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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.'"
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Probably the biggest difference will be the lack of support for the Sun ONE WebTop(whatever, exactly, that is) in OpenOffice.
the main problem is that sun shoots itself in the foot. examples :
1. Microsoft releases C# with large amounts of adverts. Sun goes off and releases Java 1.4 with non blocking i/o and ssl support (both advertised loudly) and then ensures that the ssl stuff doesnt work with the non blocking i/o due to the bugs present in java 1.4 which was rushed to the door too early... Result? people look at C#.
2. Ximian goes off and announces Mono which is the open sourced C# clone. Sun proceeds to piss off the apache group in a very public way who then complain loudly that java is a proprietary language. Result? people look at C#.
3. Sun announces linux support on an expanded cobalt line and drop x86 solaris in favour of linux. Sun then decides to have their cheif competitive officer write a very anti linux article. Result? linux community is pissed. sun customers look away from the cobalt line. sun customers are confused. sun customers start looking at ibm.
4. Sun announces that it is open sourcing staroffice. Linux community is really happy. sun customers start to look at replacing NT with linux and staroffice on PCs. Sun decides to charge for startoffice for linux. Result? sun customers go - huh? linux community hates sun and starts using the open source LGPLed code and ignores staroffice and sun.
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.
Linux is a bigger threat to Sun than it is to Microsoft. As Linux grows into being a rock-solid and scalable server operating system, it will pretty much eliminate the need for buying expansive hardware (read: Sun servers). Linux on cheaper hardware (Intel & AMD processors) will do the job unless you are running an enterprise business, which needs the power of high end servers. (If that is the case, IBM will be more than happy to provide kick-ass hardware and Linux support for your business)
Economic recession combined with improved and more accepted Linux will make it very difficult for Sun to convince customers to pay 10X more for equivalent functionality.
Embracing Linux was mistake (in pure business sense) for Sun, and they are finally getting it.
Timemto start looking at AbiWord and KOffice
... 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?
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.
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.
You can call me a troll, but I'm serious: does Sun really think that people will continue using Star Office if they have to pay? The only time I can recall people recommending it is to someone who was looking for a free alternative to MS Office.
Personally, I've only used older versions of Star Office on an older machine (200 MHz Pentium, 32MB RAM), but the startup time was horrendous -- I literally had to wait 5 minutes to start it in KDE 1, and it was worse with Gnome. (No other app was this bad, except maybe Netscape 6.) The same went for Windows before I wiped it off and installed Red Hat. Star Office is about last on my list of applications that I'm eager to go back and give another whirl, especially now that there's a free version.
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.
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.
Yeah, i didnt either. I was at the booth with them talking about it. The girl i listened to obviously didnt want people to know. She was touting 6.0 saying how great it would be, handing out the cds for 5.2. When asked when 6.0 would be out, she talked for a bit then (under her breath) muttered it would be available for "a small fee". Once those words passed her lips, about 3/4 of the people listening to her just walked away.
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".
Quite true actually.
We had the exact thing happening to us at the company I work for. We had a web-based service aimed at business customers, and we thought it was a good idea to let poeple use it for free for a while (while we were testing and tuning).
Noone was interested.
Later, we we actually started to charge money for the service, everyone was interested - now we have more customers than we can handle.
I guess that it just seems to good to be true.
"Usually, the reason for this is that Sun pays to license third party code to include in StarOffice..."
Before we bash Sun too much, is it reasonable to expect them to pay others for features in StarOffice and offer it for free? I know for instance that the StarOffice filter for Wordperfect costs Sun $$ which is why it was not provided with the code turned over to OpenOffice.
So I read this as "if I am happy with the stuff that is free, I use OpenOffice. If I want some of the extras that Sun has to pay for, I pay Sun, or start programming for OpenOffice"
I can't complain about that (but I need the Wordperfect filter so I will gripe if it is >$50)
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.
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
do you realize what a wonderful gift openoffice is to the community? sun needs to power its business, but they are providing quality alternatives for resonable cost or none in the case of openoffice. even if they are charging, they are still promoting a free market with cross-platform standards. a free market is not always free beer its free competition.