no crime being committed by Sun in this instance, according to your Sherman/Tunney legal crap. Thusly your argument is null.
Shouldn't the same rules be applied all the time
Yes. See the above point for clarification.
Personally, I believe the anti-trust laws are not entirely fair - by this I mean that the judicial checks and balances are not working as intended.
It is clear that Microsoft is guilty of violating those laws, and many times: however, the law as it stands is simply a means of directing wealth to the legal profession. Using one's monopoly power to crush the competition, instead of using fair competitive practices (eg. delivering a better product) is the crux of this issue.
According to our Sun reps, there was such a publich outcry when they accounced they were pulling pulling x86, they decided to still develop for it. So while they may not make it publically available, it's still being developed, and you can still get it for free if you ask for it. (or pay for it)
And you want to know why?
Sun did a damn impressive thing: Taking an Office-like product, open sourcing it, helping to form OpenOffice.org and continuing with development of their own commercial release. After all, there are Sun engineers, marketeers, and shareholders who need to see profits in order to continue StarOffice. (And OpenOffice's development would crawl without Sun's continued support and resources.)
I WILL pay for copies of Sun StarOffice 6.0 for my workstations. The 6.0 beta was solid; the elimination of the pseudo-desktop (in favor of individually spawned windows) says Sun listens to their customers\users; and the new XML file format kicks major ass. Check the file sizes, folks.
Applix for Linux: Bah humbug! Corel WordPerfect for Linux: I'm too leery of Corel's track record to count on continued support. KOffice: More power to those developers.
StarOffice 6.0 for Linux: What I need. What I'll buy.
Some things to keep in mind about Sun, though:
-- Sun recently threw its support behind Linux in an uncharacteristic way.
Mind you, they've been doing so since they acquired StarDivision (which had a version of StarOffice for Linux already), launched IPlanet, and acquired Cobalt (the appliance servers that run x86\Linux). Scott McNealy recently took to the stage in the U.K. to say Sun is focused on Linux. I imagine that you can't get support for Sun's Linux release on non-Cobalt hardware. (Sun, are you changing this? What are you planning as a general distro for Linux?) What IS Sun planning for Linux? More than StarOffice? More than those crappy IPlanet products??
-- Sun isn't developing Solaris 9 for Intel. They recently stopped with Solaris 8 for Intel. The SPARC version, yes, though. And Sun is incorporating further Linux compatibility into the SPARC version with Solaris 9.
Could this also mean Sun is releasing an x86 Linux distro down the road with some Solaris compatibility which the user community can latch onto? I doubt it, but with Sun's confusing roadmap for the Intel platform, you wonder. Would Sun bring back Solaris on Intel with Linux under the hood later this year or next (depending on Sun's quarterly gains\financial health), just to give UNIX\Linux users the best of both worlds on cheap x86 hardware? Maybe... Sun does have to maintain a path for future Solaris admins\developers: Start learning on cheap x86 hardware with Solaris\Linux, then graduate to the big iron SPARC platform. You can't tell me Sun hasn't been doing this. (They dropped Solaris Intel because they were having a $hitty year financially. C'mon, Sun. Jump back in. The water is tepid and calm, but swimmable.)
-- What does Sun, StarOffice, OpenOffice and the GNOME development community gain by working closer? A kick-ass workspace and work tools which scream on Solaris... and maybe on Linux. But if I'm running Solaris which runs Linux, too, then I have the best of both worlds. And on cheap SPARC hardware. Just check eBay since the dot-com bombs. There's a lot of good equipment for auction.
Bottom line: Sun needs to make $$. The analysts and brokers need them to make $$. The shareholders demand that they make $$. Let them charge for StarOffice 6.0. Again, I'll buy it for the Linux platform (and love the fact that the Solaris version will still be free).
Now if OpenOffice would get it's ass in gear and build OpenOffice for the Mac platform...
=+=+=+=+=
->I work for Sun, and submitted this story more ->than a month ago when we received internal ->email about the plans to charge for StarOffice. McNealy, Zander and Sun's H.R. team should fire your ass for releasing internal information! Loose lips sink ships. Think about it, although you're probably going to wind up fired from some other screw-up and wind up on FuckedCompany.com like every other pathetic worm that thinks they get 15 minutes of fame when they leak something. Guess what? 15 MINUTES AIN'T A LOT OF TIME FOR FAME! You l0ser.
Maybe this is a silly analogy... But take two other examples: Microsoft and AOL...
An issue of contention in antitrust litigation against Microsoft was that their licensing with OEM's forced consumer's to purchase a copy of Windows even if they had another OS installed on the system... Windows was being sold on 98% of the systems anyways, but there was no point in making money of the last 2% because in the grand scheme of things, they wouldn't make any money off it and it does way more harm than it's worth...
AOL kinda realized this when they purchased NaviServer... AOL could have charged what NaviServer charged to get copies of AOLServer and AOLPress, but they gave it away for free... why? there was no point in selling it... they were going to develop it anyways... might as well make some friends and give it away for free...
In this case, Sun's not basing the financial health of the company on StarOffice... bet you they use it internally... bet on every Solaris box within the corporation and every Solaris box they sell, they want a powerful office suite, and so they'll develop StarOffice anyways... it's not that much effort to do the porting (lord knows they don't use native code from the different OS's)... so what's the point in charging for it when you could give away a useful thing and make friends in the meantime?
http://starboard.flowtheory.net/
Another alternative is Lotus Smart Suite. Since Sun is now charging for Star Office, we should switch to either Lotus Smart Suite or Open Office.
Instead of throwing your money at Sun, spend your money on Lotus. Specifically, Lotus Smart Suite. The Lotus Smart Suite is a far better product than Sun's StarOffice. Further, IBM's commitment to Linux is far stronger than Sun's commitment.
Star Office contains a database (Adabas) which is not included in the open office.
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
Folks, don't let Sun manipulate you. Sun is charging for StarOffice in order to force people to jump from Linux to Solaris. Sun, all along, has intended to destroy Linux.
Well, here's the way to respond. Buy Lotus Smart Suite. Dump StarOffice and Solaris.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/24/151925 8&mode=thread&tid=131
Despite what Sun said at the analyst's meeting, Sun intends to try to blunt the growth of Linux. That's why Sun will start charging $$$ for StarOffice running Linux.
Right now, Sun has seen the writing on the wall. Sun knows that it cannot compete at the low end (of the market) where the dominant machine will be an Intel-based server running Linux. So, Sun has decided to sell its own Intel-based server running Linux.
That leaves a problem for Sun. Its only profit-generator will be high-end servers. If Sun allows Linux to creep up into the high end of the market, then Sun as a company is finished. The only way for Sun to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack of server companies is to focus on the operating system. Sun's hardware can't be the differentiator because the hardware just sucks; IBM's Power4 and Regatta crush Sun's UltraSPARC III and Starcat on most of the key benchmarks. So, Sun must protect Solaris and continue to ensure that it is "better" than Linux and AIX. Then, Sun can say that its high-end server, as a system, is "better" than IBM's, HP's, and Dell's high-end system because Solaris is just so much "better" than Linux.
Sun will fail because IBM has pumped billions of dollars into supporting the development of Linux source code. Furthermore, Sun's attempt to charge for Star Office will not have the intended effect of protecting Solaris. Rather, the most prominent effect of Sun's treachery will be to boost sales of Lotus Smart Suite.
I lost faith in Lotus Smart Suite when IBM bought Lotus and messed with AmiPro. 'Nuff said. I disagree about the Smart Suite vs. StarOffice comparison. StarOffice 6.0 is much better than any of the Lotus office suites before it. We're all entitled to opinions, likes and dislikes, right? re: IBM. Of course their commitment is "far stronger." That doesn't mean Sun can't do Linux well. Solaris is the #1 UNIX operating system, according to D.H. Brown (2001) and other reports. But you're right: They're not as strong in the Linux space. And they're incorporating Linux into the fold, while IBM has been going strong with multi-millions worth of R&D in recent Linux development. I'd say IBM should be a bit scared, though, especially when Sun outsells UNIX servers over them -- and they resell Sun servers, including Solaris (soon to be able run Linux, and not just with the lxrun software). What a wacky world, eh?
Stepped on someone's free toes, did I?
OpenOffice is dualicensed and is GPL'ed too.
Can't somebody put it online on some server for free download?
I saw the headline and immedietely noticed "Sun" and "6.0". But I read too fast and thought it was about OpenOffice, not StarOffice.
Companies will like this - it adds credibility. If they are giving away this for free - how do they earn money on this? Can we be sure that they will continue to develop on this? (this is what companies are thinking!).
As a student or normal user, you can just download Open Office and use that instead or maybe Staroffice will still be free for personal use - I could easily imagine that.
No matter what, it would be cool to have Staroffice to replace MS Office. I'm not talking about the fact that it is open source, although that is great too, but it is *not* the most important thing IMHO. The greatest thing would be the open document format! It removes the possibility of lock-in and that is what currently binds people to MS Office and makes it difficult for companies to drop it.
I'm going to buy a copy for my girlfriend to use on her machine. That way she should be able to stop needing Word/Excel and hence Windows.
I'd rather let some of my cash slip to a company providing some support the growth of Gnu/Linux and hence free software than one that doesn't.
Me. I say TeX rules:-)
Nope. The real reason for the split is because sun are trying to cut costs.
Sun are trying to make the part of the company that deals with Star Office cover its costs.
IMO if in 18 months the Star Office part of the company isn't at least covering its costs, they'll ditch start office.
I had this application form for a job sent to me in MS Word 2000 format and the person who designed the template obviously could not resist the temptation; the document crashed StarOffice beta (did not have OpenOffice on hand at that time) and only partially opened on KWord.
So I bit the bullet, used MSWordViewer under CrossOver and found out... that it could not even Copy-n-Paste the whole document. Bummer. Had to use someone else's computer to open it.
And what causes this? Oh, the document had.. believe it or not.. radio buttons, and drop-down lists. To select simple things like titles, etc. Even the columns for names are text boxes.
Quite sad that some companies seem hell-bent on using all available features just because they can. Now I understand why Office is said to be a viral software (must be why they don't like the GPL competition).
Michel
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
This indicates the cardinal danger of non Open Source licenses. In pulling the mother of all bait and switches Sun has sapped resources and attention from projects like Open Office.
Isn't this exactly Sun (and others') complaint about Microsoft? Bundling a free product with their operating system to achieve a monopoly?
It seems highly unlikely that companies would ever rely on a free (as in beer) piece of software (without tech support, yada yada).
Really IE being "free" is seen as an asset, without free software there would be no internet either.
Well,
IMHO it is *easier* to integrate Visio-Drawings
into a StarOffice document, because StarOffice
supports EPS !
One of several reasons why I like StarOffice is that instead of useless and annoying fluff like animated paperclips and "I think you are writing a letter"-shit, they implmenented support for fileformats like EPS.
That's what I call software for professional use !
BTW: Thanks for reminding me of this, importing Visio drawings as WMF or JPG into Word was really pissing me off !
cheers,
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Absolutely. Ironically a lot of customers won't adopt something that is free of charge. It suggests the company providing it has no commitment to the product. You're not going to migrate 10000 desktops form MS Office to StarOffice if you don't believe that Sun are serious about supporting it. OpenOffice will be free, StarOffice will be branded and supported.
IE isn't free. It comes bundled with windows, which costs money. StarOffice however is totally free at the moment. Managers don't go for stuff that's completely free. You need to make them pay for it or they won't use your stuff. Managers are weird creatures.
Sorry, but i can't see "all" /.ers jump at sun for this, most seem to have the opinion that it's legitimate for sun to slap some pricetag on StarOffice, even though the /. story omits a lot of details from the Heise-story, especially the reasons Sun gives for doing this:
- they claim many customers want professional support managing their licenses.
- apparently many corporate customers don't want to use free software, out of fear it will be discontinued in the near future.
Also neither the slashdot editors nor the person who sent in the article lost a word about OpenOffice. This will still be free and is mostly identical with StarOffice. OpenOffice lacks the spellchecker and the database, which sun licensed from others.
Although all these omissions let it all look worse than it really is, apparently not everyone is pissed off or hates sun, at least not as far as i can see.
--
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
This is obviously another instance of them not being able to see past their brand once again. It's why they are getting stingier with Java. Someone, somewhere in that company actually thinks that this will make users up and switch to Solaris. I seriously doubt anyone is that dependent on StarOffice just yet. They just want to see what it feels like if they had a monopoly.... too bad they don't have one to exercise.
"'force' people to use Solaris instead of Linux."
Perhaps I'm not seeing all of the angles here... BUT IMHO, this theory doesn't really stand up to scrutiny because...
If I'm running a Linux box or a Windoze box - I can't really see myself running out to buy a Sparc station just so I can get a FREE (as in beer) office suite.
I have a great little box already and if I wanted the extra features of SO, as opposed to OO (which serves my needs VERY nicely and supposedly will remain free) then I believe I'd rather pony up $50 for SO than completely convert my platform and OS. If someone is already on the fence thinking about moving to Sparc/Solaris, then this *might* be the kicker for them.
I personally buy into the opinion that it gives the app some credibility. We've all been the victim of truly crappy shareware before (I assume), and by sticking a price tag on the package, it DOES give more credibility to the SO app as legitimate business-quality sw.
I'm the first to dig into a shady conspiracy theory. BUT, from what I've seen here so far, if there is a conspiracy, no one has figured out what it really is yet. I can't give credence to the "Convert to Solaris" theory.
A lot of people here seem to see this as Sun trying to "make people use Solaris".
Another way to think of it is that Sun will have an office suite that costs money and they bundle it with Solaris and sell it separately for other systems...which seems much less evil, doesn't it?
How can you tell which is worse? They both suck. The only reason to install Mozilla that I've found is to compile better browsers that use the Gecko rendering engine. The one time I tried StarOffice I was convinced I would never touch it again. I realize my hardware is aging, but I haven't had slow load/response times like that since the early 80's. Hard to believe OO is much better or worse than SO in that respect unless one or both projects have learned not to load an entire GUI on top of the GUI you're already running.
Yep, if you do some reading, you will find that in the latest Release of StarOffice 6, they are removing the "Desktop" interface that came with the previous versions.
I can see why it was there when they were running on Solaris, however on MS Windows platforms it was just a pain in the rear end.
I will be lookingforward to the next release of StarOffice and shall hopefully be running it under Linux.
It may not be as good as MS Office (which I think rocks), however from what I can see it is substantially better then the other office products that come from KDE et all.
Well just my two pence worth.
Doug
Doug.
People like Netscape because they are the underdog. Bully (Bill) Gates stole poor Netscape's lunch money and couldn't afford to eat anymore.
Then again, Sun is just doing to Microsoft what Microsoft did to Netscape, but it didn't work. Let people pay for the development of StarOffice.
If StarOffice can be sold for under US$100, I think it can do well - especially if it has extra goodies that they couldn't add to OpenOffice due to third-party licesning of those goodies.
By the way, have you heard OpenOffice is part of GNOME Office now.
Then again, I forget, everyone wants something for free as in free beer - well, someone has to pay for it. Sun is just getting you to pay for what you use. When you buy Solaris, you already pay for the SunOffice, err, StarOffice. Programmers have to eat too you know.
Now, the real question, does open source software put programmers out of a job? Who pays their salary? Do open source programmers live on welfare? I can't see the economics of open source softare.
1) the free version. a staroffice.
2) the upgraded version with support ($35)
3) the glitzy one with a calendar and other software rolled in(100).
First of all, what are you talking about? Blah, blah, blah.
Microsoft has been in the enterprise OS market for a long time. Where have you been?
Maybe you're talking about the Server OS market?
the market that hosts web servers, database servers, etc... Yes, Microsoft is behind there, but they sure are catching up.
Why? Easier setup and maintenance. Unix seems like you have to have a CS PhD to get it to do anything. Computers are suppose to help us - not the other way around.
I've got two 16's and a 64 Memorex. Amazing how much you could do with that much.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
WTF... how is this, at least in it's entirety and overall message, a flaimbait. Besides calling GPL communist in nature (it's more socialistic really, and we know from generations of experience in various Euro countrys that doesnt' work), this is a pretty good comment.
/. please just dump the MOD system all together... it's retarded.
God, can
I've got to put this last nail in the Star Office coffin. Seriously though ... They're raising the barrier to entry for a product that's yet to gain any signifigant following in the Windows and Linux arenas. This surely will isolate the users that have already adopted this application, and severely limit the number of future adopters.
I did, I d/l'ed the program used it for two months, and I was very happy with it so I bought it. I look at it as a donation to the company. Like if you like a really good or usefull app and want to say thank you for some one elses hard work.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
In the case of Staroffice/OpenOffice, it seems to me that real reason behind the split is to 'force' people to use Solaris instead of Linux.
couldn't this be construed as a monopolistic action like the ones microsoft is taking?
------
I'm sure that sun will include it for free in their Linux distribution. They might get alot more people using their distro that way.
I really don't understand charging for it on windows though..
-jj-
As I recall, the StarOffice 6 database link
was read only.
If you want a Linux WP with a REAL (read/update)
database link you need Applixware. (Or whatever
vistasource calls it now).
Actually, you may need to get an old copy, as
the current version doesn't seem to have
Data in it. But people on the mailing list
say you can still get it.
-- ac
damn right about the looking at ibm. why buy limited hardware--cobalt--from a company that cannot get its message straight. i really do like those appliances, but sun hasn't updated the hardware in over a year it seems. oh yah, except for the $4000.00 xtr. good price point--not.
If this is actually the way Sun is reacting, then they're even more foolish than I'd imagined (which would be a feat in and of itself). Sun is going to piss off its last remaining friends simply to make a tiny dent in Microsoft's bottom line? That's not how business works -- every action done should result in a net positive cashflow as a reaction. Companies, especially public companies that are in touble as it is, don't have the time or money to play these kinds of games. Microsoft is over 10x the size of Sun. Sun isn't going to win a David and Goliath battle by aiming for Microsoft's big toe.
At any rate, I sincerely doubt that Microsoft would need to lower prices even if Sun did have some success with Star Office. MS Office is king by a tremendous margin. Did Microsoft lower the prices of Windows when Linux became a "viable competitor" with a fairly large percentage of desktops? Nope.
Josh Woodward
Sun just stopped x86 development of solaris, which means the only OS on PC's they like is now Linux. Scince there isn't a sparc version of Staroffice, Linux and Solaris are the only platforms where Sun will profit.
Windows users on the other hand should be using Linux, and mabye they would if star office is only free with it.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I don't think that managers believe that free software is no good or that "you get what you pay for"; they probably realize that there a lot of good, free products out there. It is MONEY, though, that keeps a product and a company going - managers want to know that the product they are using will be here next month and next year and hasn't been abandoned for lack of funding.
Has it been slashdotted or, contrary to posting here, is Sun pulling the plug on Open Office?
Or Netscape. Or instant messaging.
???
Back in the day when people had real choices to make over the personal computers they bought, the conventional wisdom said, "Buy the computer that runs the application(s) you must run."
Back in the day before that, when there were no personal computers, computers took filled closets or rooms, and programmers were really mathematicians and physicists and linguists, hardware companies gave away software, in part so you'd buy their hardware.
Sun's decision to make StarOffice "free" for licensees of Solaris makes sense in this light.
These days, we call it "Value Added".
Well, so much for Star Office then. I guess I'll just keep using my free version of MS Office. (Huh, what do you mean MS Office isn't free? I didn't pay for mine!)
Just a little look back...
"When the project was opened two years ago, it was missing online help, spell-checking, and printing which had been based on proprietary commercial libraries. With release 6 the open source community has replaced these missing features."
Okay, slightly off-topic, but it's been vexing me... How can I open a file from CLI via oo641c?
Chances are anything negative said about the Beast, ( as much as it's supporters would like to
characterize it as over the top, knee jerk , rabid anti-MS vitriol - and thus not credible)
is true.
Like in the Anti-trust trial where some commentators were saying "
There are so many negative things about MS in
the judgment it must be biased.
No just the sad truth.
So if Sun sells Star Office with a decent manual AND they can sell it for less than $100 AND I get both Linux and Winblows versions for the bucks, I'll buy it. Otherwise, I'll be switching over to OpenOffice.
Hope some of the Sun folks are reading this...
If they had a monopoly then sure, it could.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
No, it's not a 100% replacement for Visio, but in some ways it's more powerful. Its drawing tools are about on a par with Visio 2000, it just lacks stencils and connectors. Yes, that is Visio's hook, but in practice I'd say 75% of the Visio diagrams I've seen real office people create consist of squares with text in them, lines and arrows. And it's included in both StarOffice and OpenOffice. You can embed a StarDraw document in StarWriter probably easier than a Visio document in Word.
;) )
Now if it would just import Visio diagrams.... but it does import WMF's and EPS's, which have been good enough for me so far.
The real MSOffice killer app for my clients in the past, which is still not really available under Linux, is (sadly) Access. Yes, there's Katabase and the commercial version of StarOffice has always included Adabas, but neither of them is still quite up to snuff for creating quick ad-hoc applications without hiring someone (until you realize how unstable Access is for your now huge and mission critical app, at which point you call me!
Overall, I think the move will reduce confusion and help both StarOffice and OpenOffice in the long run.
How much will it cost? (ballpark price)
And will I need to purchase Windows & Linux versions separately? (effectively doubling my cost).
I have been pleased with the free 6.0 Beta,
and will likely purchase a disk if it is offered at what I consider a reasonable cost.
Albeit, The definition of "Reasonable" varies from person to person.
as they keep a version free enough for me to do a resume so I can get a job so I can afford to buy it then I am fine with this. If they price at the same level as MS Office, say goodbye to Star Office. I bought SO 5.2 from sun why would they not charge for 6? I like the idea of a freely downloadable version for personal use, heck charge $40 for the personal version and $200 for corporate (if this is what corps want give it too them).
Sun can't market StarOffice6 unless you can buy it from somewhere. There will be loads and loads and loads of home users and small businesses who will come to StarOffice because it is being marketed. They will see the adverts, and then the next time they're wandering round PC World with a few quid burning a hole in their pocket, they'll cough for a copy.
Having bought it, they'll install it. Then they'll start boring their workmates about it - they're not clever enough to experiment with GNU/Linux, so they'll show off to their colleagues about how clever they are to be using StarOffice. (These are the same people who bore you about the processor speed of their new machine, but don't know what chipset is running on their mobo).
You'll hear them in the office "blah blah blah blah StarOffice blah blah blah really very good, only $50 blah blah blah Microsoft better buck their ideas up blah blah blah".
And you can feel smug about having sent them a document which you wrote on OpenOffice on GNU/Linux, and they think they're clever to be able to read it (because they pressed "Next" a few times).
Never foget how stupid, vain and banal the people are that Sun are aiming at.
Dunstan
PS a quick word on the Solaris version being free - this, of course, isn't aimed at Solaris workstation users, rather at businesses who are considering deploying Sunray solutions, so after buying the servers, network infrastructure and appliances, you don't have to pay software royalties for running an office suite. Add in a Tarantella infrastructure, and you can work on the same desktop on the SunRay in the office, or in a browser at the internet cafe.
It's all starting to come together.
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
But it's the same principle. Laws are based on the principles, not on who will currently get most/least screwed.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Thusly your argument is null.
Thusly is not a word. Thus, your argument is null. Oh wait, using your logic against you will work as poorly as using against me.
I was not debating the words of the law, I was arguing what the principle of the law should be, and you admit to agreeing that it should be different. I do not pretend to argue the letter of laws, but I do say that if a law is wrong, it should be changed or disobeyed. I raise a philosophical issue, not a legal one.
Philosophically, is it not wrong for Sun to get away with something for which Microsoft would get hammered? And it goes vice versa, of course, because any good philosophy is reciprocal. Just as Sun shouldn't get away with something like this, neither should Microsoft, but they should both be equally opposed in their approach.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I willingly paid for StarOffice direct from Sun a while back. That one CDROM included the binaries for both the Linux and Windows versions (maybe even Solaris, I forget), and the box included a real printed manual as well. The support I've never had need to use, but if you need it, that's a selling point too.
Regardless, that 40 bucks (including shipping) was a bargain compared to the various other pieces of software I've bought in the past. I've even used the drawing features to make WMF files for work, since we seem to have crap for clipart.
Illegitimi non carborundum
I am extremely, well, sad, that I get no "burger."
I was promised a "burger," but the guy who was to buy it got a phone call from his "girl"friend and he is still on the "phone."
No burger for me.
Netscape is owned by AOL-TimeWarner. Don't buy their bullshit that they are this little tiny player going up against the Goliath. Their product overall is crap, so they deserve to have lost the market share. Big fat and lazy, and the up and comer kicked their ass. Gotta love it.
www.jackasscritics.com
Oh wait, using your logic against you will work as poorly as using against me
I would not use such a broken tool as your (lack of) wit against you. Here's a small clipping from a fairly good book, a charity from me to you. As you have neatly side-stepped the confines of rational argument, and your pitifully ill-informed sense of logic affords me no opportunity to riposte, I must content myself with this sop. Enjoy.
The American Heritage® Book of English Usage.
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
282. thusly
The adverb thusly was created in the 19th century as an alternative for thus in sentences such as Hold it thus or He put it thus. It appears to have been first used by humorists, who may have been echoing the speech of poorly educated people straining to sound stylish. The word has subsequently gained some currency in educated usage, but it is still often regarded as incorrect. A large majority of the Usage Panel found it unacceptable in an earlier survey. In formal writing, thus can still be used as in the examples above; in other styles, expressions such as this way and like this are more natural.
Why don't you squat on my flag-pole, little girl?
So, what you're saying is... that you were wrong? Because usually when you cite sources you at least try to cite ones that enforce your position. Or, at the very least, don't undermine it.
the speech of poorly educated people straining to sound stylish
it is still often regarded as incorrect
the Usage Panel found it unacceptable in an earlier survey
I don't know exactly to what end you were aiming, but for your sake I hope you just missed the mark. In one quote you managed to call yourself uneducated, that you are straining to sound stylish, and that the language you are using is incorrect and unacceptable. If you think this quote supports you, you are grossly mistaken, it just makes you seem like the type of person who will do anything to win a conflict, even switch positions in the middle to avoid a loss. You are arguing on my behalf, but take no offense if I am reluctant to thank you for it.
Because I can't see it, little man!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The adverb thusly was created in the 19th century as an alternative for thus in sentences such as Hold it thus or He put it thus. It appears to have been first used by humorists
.. thusly I shall leave you with this simple admonishment: "If you put it in your mouth first it won't hurt quite as much"
This part would be quite illuminating, if you'd take the time to read the entire quotation in context... but your feeble grasp of reason is distracting, and the day is yet young
Open up, Buttercup
You continue to demonstrate your own feeble grasp of reason and reality, perhaps distracted by your rather unfortunate inferiority complex. You have run back to your citation, with your tail between your legs, to point out a brief quote which I overlooked in my response, in turn ignoring the rest of your post, and mine which pointed out to you some of the parts of your argument that specifically and effectively undermined your position. You ignored them when you posted, you ignored them when I pointed them out to you, you ignore them now. How young is the day when you post so late in the evening? Would not then the night be young... or are you attempting to establish yourself as a humorist, to which status you evidently aspire?
Speaking of which, I shall speak once again on "thusly." It was created in the 19th century by humorists to be used in their jokes in order to mimic the heavy-handed speech of orators. These humorists used "thusly" instead of "thus" in imitation to make the imitated seem further removed from the mainstream, and to elicit laughter from the unwashed and the educated alike. Thus you, sir, are nothing but a mimic, and not a particularly humorous one, to say the least.
What's new, pussycat?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
You completely and totally failed once again to lick the single crumb I held out earlier. Perhaps the fault was mine, as I did not see fit to smear it with peanut butter for you. "Thusly" is a perfectly valid and useful word, as are "jiggy" and "meatball" and hundreds of thousands of others in my dictionary. Your unwillingness to acknowledge it changes nothing; however, I was duly impressed that you have now read the definition in its entirety.. soon enough you will grasp its meaning, and maybe I will get to glue a pretty star to your report card, little lady, but in the meantime keep studying.
N.
Have a bone, bitch
Peradventure I did, as you say, fail to lick a single crumb of what you held out, and it was, as you admit, your fault. After all, the reason I failed to grasp it was because of its incoherence, or its ridiculousness, or its ludicrous nature. The first step to improving your skills in any particular venture is to admit your lack at the start, and you have finally shown signs of being able to do this. Congratulations, stubborn sir, soon you may well become a normal member of society, able to communicate with others without agitating them or yourself.
Of course I read your entire definition, as I was able to point out its flaws to you, to which you have still as yet not responded. In your eternal incompetence, you have continued to ignore the better part of your own definition, and yet you practically call for your mother when I overlook (for the purpose of making a point, the information was already readily available to you, as you had posted it) part of your post in order to show you the parts you should have overlooked. While you consider your next bout of quasi-lucid attacks on my literary aptitude, you should go about actually reading your own definition, as you have not yet proved, or even hinted, that you have read the dashed thing in its entirety. Due to your evident ignorance of your own definition, it is probable that it is in fact you, not I, who lacks a proper grasp of the definition put before us by your ever-diminishing wisdom.
And in your efforts to pack your sentences with potent imagery, you have only managed to display your own impotence. Review your first two sentences and tell me what is wrong with them. Until you are able to do so, do not bother responding, as my time is too valuable to waste on ignoramuses such as you.
Punctuate, Frau.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Here, for your edification, is a concise refutation of whatever points you believe you have made. It is from Merriam-Webster's online dictionary.
I shall quote the relevant bits to save you from posting further uninformed drivel - it is clear that you cannot sufficiently research even the definition of a common English word, and I do this more from pity than genuine interest in your inevitable, tiresome and worthless reply.
Lexicographers believe thusly was coined in the mid-19th century by either Josh Billings or Artemus Ward, American humorists who used it for comic effect. It took a century for thusly to move from parody to general use, and even today it's used more in speech than in writing.
Nonetheless, thusly has established a place for itself in the language. Why? Probably because it is used primarily in ways distinct from the principal uses of thus.
You have been wrong in every post in this thread. You will continue to be wrong until you take the time to learn from your mistakes, and unfortunately you have proven that even I cannot help you in that regard...
in your efforts to pack your sentences with potent imagery, you have only managed to display your own impotence
I have made no such effort, despite your presumptions. You are a moron by the accepted definition of the word.
my time is too valuable to waste
I concede that your time may be perceived as valuable, but if the price of knowledge is leaving a few customers to wait in the drive-through, then it is well worth the time you have taken to view this post.
I strongly suggest that you buy a dictionary, a thesaurus and a book of English grammar so that you may be better prepared for my next post.
Today's lesson is now over. You may put your skirt back on.
You may have missed it, in your haste to attack me blindly rather than approach the argument on the calm terms I have been attempting to establish, but the attempted potent imagery which displayed your impotence and the first two lines which you refused to critique were and are one and the same. Of course, your hypocrisy has been established and I should not have been surprised that you would ignore your own mistakes in favor of attempting to attack me, again blindly. If the first to lines of your preceding post were not an attempt at potent imagery, then you are not an aspiring prose producer, but only a haughty spout of heavy words, mixed with a plentiful dose of inanity. You continue to try to make the point that I will continue to be wrong until I admit my mistakes, yet you do the same at every turn. In fact, you appear to be mistaking your mistakes for mine, and attacking me on your own faults.
Address your hypocrisy before you attempt to address me again, you self-proclaimed master of the english language, who is showing definite signs of schizophrenia.
Your pride is surpassed only by its lack of merit.
Nothing could possibly be worth the painful exasperation induced by your repeated posts.
Do not miss the forest for the trees, nor the trees for the forest.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.