Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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
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 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.
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 ?
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
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 don't they "get"? They tried giving away something to compete against MS Office. It didn't work. Rather than get nothing for it, why not charge for it, and maybe get a few bucks.
normal person: How can you make money giving away software?
Open Source advocate: Volume.
is said to be one of the differences between OpO and StO. No spell check? Aaargaarghaarg...
Everything is mainstream now.
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. $200 won't be - I may as well just use MS Office at that point. I'm just throwing numbers out as I haven't seen anything at all re: pricing on this.
Value-adds I wouldn't mind paying for if they're bundled: Professional clipart, professional templates, multiple language dictionaries - all those would be a good start.
creation science book
Does this essentially lead to a Mozilla-like 'split', where a commercial derivative with extra frills is available on top of a free version (both senses)?
:).
Not exactly. Although this is a good comparisson, the commercial version of Netscape is still free. The main difference are testing (Netscape stick to a mozilla version and do a lot of QA testing before moving to another, while mozilla keeps going), features (like that spellchecker) and some 'AOL integration'
In the case of Staroffice/OpenOffice, it seems to me that real reason behind the split is to 'force' people to use Solaris instead of Linux. If that's the case, I don't it was a good idea: people will still use Linux (as long as OpenOffice is still available), and the anger against Sun will increase with this move.
Linux can run on x86, ppc, sparc, itanium, 68K, alpha, os390, and other processors, while solaris can only run on sparc and x86, with x86 support going dead.
What are the major differences currently between OpenOffice and StarOffice?
I remember a DoD procurement elated to StarOffice, has the price remained the same? (Are they running it on Solaris anyway?)
e4 e5
just thought you would like to know, Solaris for intel and SPARC is free via Sun's web site.
Why must free=good reason to switch.
--zer0her0 home: http://zer0her0.info work: http://lgmp.info
Let's face it, other than dorks and geeks, very very few people use Star Office. M$ 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!"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.
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?
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?
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.
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!!!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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'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.
"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...
Timemto start looking at AbiWord and KOffice
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
... 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.
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.
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.
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 don't seriously think they'd do this to hurt their product do you? its like Microsoft don't lose money by giving away free Hotmail accounts. big business was wavering over investing in StarOffice when it was free cos they couldn't see how Sun could make a going concern of it, so Sun are charging and some big business will thus go for it, so how can that hurt?
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...
Exactly three people will be using the free version on Solaris and no one of the Linux and Windwos versions.
There already is OpenOffice, which is dual-licensed under the GPL and Sun SISSL licenses. So it is Free Software, which I think meets your request for "open sourced under the GPL". This is the code base that StarOffice 6 is based on, so Sun deciding to charge money for their release is no big deal.
There are other Free Software office applications and suites available.
Java's next... just wait and see.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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 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?
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.
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
java.net.ssl is distinct from java.nio.* libraries, and it was known months ago that Sun was not going to provide an SSL nio library. See this article.
Hint: it's from last September.
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!
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
"Do you read the minds of sun execs? Unlikely."
In fact not only are they not readable by you, your group and the rest of the world, they are not even readable by owner! This is all due to a bug in the way chmod works in the solaris bio-neural interface...
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.
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.
I never really had to LEARN Kword or StarOffice. A WP is a WP. Click on all the menus and see what's there. Nothing to learn really.
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.
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 run x86 Solaris at my house on the box I use for my website. I love it (even have Gnome installed!) Slower than a SPARC (it's the I/O for not being SCSI), but UNIX is UNIX, man. WHat's wrong with Solaris .(The minute I can win a damn auction for an AIX workstation, that bitch is MINE!)
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.
(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 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?
As another poster replying to you said, he has every right to do this.
People can scream about him being a , but the GPL'd version of Smoothwall that's already out there can always be used for free. All he can do is restrict future releases. If the free one does everything you need, what's to complain about? (Or do you just feel the world owes you some free labor because you're so special?)
If you want my take on the whole Smoothwall thing, I think it boils down to Richard Morrell originally having this idea that the free Smoothwall project would/should lead to a large number of donations to the charity of his choice. (He seems to be personal friends with a lady in England who runs this home for deaf children, and hoped to use Smoothie as a vehicle to get some funding directed her way.) When he found out that most people downloading and using Smoothie weren't willing to send a voluntary donation to said charity, he got irritated and started in with the name-calling and accusations of people expecting something for nothing.
People *do* want something for nothing. It's human nature. Is it "right"? I dunno... it just *is*. Richard probably should just start developing commercial software at this point. Perhaps it will put less stress in his life, and allow him to contribute directly to the charities he'd like to see money going towards.
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?
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....
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
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.
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.
I agree, I shall switch to Open Office as soon as they firm up the announcement, SO6 will not be installed even on my UltraSparc 5. I wonder if any opensource developers will ever trust Sun again. Sun is really about selling SPARC running Solaris, Linux and anything else is a necessary evil - "Linux on Mainframes don't make sense", "Sun will supply Linux on Intel based servers for EDGE services". You get the distinct impression that there is a concerted campaign to rubbish Linux whilst saying they've nothing to fear from it. They intend to supply Linux in low end applications, convince customers that it's no good for much else and hopefully set them up as Solaris converts. If you've seen and understood the utter rubbish they give out about mainframes, you can see they are hurting under the weight of the competition and clutching at straws.
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.
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?
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.
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 ----
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
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!"
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.
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.
"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.
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
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!
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.
Does anyone really like Sun? If you like Sun, you have probably never had to use Solaris 8. Any given Linux distribution is years ahead of that trash. Especially for desktop users.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
Is it possible (legally) to port from Solaris to Linux/Windows? If so, it will remain free...
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
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
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.
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.
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
I was in the Jersey Giant pub at Church & Front St in Toronto earlier tonight, drinking my face off and screaming my brains out at the large screen TV. WHHOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
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.
LOL...Reminds me of trying to run Win2.0 on my '286. "call me a troll", but does MS think anybody will pay for that shit?
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...
=+=+=+=+=
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/
Star Office contains a database (Adabas) which is not included in the open office.
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/24/151925 8&mode=thread&tid=131
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.
"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."
Result? People use OpenOffice instead of 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.
However, I'd be happy to pay $99 if it worked properly, with a decent range of fonts, and worked the same on Sparc and i386, and FreeeBSD.
I'd even settle for a deal where I had to buy a licence per Arch, or per OS, or, for $50, per machine!
BUT ONLY if I get the source code and can fix the damn bugs.
Where? How much?
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.
If you want FULL "compliance" (i.e. ability to open all documents), you bascially have to own Office 97, 200 AND XP, each costing twice as much.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
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
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.
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!)
Office XP can open Office 97/2k documents (it can open any Office docs going as far back as you like).
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-
Can it? that's something that 97 and 2000 couldn't do.
Well, my Office 2k here at work is quite happy with docs from previous versions of Office, and my Dad can open my Office 2k docs with his copy of Office XP.
.rtf - can't we just get everyone to live in harmony? (oops, sorry, wrong site... errr.. s/get everyone to live in harmony/cut Bill Gates into little pieces and feed them to the AOL users/)
Anyway, *everything* can open
More like "can attempt to open". Whether it succeeds or not is material for a betting pool.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
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.
Well, no problems personally, and none that I'm aware of with sharing documents between our 100+ employees and 13000+ clients. I imagine you have had some though, which is why you posted in the first place :-)
Still, it'd be boring if we were all the same eh?
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
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?
How can you make money selling something that nobody wanted when it was free?
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".
All they have to do is sell a single copy for any amount of money, and they're doing better than when they were giving it out for free. At this point they probably aren't even planning on breaking even, they just want to minimize the loss.
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?
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
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.