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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.'"
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
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
StarOffice 6.0 is far better than 5.2. 6.0 boasts better compatibility with MS Office filetypes, a faster and cleaner interface (no more of 5.2's cheesy desktop shit), greater stability, and a bunch of super cool chart/equation/textart type plugins for all of the SO programs. I wouldn't call it an Office Killer, but it is definately pretty close.
Though it may seem strange, it is usually easier to market commercial software than it is free software. Most business customers still associate free software with shoddy shareware. By charging for StarOffice 6.0 and putting it in a nice pretty box Sun has a better chance of gaining marketshare than they would with a free download. Plus die-hard freeloaders who don't want to play still have OpenOffice, so everyone will be happy.
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
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.
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!"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));
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...
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?
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
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.
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.
The reason they sell Forte and give NetBeans away is cost of support (or so they say) and a few "enterprise" add-ons. With Forte you get guaranteed support, with NetBeans you get community support.
At least this is how I see it...
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 $40.00 for a quality office suite would be worth the money especially if the product gets advertising that mentions Linux.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Its not like this was a succesful product on either windows or linux, and the windows population (which doesnt even know this program exists) wont buy it, and with free solutions that are much cleaner and feature rich (AbiWord, Koffice, Gnumeric) why would a linux user (who doesnt like to spend money on software anyway) buy it? I am sure that Sun knows this and are essentially pulling out of the mainstream office suite market.
I'd bet that way more people use Star Office on Windows and Linux than use it on Solaris. It's not very profitable to start charging the people who use it on Solaris since these are so few. They're also Sun's most loyal customers so it doesn't hurt to give them the occasional freebee.
People are willing to pay for Star Office on Windows and Linux. It would be nice to make some money so that more money could be invested in advertising and marketing. Maybe you could hire some new developers with the cash as well. Then maybe SO could be a real competitor to Word.
Basically, it's nice to work at a company where customers buy your products and the executives really care about making money.
A pasted translation from the German page above quickly points out that Sun is doing it so they can provide a supported product to businesses.
I can confirm that my organization (Fortune 100) didn't give StarOffice a first look because it was "free". They don't trust free s/w and need to hold someone accountable if there are problems (I should point out that we don't really hold M$ 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...
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.
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!
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.
You also have to consider Sun is going to be offering their own Linux distro. Perhaps they plan to include Star Office free with that as a value add to it. In that case it would make sense for them to be charging for an unbundled version of it. They are, after all, paying for the R&D of Star Office. And what competitive advantage does their distro have if other distros can provide Star Office without having to pay for any of the development costs?
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.
Every half-competent IT staffer in the country understands the value in free products
But said half-competent IT staffer doesn't get to determine what Mary (the CEO's private secretary and coffee-carrier) will use to type the boss's very important letters.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
(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.)
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.
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?
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.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
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
Not to mention it's opened every MS Office document I've thrown at it without a problem.
Actually that's a sort of strange thing I've found wtih Open Office... I've had a few instances where Open Office would open MS Office documents that even MS Office (2000) wouldn't open.
Of course.
OpenOffice is meant to work with MS-Office (any version).
On the other hand, MS-Windows v.X is meant to not be exactly compatible with documents created with MS-Office v.(X-1).
It was very very obvious with MS-Office 97/95. And it was a RPITA to export from MS-Office 87 to 95 version.
This is what you get with closed file formats. They own your documents.
Sounds like Sun's made a pretty good decision for all inovlved. Value-added, low-cost (targetting a magic price somewhere between "free" and "what it's worth to ya"), and still open source (free-beer, free-speech). It's what took Linux from nothing to what it is today. Why not the same for an office suite?
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.
I would also like to add that after having used many of the Gnu utilities for so long, I had no idea how spoiled I was by all of the options they give me until I got some exposure to Solaris 8.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
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.
Netscape doesn't charge for the Netscape browser. How is it a money making machine?
All the same, I don't see a problem with what Sun is doing. Plus, there's still Open Office available for free.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
There's a difference, though, between leaving free stuff on the curb and offering free stuff through the classifieds. Someone looking to get something advertised in the classifieds has to go out of his/her way to collect the merchandise. In contrast, someone seeing your free stuff on the curb is already pretty close to it anyway, so said someone doesn't have to go far out of his/her way to collect it.
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/
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.