StarOffice 6.0

Lawrence Teo writes "News.com, Infoworld.com, and eWeek are all reporting that Sun's StarOffice 6.0, which will be released on May 21, will cost a measly $75.95. That's less than a quarter the cost of Microsoft Office. Details are also available at Sun's own StarOffice 6.0 website." Sun's press release mentions the new features, although if you're familiar with openoffice.org, you've got a pretty good idea of what StarOffice has to offer. An anonymous reader also points out that Sun has effectively one-upped Microsoft's various schemes to get its software into schools by making an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.

Comments

$75.95

[Anonymous Coward]

A measly $75.95? Phew, surely there can't be a comparable office suite that's any cheaper than that!

Re:$75.95

[dougga]

I believe due to some testing fluke, I was able to purchase and download StarOffice 6.0 last week. The Price was $75 I don't recall the extra $0.95 but what's the difference.

I wasn't paying much attention to the updates so I was a bit surprised that all of the integrated mail and scheduling tools were gone.

The products that remain seem to be excellent with improvments in graphics and ease of use. I haven't used them enough to really be an expert, but they seem to be clean.

I'm highly dissapointed with the lack of scheduling and email. The integration with the Palm OS was a huge advantage for me and I was planning to push this suite to clients in large part on the merits of the clean Palm integration. Nevertheless, it seems to be a win.

Now, I need to find someone who will write a clean integration tool for the Palm on Linux functionality. KPilot is a mess and J-Pilot doesn't intigrate with any other desktop apps. Sigh....

RedStarOffice

[rjamestaylor]

An apt name change, considering the overwhelming majority of potential users under this plan.

pre-order here

[Jonny Ringo]

You can already pre-order it here

Re:pre-order here

[Cardhore]

Yes! And you can even use the "buy now and we'll never ever send it to you" technology!

"Next-gen" office from Microsoft, also XML-based

[SteelX]

Wow. Hot on the heels of Sun's press release, it looks like Microsoft is also planning their so called next-gen Office which is also supposedly based on XML. That zdnet article is pretty interesting.. it has some comments from Gartner about both Office.NET (ugh! I'm getting .NET-phobia) and StarOffice.

hmm

[nomadic]

Wonder if they think charging for it will make people more likely to use it.

Everyone does know that the only reason Sun bought StarOffice was to have something to annoy Microsoft with, right?

Re:hmm

[Innominate Recreant]

That was a consideration. Sun's decision to charge is based on research that showed enterprise users were not adopting StarOffice 5.2, the previous version of the product, in a significant way because they questioned Sun's commitment to a product it was giving away for free and which did not come with support and training.

Re:hmm

[Guppy06]

"Wonder if they think charging for it will make people more likely to use it."

I wouldn't be surprised if it does. When it comes to buying applications, most purchasers believe in the addage "You get what you pay for." While StarOffice may not be above and beyond what OpenOffice can do, the price tag demonstrates to most buyers that it's a "real" program and also suggests that there is guaranteed support behind it as well.

After all, look how well RedHat is doing compared to competitors. Or how much Mandrake is taking off as they establish a similar model.

Re:hmm

[dunstan]

It's harder to justify a marketing campaign to the bean counters if there's not going to be any revenue. And you can't get the PC shops to stock it if they're not going to put it through the tills.

How they decided the price point is what interests me. The five seats licence is the most telling part - basically they're not interested in the revenue, and are only using the pricing model as a means to get the suite into the conventional market channels. Their interest is in denying revenue to Microsoft for Office, and attempting to break the monopoly of the secret office file formats.

Further, by charging money there is a greater likelihood that people will use SO6 *instead* of MS Office rather than as well as MS Office.

Dunstan

But still no mac support..

[Anonymous Coward]

The openoffice team has *barely* got some kind of beta mac os x support.

Last i checked, the idea any flavor of staroffice would be supported on classic mac os was a joke.

So, your choices are: Go with MSOffice, and have no support for UNIX; or go with staroffice, and have no support for Macintosh. Lovely choices here.

I realize this isn't a problem, really, since you could just put openoffice on the unix/windows machines and msoffice on the macs, and use compatible file formats always, but that's still obnoxious, and i don't think that msoffice/mac can support openoffice's XML format at all, no? Is there a plugin that would let it?

Dammit, when's this XML DocBook standard or whatever going ot be something that all the major word processors can save in?

One problem

[Disevidence]

The only real problem i can see is this is going to be hard to get to the average masses. I know quite a few people who think that they need MS Office, mainly because they have an ME or XP.

If in they're advertising, say it works the same as MS Office, and supports all their documents etc etc, then they might see a little change. The problem is, MS has had such a monopoly, its hard to breakthrough to a non-technical users level.

Re:One problem

[(startx)]

People don't "think" they need MS Office, it's what comes bundled with their machine along with windoze, so that's what they use and stick with it along the upgrade path. The last machine my parents bought (a 500Mhz el-cheapo e-machine) a few years ago came with star office 5.2. They now uses it exclusively and haven't had any problems. Guess what? now my dad wants to buy star office 6 because, yes, it's an upgrade to what he's got. The real solution is to get more OEM's to bundle something other that MS Office with their machines.

Re:One problem

[mark_lybarger]

mandrake does a GREAT job installing on a windoze machine that has one big fat32 partition. just kick off defrag, and then the next day when it's complete, you can start the mandrake install. it will allow you to resize your paritions from there.

after doing the mandrake install, i would recommend then installing RH 7.3 on the partitions that mandrake created. just a personal opinion, but i dind't really get mandrake at all.

on the open office/star office front, i used so 5.2 on rh and it works great! getting oo installed was challenging, but maybe the 1.0 binaries are a little easier. rh (and others) are working on rpms, but have a few changes to make due to the graphical install currently needed by open/star office.

$75 bucks for the software

[Anonymous Coward]

$7,500,000 million for the StarFire 10000 with th 10 TB of RAM now required to run Star Office.

Why pay $75.95?

[Devil's BSD]

Since I primarily use any office suite for word processing, I just downloaded AbiWord. Slashdot ran a story earlier, too, about this.
If you use databases, I am sure you can find some open source version DB software somewhere. Same with spreadsheets and presentations. As for scheduling, let's just say, pen and back of hand work fine.

$75.95 != Free

[qurob]

Sun's StarOffice 6.0, which will be released on May 21, will cost a measly $75.95. That's less than a quarter the cost of Microsoft Office.

If it's not free, the only way it will be able to compete with Office is if it is 10 times as good.

Re:$75.95 != Free

[Random Feature]

Wow. You guys are really all missing the point here.

The reason that Gartner expects StarOffice 6.0 to take away 10% of M$ market share in the productivity suite arena is because it's a paid product offered by a reputable, known viable vendor.

There are a whole lot of people looking to get out from under Microsoft's licensing/upgrading set to take effect this summer. Sun's offering may entice them to jump off the fence.

While open source is ready for the enterprise, the enterprise is not necessarily reader for open source.

What does that mean? It means that most enterprise class shops won't go for something that a) isn't supported by someone on the other end of phone and b) they aren't certain will be available in 5 years because of vendor viability.

Sun doesn't really give a damn about all of us - they are targetting a larger market that will provide a longer-lived revenue stream.

And take a bite of out Microsoft's chunky a$$ at the same time.

I don't like OpenOffice. Font support sucks and some of the compatability with MS Office products is less than acceptable. Given that I absolutely have to be able to read/edit MS documents, that is an imperative.

Will I pay for StarOffice? Hell yeah. I'd rather give it to Sun than MS any day.

StarOffice came first - open office is the release of the code into the open source community. StarOffice isn't originally Sun's, but was offered as early as 1996. Sun picked it up (to the dismay of many, myself included ) in 1999.

You can read about the acquisition here

OpenOffice did not come first, StarOffice did. Sun released an earlier code base to the open source community and continued with its own development.

Re:$75.95 != Free

[dhogaza]

No, the code base is the same. Sun released the code base but didn't fork their own development separate from Open Office.

As others have said, Open Office is missing components (db, fonts, templates), though.

Re:$75.95 != Free

[mark_lybarger]

either that or the fact that nearly every single person living in a cube farm has office trainning. most corporations started using (and investing training $$) beginning with office 95, then '97, then 2k, then, then, then.

i really think the licensing is pittance compared to the trainning investment in the M$ "productivity suite". not only the current trainning investment, but trainning required to migrate to a new package. as well as conversion to new file formats.

and finally, there's always the new guy in marketing that goes out and gets office XP and starts sending documents out in that format such that within a few months every other employee NEEDS the upgraded version (however real the NEED may be is hightly debatable, but that's probably another thread).

so to conclude (there's gotta be a point here, eh?), i think it's more than Free == No Value. I think the underlying hesitation is that Change == Huge initial investment and the actual payback due to the change is negligable in terms of licensing dollars, and intangible in terms of being the odd ball without M$ Office.

Well if you really want to spend $80.00

[young jedi]

While StarOffice 6.0 is cheap, the same product is available for free in openoffice 1.0 which is the base. All Sun really did here is repeat what we have already seen in the netbeans -> forte4 java relationship. I say download the software(OpenOffice that is ;) ), install it, use it, and join a mailing list if necessary. I always thought real users could better recreate program errors than tech support.

Besides OpenOffice has been perfect for me thus far.

Missing PIM Functionality

[Trinition]

I still say they're missing PIM functionality. Figure out a way to get Evolution to work with it seamlessly. I run Windows and would glady switch away from Office if I could read/write Word documents, Excel spreadsheets -- and duplicate my Outlook PIM/e-mail functionality (and still synchronize it to my PDA).

Re:Missing PIM Functionality

[tempest303]

If you've got a Palm, you're set to go then. OpenOffice.org/StarOffice + Evolution work very nicely together, and Evo's PIM support for the palm is quite nice.

Why China?

[driehuis]

Hmmm... Free StarOffice for Chinese kids...

One can only hope that the rollout will be done in a more responsible way that the Korean K12 Internet Access initiative. If you're the unlucky recipient of spam, chances are that a lot of it is sent to you courtesy of the Korean school system. All 16,000 schools got a preconfigured PC with some Windows toolkit on it that will connect anyone on the Internet to anyone else for any purpose. Kewl. Of course, none of the educators were educated into being good Internet citizens, and with English skills at a minimum the non-Korean speaking world now has a problem.

The big question is, of course, why China? Why not make it freely available to any school kid under 18? That would be a huge marketing move.

Re:Why China?

[ender81b]

The big question is, of course, why China? Why not make it freely available to any school kid under 18? That would be a huge marketing move

Or why not make it available for free to all US Schools? I imagine because having the entire K-12 system in china run on star office is considered more of a 'coup' than just having it available for free to various US groups (which it really is, in the form of Open Office). It is just great propaganda to use.

Customer: So.. umm who uses this?

SUN: Well nobody really. Except 12 million chinese schoolkids, who will eventually grow up and live in what is become the world's largest economy.

Customer: Righto. Sign me up.

You instantly gain a few million users and spite microsoft in one fell swoop. I imagine MS is now plotting to get back at Star Office someway - most likely by changing MSoffice formats to make them harder to read.

Re:Why China?

[mgv]

Except 12 million chinese schoolkids, who will eventually grow up and live in what is become the word's largest economy

I think that 12 million is a bit of an underestimate. Try 100 million and you would be a bit closer to the mark. If it were only 12 million children, it wouldn't become the world's largest economy. Of course, India could still take that badge.

Michael

Re:Why China?

[morgajel]

do you have to ask?
I can think of 1billion + reasons, and ALOT of them are kids.

fact 1: shovel your software on the youngsters, they chose it when they go into the real world. look at what colleges have done over the past 20 years with *nix.

fact 2: there are alot of people in china.

fact 3:if, say, 1/4 of the population is children(low estimate, I know), and they're being exposed to this software, well, that's 1,000,000,000/4= 250,000,000 kids growing up on something that will basically cost sun little more than opening up an FTP server for them...

and we all know how asia in general has a knack for making copied CD's:)

wildfire, my friend...that's what it'll be.

Re:Why China?

[WEFUNK]

You know that somewhere over at Sun, they are brainstorming about their future and somebody's asking "what do we need to do to say we have the World's (or Asia's, or Who-ever's) most popular office suite?"

They've gotta be trying to position themselves with a product they can call number one in certain market niches, preferably pretty large ones. Trying to create a de facto standard in China seems like a great way to do it. They might not make any money at first, but the beauty of software is that it doesn't really have any marginal cost until they develop upgrades or offer full support.

If they successfully penetrate the Asian markets, they can leverage this sort of credibility in their marketing to paying customers around the world.

Also, if it works but MS makes MSOffice formats harder to read, MS could end up stabbing themselves in the foot - Don't use MS, you can't talk to 3 Billion potential customers/suppliers/partners with it. Pretty good FUD if you ask me. Maybe US businesses would start using both MS (for the West) and Star/OpenOffice (for the East) together for Global compatibility until enough people do that that they can eventually drop the more expensive solution (MSOffice).

Lots of maybes, but if StarOffice has a chance to break the MSOffice gridlock, this is exactly the kind of bold ambition they need to shot for and exactly the kind of motivation that is probably behind this strategy.

Re:Why China?

[cscx]

SUN you could provide some of you engineers to go around to Schools and provide some UNIX training for free to the Teachers who are stuck in C:\WINDOWS.

Are you out of your mind? You're talking about the same people who poop themselves and don't know what to do when they leave a floppy in the drive and it says "Non system disk error - remove and strike any key when ready" and have trouble saving Word documents to their H:\ home share!!!

I'd like to see what would happen when they are faced with [~]$.

Re:Why China?

[ender81b]

Yes, I was considering the fact that most don't have access to computers yet.

Re:Why China?

[zangdesign]

Personally, I'm still pondering the wisdom of giving anything to a country that would really like to wipe us off the face of the earth.

Re:Why China?

[ainsoph]

I think that 12 million is a bit of an underestimate. Try 100 million and you would be a bit closer to the mark. If it were only 12 million children, it wouldn't become the world's largest economy. Of course, India could still take that badge.

Man... Have you seen that festival in India where the banks of the river are filled up with shitloads of people. And you think, like man, thats a lot of people.

Then you read. Its 30 million pilgrims who show up for the event.

Imagine a World Series with 30 million people in attendance.

Fest pic one

The greatest show on earth

India is just mind blowing. Those kinds of populations just how insignificant you really are in the scheme of things.

Re:Why China?

[Glytch]

Who's "us"? China sure isn't hostile to my country.

Re:Why China?

[zangdesign]

Try living in the U.S. sometime. See how you feel about the rest of the world hating your guts (except UK, NZ, AU, and CA(and I've got my eye on CA)).

Re:Why China?

[ainsoph]

30 million? Thats a lot of dosed naked hippies!

HAWKWIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;)

Re:Why not Open Office?

[ArsonSmith]

Support?

Discounts for multi-seat purchases?

[bc90021]

Does anyone know if there will be discounts for multiple purchases? Ie, if a company has 1,000 users that they want to switch to Star Office 6.0, will Sun give them a discount, say to $50 per seat? (Granted $76 is cheap, but corporations are always looking to save that extra buck.)

I see that there is a Star Office Now program (here), but that looks to be for vendors.

If Sun makes it so that large companies can get an even further discount, it would seem to me that they'd get even *more* people switching, which could only be a Good Thing (tm). ;)

Re:Discounts for multi-seat purchases?

[lindsayt]

If you've never bought sun software at the enterprise level, you wouldn't know...

Sun has a discount level associated with every product. The level is identified with a letter: A, D, and H for most hardware, B and P for most software, some other codes.

They negotiate discount levels with just about anybody - the bigger the institution, the steeper the discount. For example, a certain institution that I know of (I don't know if this is technically NDA so I won't mention names) has a 38% category A discount (with which we buy Sun Fire 3800s and up), a 20% category H discount (for netras and the like), and a 38% category B discount (for software like staroffice). So when we buy Solaris media with documentation, instead of $100 we pay $62.

Of course we have a site license for Solaris and StarOffice, so in reality we don't pay per seat. But when my boss got confused, we paid $62 for staroffice...

This is a standard discount with which we buy online. I know that another institution had a category A of only about 30% and a category H of about 15%... each group negotiates separately.

Active Office Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, mayby MS will try to turn Windows into one large office suite to compete with this new threat. Soon we may learn that an office suite is really an integral part of an operating system. Separating the two will be "impossible" and "bad for the economy".

Why?

[Pinball Wizard]

What does Star Office offer that OpenOffice doesn't? Is there a significant level of support that users of office suites typically need?

As soon as I heard about Sun charging for Star Office, I switched over to OpenOffice. I haven't noticed any loss of functionality.

What I have noticed is that on a modern(500Mhz+) machine, Open Office is fast, relatively bug-free, and can open and save MSOffice documents easily. I rather like it.

I could see paying to support the project, but I don't see people paying $75 en masse for something they could get for free with OpenOffice.

Re:Why?

[Jahf]

Star Office still has the Adabas database component and some extra file/print filters.

These items were proprietary code that Sun could not open source because they were not part of the Star Office purchase.

Open Office doesn't have these items, but most people won't need them. That along with commercial support are the only real differences. If you don't need a GUI database and you don't need commercial support, get Open Office.

Sun is not counting on Star Office to be a cash cow ($76Million isn't chump change, but it won't change the world either). The cost associated with Star Office is to help pay for support infrastructure, which in turn makes companies who feel that only supported software is worth using (a logical concept for an Enterprise level company) feel comfortable buying Star Office.

I've been using Open Office for months and, especially because of the last 2 releases, have gone ahead and removed Office 2000 and Star Office 5.2.

Re:Why?

[finkployd]

It you searched for 100 years, you would be hard pressed to find a crappier database than Software AG's Adabas.

Finkployd

Compatibility Issues

[saveth]

Sun's web site mentions that StarOffice 6.0 will maintain "interoperability with other desktop suites," such as Microsoft Office. Sure, they can offer this, but will Microsoft counter it by obfuscating their document formats even more? Microsoft, may not intend to do this, but because Office has the ability to put so many things (Word Art, equations, movies, strangely placed words, etc.) into documents, the parsing process becomes a nightmare.

Currently, bare Word .doc files, for example, are fairly simple to parse and import. But, when it comes to importing embedded objects like equations and Excel spreadsheets, the parsing process becomes far less trivial. I've used X-based programs, namely Abiword and StarOffice, to read from and write to Microsoft document formats, and it's not a pleasant experience. One of my more recent trials resulted in corrupted documents, in fact. Backups were made before attempting the export, of course, so this isn't meant to be a rant, but the fact remains that the number of features Microsoft Office has is proportional to the number of points at which a program that imports or exports their formats can break.

Anyway, that's my experience with the matter. I won't be leaving Microsoft Office any time soon. Your mileage may vary.

Re:Compatibility Issues

[Peter Harris]

Actually, you have given a stupendous reason to get away from using MS Office as soon as possible.

If Microsoft's formats are only going to get more complex and error-prone you might as well take the pain of moving to OpenOffice now.

Yes, some documents will need a certain amount of editing and tidying after conversion, but this is a bit of a red herring if the number of documents you plan to produce in the future is greater than the number of non-simple documents you have to convert so far.

The alternative is, inevitably, tighter lock-in and diminishing compatibility with your older documents.

The sooner you change, the easier it will be on you in the long term.

Yes Abiword and StarOffice 5.2 suck in serious ways. But OpenOffice 1.0 is excellent. In the short term, its interoperability with MS Office can only increase.

In the long term interoperability with MS Office will become as irrelevant as interoperability with WordStar.

Re:Compatibility Issues

[peddrenth]

hang on a sec, you've launched head-on into some of the most unstable features of MS office (dynamic cross-references, embedded spreadsheets, wordart, floating frames) and you're criticizing a rival office suite for not understanding that?

It's hardly surprising, is it? From what I remember of MsOffice, Word itself gets pretty confused by all these features, as anyone who's waited 5 minutes to save their dissertation knows.

It's difficult to say what would be the best way of handling such features, but doing it internally in a word processor can't be the best solution. Parsing the entire document on each paragraph-insert soon gets nasty in 100-page documents.

Perhaps an extension to LaTeX which allows you to run a Perl program and \include{its output} would work better. It would introduce a whole host of security risks (as does MsOffice) but it would let you dynamically include tables from spreadsheets, the latest copy of a graph, or whatever.

I presume you can use things like "gnumeric mySpreadsheet.x /exportgraph /jpeg graph1" to get the data out of the office applications?

Re:Compatibility Issues

[AVee]

OTOH, I've had a MS Office document that was unopenable in MS Office! No matter which version I tried the program crashed.

I've had many of those in office 97, but i've also had files that whould open perfectly and then crash office when changing the size of a certain a text area inside that file. Even after copying everything and pasting it into a new file. Which leads to the conclusion that office is capable of saving corrupt files...

Re:Open Office

[tzanger]

A little bit of research on your part would go a long way; OO does not have a database component (i.e. like Microsoft Office's Access), nor does it have some file filters, fonts or the clipart that StarOffice has.

For me, the database component is required, but I would plunk down my $80 for SO to "help the cause" -- I use OO right now on both Linux and Windows and under Windows, it rocks. It rocks incredibly hard. Linux OO has some issues like fonts and startup time but being able to open (and save) Microsoft documents without issue is great.

I'd love to see a KDE wrapper for SO/OO; having access to all the office functionality through DCOP and have the damn thing look right would be nice. I've tried out OpenOffice, KOffice and HancomOffice. At this point I would say OO is in the lead, with KOffice gaining ground fast. Hancom was nice but just too ... odd.

Re:Why not Open Office?

[SteelX]

The one feature which I need in StarOffice which is not available in OpenOffice.org is the templates. As someone who frequently needs to do quick presentations, templates are a must. Now if there's some project out there that produces templates specifically for OpenOffice.org, that'll really be sweet. Any takers? :-) Perhaps there's a need for a new SourceForge project.

BTW if you're interested, the diffs between OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are available here. That may contain other reasons why people would prefer StarOffice instead of OOo.

not quite the same as openoffice

[Innominate Recreant]

According to this article, while OpenOffice shares the same code base as StarOffice, there are some features and functionality in the commercial product that aren't available in the free product - some fonts and some linguistic functionality is missing, as well as the manual and web-based training.

Users should decide whether or not that package of features is worth 75 bucks.

Of course, where OpenOffice is licensed under the GPL, those fonts and functions *could* be developed and distributed for free by another group. Hmm.. I smell another sourceforge project here.

XML-based.

[Anonymous Coward]

XML is just a method of storing structured data as a rooted tree. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It's become popular not becuase the technology itself is particularly revolutionary-- the technology is simple. It's become popular, rather, becuase of a number of very versatile, useful, well-done parser libraries that (for example) let you save and retrieve your structured data to and from XML without much fuss or work at all. As opposed to mucking about with file pointers and binary data and such yourself, and probably misusing a free() call somewhere and segfaulting. (There is also the associated neat ease-of-parsing technologies, like schema and XSL, but i won't get into that.) One such parser library was written by microsoft, and is part of ".NET". This is why microsoft is pushing XML right now; it's a development best practice. Or something of the sort. Not because they are moving toward XML as an "open standard".

(The fact it has a sexy acronym, and the fact that nebulous connections exist in people's minds between anything XML (no matter how useless) and the very useful technologies like SOAP and XSL that have sprung from XML, doesn't hurt.)

XML does not support interoperability in any way unless everyone agrees on common XML grammars for a specific task.

Unless Microsoft releases the XML schema for their new-office XML format, then the new MSWord format will be every bit as much unusable gibberish as the old MSWord format (except the new gibberish will contain a lot of > and < symbols, and begin with a standard tag identifying it as an XML document). Microsoft seems every bit as xenophobic as they'd ever been, and have given no indication they will release such a schema for any reason unless they are forced to as part of a court judgement terminating the current antitrust case with the states. And probably not even then, unless the court order is carried out by armed national guard members storming the Redmond compound.

Re:XML-based.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you make a really excellent point.

However, while XML documents are easier to reverse-engineer for the reason you give, it can still be plenty difficult or maybe even impossible to decipher.

If you were using HTML, which doens't take much to become valid XML, you can use any of the following to achieve the same purpose (my apologies if i haven't remembered the exact css attributes off the top of my head):

• <img align=right width=100 height=100 alt="local image" src="localimg.gif" />

or

• <table align=right><img width=100 height=100 alt="local image" src="localimg.gif" /></table>

or

• <img style="align:right; width:100; height:100" alt="local image" src="localimg.gif" />

or

• <style>img {align:right; width:100; height:100}</style> <img alt="local image" src="localimg.gif" />

And there is absolutely no reason, that if you were designing your own XML formatting system, that you couldn't make this valid:

• <align direction=right><img-entity><width value=100><height value=100><alt text="local image" /><img>localimg.gif</img>&lt ; / eight></width></img-entity></ali gn>

Look at all these different ways to do a single thing! And yes, we have a pretty clear distinction of what's a tag and what's data. But look at all those different ways of *conveying* data. Formatting (content) can be conveyed as parameters, as entities, as data within tags, as tags within tags, as header information elsewhere in the document, as parameters that serve as enumerated options just by showing up in a tag. If all those options above were gibberish acronyms instead of being in english, and if the "local image" and "localimg.gif" bits were being stored as huffman codes or something other than straightforward text (which *could* happen) i guarantee you'd have a really hard time determining in each example what was structural/logical division data, what was document-inherent/header data, what was style information, and what was content.

In an actual reverse-engineering environment this is much easier because you could make a bunch of MSXML documents and see what shows up frequently and what's different in every document-- thus telling you what's enumerated formatting and what's data-- and you could disassemble the Word executable itself and try to find the place where the XML-parsing program logic is. But it's still possible a couple of rare but crucial implications of certain innocuous-looking parameters or tags that your tests just didn't happen to touch on could slip through the cracks..

Re:XML-based.

[4of12]

But it's still possible a couple of rare but crucial implications of certain innocuous-looking parameters or tags that your tests just didn't happen to touch on could slip through the cracks..

Right-ee-oo.

I'm just waiting for people to discover gem tags like:

<renderscheme url="http://microsoft.net/My.OfficeXp" value="6e5736d7bbc6176c2e1a07c0b1831c8a"> <p>I am some plain text.</p><oxpremark>d9812c10019209e23a f700241cf1ae23</oxpremark> </renderscheme>

Even if the document is more exposed as XML, it's still quite possible to hide critical parts of the implementation by making the interface just as opaque, making reverse engineering exceedingly difficult.

Re:Open Office

[tzanger]

I hate replying to myself...

SO also has support for reading WordPerfect 8 files, which is very very important to a lot of people.

Screenshots

[FattMattP]

We are the screenshots? Why don't companies that sell software put up screenshots?

MS XML! Argh

[aaandre]

If you have seen XML documents created by MS applications you'd be be as scared as I am.

Differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org

[SteelX]

Seems that there are a lot of "Why StarOffice, and not OpenOffice.org?" posts out there. To make things easier, here's where you can find the differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org.

Re:"Next-gen" office from Microsoft, also XML-base

[tzanger]

No way in hell that MS would make the office formats XML

Sure they would. They'd just do what they do now; embed the WMF data (perhaps as Base64) into <mstag> and <mstag/> tags.

XML doesn't mean shit, only that the data is organized in some kind of fashion. It does not guarantee that the data is open and accessible

Crescent Office!

[commodoresloat]

JALALABAD -- March 26, 2002 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced a donation to the Ministry of Jihad (MOJ) of al Qaeda that will make StarOffice[tm] 6.0 (branded CrescentOffice[tm] in Islamic markets) an office suite of choice in madrassas throughout the Muslim world. Today's donation will provide unlimited access to one of the world's largest open productivity suites based on open source development. The technology will be available to be replicated and distributed to the students, teachers and administrators of the educational institutions governed by the ministry. The discussions today are a major expansion of the existing relationship between Sun and the MOJ.

"In the quest for learning and understanding, there is really no greater tool than technology," said Kim Jones, vice president of global education and research, Sun Microsystems. "With this contribution of software, Sun and the Ministry of Jihad will work closely with students, educators and suicide bombers to enhance their ability to compete in a global economy, while opening the door to greater productivity and achievements throughout the Islamic world. Sun Microsystems will provide al Qaeda with the office productivity tools they need to destroy all Zionists and Crusaders. Allahu Akbar!"

Re:Crescent Office!

[swissmonkey]

I understand it's for fun but please...

Avoid mixing "islamic world" with "Al-Quaeda" and avoid mixing Jihad with war/fight.

Al-Quaeda is a minuscule minority of the islamic world and does not represent it.

Jihad is an extremely broad term which sometimes means war, and most of the time doesn't.

Almost all americans and many europeans have a problem understanding these two things, and through this ignorance make wrong judgements of the muslim world and muslims, it would be good if you could avoid strengthening that by mixing these things together.

Re:Crescent Office!

[Dazza]

Sort of like how Christianity was a bastardised form of Judaism ?

Or how Judaiam was based upon more pagan-like polytheistic ( eg, worshipping a wife of Yahweh ) religions that came before it.

btw, look up the etymology for the word 'zealot'...

Re:Crescent Office!

[AxelBoldt]

The Spanish Inquistion dudes claimed to be Christian, but were operating in total opposition to the teachings of Christ. ("Love your enemies")

I trust that you, a good Christian no doubt, have already sent off a bouquet of flowers to your beloved enemies, the Al-queda?

Re:Crescent Office!

[56ker]

1) Proper nouns ie Islamic, Muslim etc have capital letters at the start.
2) With the propoganda about Al-Quaeda, Islam & Jihad at the moment there is more ignorance and misinformation about the whole thing than ever before.

Re:Crescent Office!

[AxelBoldt]

Local muslims are not your enemies. Your enemies are people who want to wipe you off the face of the earth. Do you love those?

I was pointing out the flaw in your argument: if "Love your enemies" were the criterium for true Christianity, then there would be virtually no Christians around, since virtually nobody follows this prescription.

$ == legitimacy in business

[pyrrho]

I think it odd but likely that charging for Star Office will facilitate it's spread. People do look gift horses in the mouth, but charge them 80$ and they go away thinking, "cheap! neat!"

Re:$ == legitimacy in business

[Elias Israel]

"What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value."
-- Thomas Paine

Year in and year out, the new cars that are rated the highest are the ones that cost the most money. Generally speaking, this is not because expensive cars are so much better than others, but primarily because those who pay are obliged, in their own minds, to evaluate what they received more highly, or call themseles fools for having made the bargain.

but how?

[moosesocks]

i'm just a bit curious with the Chinese donation.

How does free software 'work' in a communist government on a large scale. Could a private enterprise (sun) give them stuff? Does it then get classified as 'enterprise' if it's free?

Free software often conveys ideas of free speech. This is frowned upon by the chinese (remember what happened in 1989?).

it's not that they couldn't use software such as this; it certainly is for a good cause. it is also certainly a welcome change to see private enterprise to begin to appear in china, just like this software, which brings up another humungous topic:

In a hard-core communist country, would the government create all software, which is required to be proprietary to the country, and keep it inside the country? What would their opinions be on free software?

and of course, after reading this post, I see why communism hasn't been successful yet.

Talking paperclips and such...

[incunabulum]

I think this is the real issue here... Would you pay for an office suite that doesn't include cute, animated assistants? I know I wouldn't! I will pay any price to have a bored kitten jump around on my screen. This may be the reason why Star is being distributed in China and not Windows Office. Those office assistants have an unchecked free-spirited character that is not acceptable in a communist society. The things that that paerclip will say!

"Single" user license.

[Copperhead]

The best part about purchasing the single-user license is that you can install it on up to 5 workstations. This eliminates the "What do you mean I can't install Office on two computers?"

Re:"Single" user license.

[sheldon]

You mean three computers.

The Office EULA allows you to install it on two computers... your desktop and your laptop.

Re:"Single" user license.

[Registered Coward v2]

The Office EULA allows you to install it on two computers... your desktop and your laptop.

That used to be the case, but I don't think it is anymore. I seem to remember my dad bitching that he couldn't take his work copy of office home, and this back around Office 97ish.

It still is, at least for Office 2k. I have it on my laptop and desktop, and had no problems geeting MS to activate both. I called, explained I wanted to install a second copy on my laptop, and they gave me the activation codes. Not that I'm a big fan of their activation scheme (or Office, for that matter), but at least they realize people want to run Office on two machines. I'm not sure about XP - I haven't found a compelling reason to fork over a few hundred bucks for whatever new features it has, given 2k does all I need (as, in fact does 98 or 95, except for some file conversion issues)

I work for a small company (less than 100 people), and StarOffice seems to be a good fit, in terms of price. What is key is the ability to seamlessly send files from MSO to/from SO; my clients use MSO almost exclusively, and I can't send them a file that they can't open and have it look just like what I have on my machine. It wouldn't look professional, and I'm not willing to risk a large consulting contract by saving a few hundred bucks on software.

Re:"Single" user license.

[rainer_d]

....they can't open and have it look just like what I have on my machine

Then please do yourself a favour and send a PDF.
It will never look the same on your clients machine when sent as .doc, because they have most probably different templates, different printers etc.
PDF is the only way to preserve layout 100%.

Re:"Single" user license.

[Registered Coward v2]

....they can't open and have it look just like what I have on my machine
Then please do yourself a favour and send a PDF.
It will never look the same on your clients machine when sent as .doc, because they have most probably different templates, different printers etc.
PDF is the only way to preserve layout 100%.

Unfortunately, even PDF isn't always 100% portable - I've had problems where the conversion inserts a blank page or strangly splits pages when generating pdf files. For some bizarre reason, this seem to happen with orignals created on Macs.

The problem with pdfs is that they are not editable - so if a client wants to make a change, they're out of luck - unless I send teh source.

I generally don't have problems with them viewing/editing - but I agree printing can be a problem.

I know you're trolling, but. . .

[kfg]

go read George Washington's farewell address to Congress anyway.

It'll answer your question.

KFG

Re:"Next-gen" office from Microsoft, also XML-base

[flacco]

Yeah, it'll be XML, but the content will be encrypted. Like this:

<ms-word format="screw-you">

l;wekras'epfu]9rj]-w34rmgq]4 5u]`mwmu -345u1vu3bm405m-uq[w4rkv=wr,v3,rvir=\aaoifj[0u5 [0uigjmlvn'sdlku[0qrt94tu0349'rgja'ergj' q49u]1349tjg'oalrjg'90ut][340tpojer'porgj093 4u51]04jg'aorjg'q394u51340tuj4nmg'eut[034

</ms-word>

OpenOffice didn't cut it for us -Would StarOffice?

[haggar]

In this NGO where I help out from time to time, there are a few computers and I have installed OpenOffice to see how it will compare to the current solutions. Well, the reason why it's not working for us is, we have a lot of documents written and some still being written in WordPerfect for Linux. In order to use OpenOffice, we have to export to .RTF. The problem is, some Finnish characters are lost in the process. Don't ask why, I have no idea.

Anyway, you see the problem. So I am wondering if StarOffice 6.0 has the possibility of editing WordPerfect docs?

I don't understand the difference, either.

[Futurepower(R)]

I don't understand the difference, either.

From the Star Office web site, "A single-user license lets you load the StarOffice office suite onto as many as five individual workstations or PCs..."

Nice licensing, but it doesn't compare with Open Office's unlimited multiple-user licenses for free.

Also, from the Star Office web site, "Through the OpenOffice.org Project, Sun has made full use of feedback from highly talented open source programmers. The StarOffice 6.0 suite shares a codebase with the OpenOffice.org 1.0 office suite, future enhancement to the base source code are planned to be available, providing the best of both worlds to users."

Sun has certainly done everyone in the world community a great service by open sourcing Star Office, but it has not explained the difference between its version and Open Office.

I just hate glib marketing writing like this. Certainly the web site writer knew what we wanted to know. Why not just tell us?

Re:I don't understand the difference, either.

[chill]

The difference?

A database program, for one. More licensed clip art and fonts, for another.

Let's see M$ get around this one!

[yancey]

Microsoft effectively beat Netscape into unconsciousness by bundling their free browser into Windows, but even with monopoly power they would never bundle the office suite for free. Office is Microsoft's big money maker. This is going to severely piss them off!

I like it.

How much better?

[Mr.Ned]

Can any Mandrake Club members who've used StarOffice attest? How much better is it than OpenOffice? Particularly, are the MSOffice filters better?

In any event, hoo rah to Sun for marketing this. Few would use OpenOffice because it's free. $75 is an excellent price - enough to make people consider it serious software but inexpensive enough to make the switch.

That's less than a quarter the cost...

[teslatug]

...of Microsoft Office

So is it one fourth as good?

Here we go again...

[fmaxwell]

Of course, where OpenOffice is licensed under the GPL, those fonts and functions *could* be developed and distributed for free by another group. Hmm.. I smell another sourceforge project here.

Sadly, you are probably right. Slashdot readers sit around bemoaning Microsoft's virtual ownership of the PC software market. But when some other company introduces a supported, professional, competing product, much of the discussion on Slashdot centers around:

1. Encouraging people to download free software instead of buying the new product.
2. Creating open source projects to replace the package being discussed.
3. Getting the package without paying for it.

Today was just another great example on Slashdot. First the announcement of Opera 6 for Linux. I lost count of the number of times that people suggested the use of Mozilla or some other free browser to avoid paying for Opera. At least one person posted registration codes. Others posted ways to disable the ads that pay the bills for the ad-supported version.

Now we have the announcement that StarOffice 6 will be sold for a mere $75. Are Slashdot readers celebrating the fact that Sun is going up against Microsoft in the office arena? Nope. The discussion centers around using, and extending, OpenOffice instead of purchasing StarOffice from Sun.

Microsoft management is probably thrilled by what they see here. A major competitor announces a compatible office suite that runs on Linux, Solaris, and Windows. It's priced at a fraction of the price of Microsoft Office. And what do readers on Slashdot, a group that should be a prime audience for the new package, do? Look for ways to avoid buying it.

Re:Here we go again...

[FredGray]

For plenty of us, it's not just about the $0 price tag. It's about having software that we are free to share with friends and colleagues. It's about having the ability to put it into a standard system image that's installed over the network to every machine in the department without any licensing hassles. It's about having access to the source code and the right to modify and build it.

If you don't care about those fundamental freedoms, then by all means buy StarOffice from Sun.

Re:Here we go again...

[fmaxwell]

For plenty of us, it's not just about the $0 price tag.

But for plenty it is, as demonstrated by the question regarding whether the enhancements were worth $75. He didn't ask about giving up freedoms for features, he asked about giving up $75.

It's about having software that we are free to share with friends and colleagues. It's about having the ability to put it into a standard system image that's installed over the network to every machine in the department without any licensing hassles. It's about having access to the source code and the right to modify and build it.

No, it's about making it financially viable for a company to release a product that competes with Microsoft. Skipping around and flinging CD-ROMs to friends, family, and colleagues does nothing to make that happen. And how much need is there to modify a browser or office suite? Get real.

If you don't care about those fundamental freedoms, then by all means buy StarOffice from Sun.

And if you don't care about Microsoft having any competition in office suite software, then by all means download OpenOffice in lieu of buying StarOffice.

Re:Here we go again...

[SteelX]

I totally agree with you. I think the reason why we're seeing this behavior might be because most Slashdot readers are tech hobbyists who prefer their things cheap or free. This is not surprising. In Geoffrey Moore's book Crossing the Chasm, this group is what we call the "innovators" -- people who love technology, who're way ahead of everybody else but they want to get their things free or as cheap as possible. Hence the many posts saying "why not download Mozilla/OpenOffice.org/etc etc" instead.

Sun's market for StarOffice 6, OTOH, is likely for IT managers and other corporate types, who prefer to pay for stuff just to get that warm fuzzy feeling that their investment is being protected. Plus, it's easier to convince upper management to migrate to alternative products, if they're stated as being "less expensive" as opposed to "free". Upper management always says, "how can good products be free?" So I think Sun's strategy of making StarOffice at a quarter price of MS Office, instead of being "free", as a really good move. Plus they offer OpenOffice.org for the hobbyists too. So I don't see why anyone should complain.

Re:Here we go again...

[fmaxwell]

So I don't see why anyone should complain.

Because this is the Internet. If you said the weather was "nice and sunny", someone would reply "I guess you think skin cancer is nice!"

The argument would probably grow into something involving several other people. Eventually all but two of the participants would move on. The remaining two would end up making hollow legal threats like "I'll have my attorney subpeona your ISP to find out who you are and then I'll sue you for slander" or, alternatively, one of the participants could compare the other to Adolf Hitler, at which point both could feign disgust with the other and refuse to continue the argument.

You really need to pay more attention to the world around you. ;-)

Re:Here we go again...

[FredGray]

And how much need is there to modify a browser or office suite? Get real.

Well, I started working on adding the ability to rotate EPS figures to OpenOffice. You can't do it in MS Office (at least in Office 97, which is the last one I've used). You can't do it in StarOffice 5.2. It would have been very useful for me on several occasions; I ended up having to convert my figures to bitmaps to rotate them, and they didn't look very good. However, by the next build, someone else with the same itch had already contributed this feature, so I can't claim credit for it. Nevertheless, that's why I personally have wanted to modify an office suite.

And if you don't care about Microsoft having any competition in office suite software, then by all means download OpenOffice in lieu of buying StarOffice.

OpenOffice is guaranteed to be available in ten years. StarOffice will disappear as soon as Sun loses interest.

Re:Here we go again...

[jrp2]

. It's about having the ability to put it into a standard system image that's installed over the network to every machine in the department without any licensing hassles.

You bring up a very valid point. Is it easy to build into an image that can be deployed cookie-cutter style without an administrative headache?

My guess is they (Sun) are not going to be jerks about it, and probably not enforcing it with s/n's being entered, etc. Maintaining all the license paperwork for the BSA audits are also painful and expensive. That is what makes MS Office and Windows and many other apps so difficult, it is a royal pain to manage and deploy it all in an enterprise setting. If they take a laissez-fair attitude, take corp folks reasonable efforts to maintain legality as "good enough" and only go after companies that blatantly disregard the licensing, they will have achieved their goals and made a lot of friends. There are not likely to be too many companies in the blatant disregard category as they could just use OpenOffice if they want to be cheap.

Bottom line, it appears Sun is not in this office game to make a killing, but primarily to stick their fork in Microsoft's side and break their lock on the market a bit and trying to break even while doing it. I just can't see them making a fuss over licensing like MS does. As far as sharing with your friends, share OpenOffice, do you really need the extras? Corps do, you and your friends probably don't. I think this is going to work just fine.

Does anyone know what kind of licensing enforcement mechanisms are being put in SO? Are they "mass deployment friendly"?

Re:Here we go again...

[fmaxwell]

Might I reiterate that you're a moron? It's middle managers like you who are resistant to change and innovation, leading us all into this damn recession.

First, let's get the insults out of the way: If you could get laid, you'd be a fucking idiot. As it is, you're only batting .500.

Secondly, I'm not a "middle manager." I am a software engineer with 20+ years of professional experience. I like getting paid for my work and I believe in paying others who do similar work.

Well any fucktard who's willing to pay for something when he can have the exact same thing for free, does deserve to get berated and made fun of.

I'm not as short-sighted as you. I recognize that monopolies are bad and that if you don't support competition, there won't be any competition.

You can't get competition for free. You have to pay for it.

Re:Here we go again...

[dunstan]

Au contraire, I think Sun would be more than happy for the more technically literate to download and use OpenOffice. The decision over whether to charge for SO6 or give it away for free was based on achieving maximum penetration, not on earning revenue.

Having establised the price point for SO6 I would expect frequent "promotions" (Summer Madness - for the month of July only get SO6 for just $39.95, that's 50% off).

Remember, every time a document is created in MS Office format it reinforces Microsoft's monopoly on office document file formats. Every time a document is created in OpenOffice/SO6 format it undermines not only that monopoly but also the Windows monopoly (as OO/SO docs can be opened on Windows, Solaris, Linux ...)

So the simplest way for Joe public to be part of undermining this monopoly is to walk into a shop and buy SO6. For the more technically literate they can achieve the same effect by a download. Is Sun bothered about the lost revenue because people are using OO? Not at all - it's all grist to their mill.

Dunstan

Re:Here we go again...

[rainer_d]

Well, I started working on adding the ability to rotate EPS figures to OpenOffice. You can't do it in MS Office (at least in Office 97, which is the last one I've used).
Of course you can't rotate EPS in MS-Office - you can't even import them.
That's what SO is really good at - importing/exporting EPS.
And one reason why I'm gonna buy it RSN.

Rainer

Re:Here we go again...

[shepd]

>I wasn't aware that using someone else's hard work, and mind was a fundamental freedom.

It is. That's the fundamental idea of copyright law. Just because the RIAA and MPAA think they can pervert it is a separate problem, but the intent is to protect the right of others to build and expand using someone else's hard work.

Wonder why?

Here's some examples:

The Lion King, Snow White, Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid.

By merging and using content from others' older material, a new idea is created.

This is the way the creative process works. Companies like Disney (ironic, isn't it?) strive to reduce the effectiveness of their own process by extending copyright to such unbelieveable lengths we probably won't see an official remake of the Disney movies in our lifetimes, even though movies like Snow White were made well before I was born.

Imagine if Shakespeare had said what you've just said. I can promise you we wouldn't be living in the same culture right now if everyone thought that same thought.

Thank God we all think differently!

>Not to mention taking away someone's chance to make a living based on your "fundamental freedom"

Someone else's chance to make a living based on my fundamental freedoms (both of which are guaranteed by the Berne Convention) should not come at the cost of those freedoms.

A happy compromise was struck decades ago, but the balance has been eroded by a few bad corporations and wimpy governments.

As long as there is no balance, there will be strife. And part of all strife is hurting the other party, which, in the case of copyright, happens to be either getting something for free legally, or, in some cases (such as with much online music) getting something for free illegally.

Re:Here we go again...

[fmaxwell]

No Slashdot reader would even think of trying to find a way to avoid buying (paying for) Microsoft products!

Microsoft has a stranglehold on the PC offce suite market. Whether Slashdot readers buy their product or not has little bearing on their overall success. Sun, while a formidable company, has no significant presence in the office suite marketplace. Whether Sun succeeds with StarOffice depends to a much greater extent on initial sales to the tech geek crowd.

Re:Here we go again...

[jrp2]

I agree with you. My response was directed to fmaxwell's exhortations that everyone should buy StarOffice rather than using OpenOffice.

Cool, then we are on the same page. But, in the spirit of fmaxwell's perhaps overzealous, but not completely out of line, rant, perhaps we all ought to buy at least one copy of the software as well as convince our bosses to buy lots. Maybe even buy our parents a copy so they have someone else to call for support ;) We have a lot to gain, and much to lose. Even the MS Office folks have something to gain as prices could go down, and interoperability go up, if StarOffice is even mildly successful. We definitely want them in there for the long haul.

XML is an uglier version of s-expressions!

[Cardhore]

I point out that XML is basically an uglier re-invention of Scheme/Lisp S-expressions. (see this link) XML isn't the cure-all end-all either as some might think.

Re:XML is an uglier version of s-expressions!

[Bobzibub]

My God man??
Are CRITICIZING XML????
Are You MAD?

(wouldn't shirts that say "XML Sux" be cool?) ; )

Cheers,
-b

Re:XML is an uglier version of s-expressions!

[dasunt]

Shouldn't the shirts say XML?

Just when I'm beginning to rely on 5.2, too...

[Guppy06]

Here I am, setting up an Adabas database as well as working on some StarBasic scripts to automate my eBay transactions and related e-mails, and it turns out that version 6 has no browser, e-mail client or true database application (the three things I need to make the scripts do what they're supposed to do). Heck, I'm having a hard time finding out if I need to look into translating the StarBasic into JavaScript for 6.0.

I'm about ready to spend the $35 for the boxed product just to make sure I have access to the software when Sun stops supporting it. Then and only then can I even consider moving on to 6.0, and I will probably end up having the two installations sitting side-by-side.

The features that died with StarOffice 5.2 were fairly useless for the personal user (their own browser and e-mail) as well as large enterprise networks (their own database structures), but damn it if they weren't useful for us middle-of-the-road types. Unless I grab one of the last copies of 5.2, I might as well invest in a copy of Office 2000 for Access 2000, Outlook and the VBA to use between them. That or learn how to script/program for real...

Re:Just when I'm beginning to rely on 5.2, too...

[Guppy06]

"With regards to email clients, well, you can call external programs for the email client."

E-mail a document or a spreadsheet from within StarOffice, sure. But can I download an e-mail message, scan it for certain information, and based on that information generate a response e-mail, create a new mail folder, and/or make or update records in one or two different databases? Without leaving the StarOffice API?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I don't find that on the web site.

[Futurepower(R)]

I've heard that, but I looked in several places on their web site, and didn't find it.

Re:I don't find that on the web site.

[comcn]

From the General FAQ:

Q. What are the differences between StarOffice 6.0 software and the OpenOffice.org 1.0?

A. StarOffice 6.0 softwre is a commercial product aimed at organizations and consumers while OpenOffice.org 1.0 is aimed at users of free software, independent developers and the open source community. StarOffice includes licensed-in, third-party technology such as:

• Spellchecker and thesaurus
• Database component (Software AG Adabas D).
• Select fonts including Windows metrically equivalent fonts and Asian language fonts
• Select filters, including WordPerfect filters and Asian word processor filters
• Integration of additional templates and extensive clipart gallery

In addition to product differences, StarOffice offers:

• Updates/upgrades on CD
• Sun installation and user documentation
• 24x7 Web based support for enterprises and consumers
• Help desk support
• Warranties and indemnification guarantee Training
• Professional services for migration and deployment

...so you get the standard OpenOffice + a few extra goodies + the standard free software money-maker, support.

As for me, I've installed OpenOffice 1.0 (I'm a TeX sort of chap), buy I can see this being great for businesses.

Not quite,

[Bake]

It'll be like this:

<ms-word format="fu">
useineeW erA sreenignE eciffOratS
</ms-word>

I installed it today on Win98Se

[ScrewTivo]

I will use it as much as possible to see when/where it fails to meet my neads. I have Star Office 6 on my GNU/Linux machine via my mandrake support. That will be another nice comparison.

If it meets only 90% of my needs then MS Office is dead in My Office!

So far looking good opening my old Word docs. But I use Word mostly for creating documentation so actually I expect OO to do just fine. I'll be putting a note in my doc's that if anyone has problems reading them that I will provide a PDF .....

ouch! I hear a Squeal! Is thata pig?

Font Issue??

[GroundBounce]

The big question is, of course, why China? Why not make it freely available to any school kid under 18? That would be a huge marketing move.

According to the OpenOffice web site, one of the main differences between OpenOffice and StarOffice6 is fonts, in particular, Asian fonts. Perhaps the reasoning is that OpenOffice is not as usable by Asian students because of the lack of Asian fonts. Western students, however, can use OpenOffice, which is already free.

Enterprise? No Outlook

[JediTrainer]

In order to compete with MS-Office in the Enterprise arena, sorry guys, they're going to have to offer an acceptable alternative to Outlook which can work with existing Exchange servers.

A company like mine, for example, which has approx 500 employees, would probably jump at the chance to get something equivalent at a cheaper price, but only if it can replace the whole thing.

Fix for OOo 1.0 font problem in Linux

[Nomad128]

I've read a couple post'ers comment on font issues in Linux. Here's how to solve the one I had, sacrificing a bit of startup time; I assume this will fix similar behavior in other Linux installs of OOo 1.0:

-----
Find user/psprint/pspfontcache from whatever directory your soffice binary is in

either delete this file or rename it

make a new, empty "pspfontcache" file and make it READ-ONLY ("touch pspfontcache && chmod 444 pspfontcache")
-----

The issue has something to do w/ font caching; I got this fix from OOo's IssueZilla.

There, OOo is now that much more useful for Linux users. :-)

For the record, I'd look into SO 6.0 if it had a *usable* database component (I hate to admit it, but, like M$ Access).

Linux kernel 2.2.13 or higher.. Sparc64!!!

[BrookHarty]

I bet thats only x86 linux. How about my linux-sparc64?

If they truly supported linux, they would support linux on their on damn hardware AND software.
-
If you cannot convince them, confuse them. - Harry S Truman (1884 - 1972)

Re:OpenOffice didn't cut it for us -Would StarOffi

[bloo9298]

Yes, StarOffice 6.0 includes a filter for WordPerfect 8 documents according to the technical FAQ. According to the general FAQ (and somewhere else that I can't find right now), the WordPerfect filter is licensed from another company, so it won't appear in OpenOffice. I won't be holding my breath waiting for a WordPerfect filter in OpenOffice, because I gather that it is quite difficult to convert WordPerfect files to other formats.

When are we going to see something big from Corel?

[Mustang Matt]

I've been hoping to see Corel do some big stuff before long.

I think that Sun really had the right idea by starting their projects opensource. That way they got people interested, they got free code from people, and they gave something back to all the people they helped out by allowing the open-office branch.

Now the thing I don't understand is... If it started as open-source, how can they turn it back into closed source? Can the creator of any work do that?

Actually it's free to all Educational Institutions

[TooLazyToLogon]

According to Sun's FAQ: Schools and educational institutions can receive StarOffice 6.0 office suite for the cost of media and shipping. For more details visit Sun's StarOffice Education Web site. Perhaps the article should have said "including China".

Re:Why not Open Office?

[johnnyb]

Open-Office does not include a database tool like Access. StarOffice does.

WARNING! IT'S A TRAP!

[jsse]

Don't attempt to be an smartass reading the above backward, because by doing so you are violating DMAC.

Excuse me while I get the door. Someone out there is knocking my door real hard.....DOH!

Re:When are we going to see something big from Cor

[RobGarth]

The LGPL. Will please please read the licenses they advocate. The LesserGPL allows Sun to take openoffice, use it and add closed source code. All the stuff they take from OpenOffice must have it's sorce readily available - and it does. But closed code can exist in the same project as LGPL code.

Re:Why not Open Office?

[SteelX]

Well I'm not necessarily that skilled to design nice templates nor do I necessarily have the time to do it. Same reason you don't expect secretaries to write word processors for themselves.

Re:Price war

[I Want GNU!]

You have to be joking. I dislike MS just as much as everyone else here but MS Office is the "standard" and most people will use it regardless of price. I doubt many will switch over to StarOffice.

Support, Support, Support

[lindsayt]

Three buzzwords for the business world and software:
1) Support
2) Support
3) Support

If you buy staroffice, you have support. If you download openoffice for your business, you have to contract in support, which is probably as much per seat as staroffice.

If no money exchanges hands, especially when it comes to the almighty GPL, there is absolutely NO GUARANTEE WHATSOEVER that the software works. Sun stakes its very life and reputation on the fact that StarOffice will work perfectly. True, the open source community produces good code, but there's no GUARANTEE of good code. Sun spent 8 months in semi-public beta of this baby (I've been using it since September).

Sun found that more companies would use StarOffice if they charged a bit for it than if it were free, for precisely this reason. Remember, the market for office suites is corporate, not personal, especially for Sun.

OS X Version??

[bigfatlamer]

So where's the OS X version? Or Classic Mac OS for that matter. I've got at least 10 machines that would run this instead of warezed versions of Orifice if it was available for Mac. If they can make it available for a 2 other Unices (leenooks and eyeriks), why not OS X, arguably the UNIX w/ the largest installed desktop user base?

Seriously, I'd buy 2 or 3 licenses for this if I could run them on my machines.
--

Re:Seems a bit pricey...

[oyenstikker]

So the thing to watch is: will Microsoft let vendors ship with StarOffice and not MSOffice, or will they add a new Microsoft-Office tax?

Re:When are we going to see something big from Cor

[Radical Rad]

Microsoft made a very large investment in Corel about a year or so ago. Corel almost immediately stopped working on Linux related software and sold off what it had. Without a roadmap for the future their stock price has fallen dramatically. Investors aren't stupid. You can't compete with a monopoly holder on its own turf.

Re:Open Office

[tempest303]

I'd love to see a KDE wrapper for SO/OO

Heh... it's not likely to come from Sun, though, seeing as how they're moving to GNOME for their default desktop for Solaris 9. There were rumblings at one point, if I'm not mistaken, that OO.o may get ported to GTK2, which would be cool.

Why Sun is losing to Microsoft

[Skim123]

They have the collective business sense of a two year old. Price alone does not account for marketshare, not nearly as much as quality. Both of these are drawfed by marketing. Other factors, such as product support and integration with existing systems are high on a company's wish list. Most medium to large companies will not even consider the price; and a smaller company would have to weigh if the savings in cost was worth learning a new system and having to move all their old stuff to the new system.

Finally, while giving away an unlimited number of copies to China may seem like a good idea, because the Chinese students may prefer this software when they are older, just remember how easy it is to get illegally pirated software in China. Who would pony up $75 when they could buy it on the streets for $5? This is like giving candy to child shoplifters in the hopes that when they get older they'll stop shoplifting and buy your candy.

Re:Why Sun is losing to Microsoft

[clare-ents]

"
Finally, while giving away an unlimited number of copies to China may seem like a good idea, because the Chinese students may prefer this software when they are older, just remember how easy it is to get illegally pirated software in China. Who would pony up $75 when they could buy it on the streets for $5? This is like giving candy to child shoplifters in the hopes that when they get older they'll stop shoplifting and buy your candy.
"

It's an extremely effective way to claim 50 million sales in the first week.

It's free for *all* educational institions

[Kunta Kinte]

Read the article

It's free for all education institutions anyway, period. You just have to buy the media. It's the same deal for solaris. We usually pay about twenty-something bucks I believe for the media. Plus not everyone is going to need the media. And you may even be able to distribute backups internally in your educational instition ( read the licence ).

Re:"Next-gen" office from Microsoft, also XML-base

[Melantha_Bacchae]

SteelX wrote:

> Hot on the heels of Sun's press release, it looks like Microsoft is also
> planning their so called next-gen Office

Actually, that was Microsoft being caught with nothing to offer when a new competitor had a new version. They can't let a competitor be in the news without blabing about themselves, so they mumbled some things about their next Office version (due in another six months to a year at the earliest). Of course they are still trying to get people to upgrade to Office XP, when many are still running Office 97, and I've even heard of one person who was still on Office 95.

> it has some comments from Gartner about both Office.NET (ugh! I'm
> getting .NET-phobia)

Here's a nice story that might make you feel better. Once upon a time, Microsoft spent much time and money researching a brilliant new idea. They brought it to market, and named it Bob. Poor Bob fell flat on his face and immediately died (I believe the cause was terminal stupidity, but I could be wrong). (Un)fortunately, the cute cudly assistants from Bobland were rescued and went to live in Office, where they lived happily ever after (until Microsoft recently made them disabled by default).

History, thankfully, repeats itself (because Microsoft never seems to learn). In the late 90's, Microsoft spent much more time and money researching the Millenium Project (yep, Millenium also starred as the alien that Godzilla nuked in "Godzilla 2000 Millenium"). Millenium used Java (and a JVM named "Borg") instead of C#, but it was basically the same thing that Microsoft is bringing to market under the name of ".Net". Hailstorm was to be .Net's crown jewel (and the bane of privacy organizations everywhere). Hailstorm (supprise, supprise) has fallen flat on its face, and now Microsoft announces that it too will be joining Office. Also joining Office will be the subscription fees to pay for Hailstorm (and while you are at it, Microsoft hopes you will pay for Office over and over again too).

Sooner or later, every product of Microsoft's that people hate will be bundled with either their OS or their office suite. With any luck, both Windows and Office will become so universally hated that people will switch to all the better alternatives that are out there (and more will come the more people want them).

What happens when you embrace and extend Godzilla? Nuclear heartburn!
See "Godzilla 2000" (released in Japan as "Godzilla 2000 Millenium") for details.

Student Version?

[proxima]

I know it's asking much, but many students can obtain cheap copies of Microsoft Office from their universities for $25-100. I'm personally interested in helping out Sun's development and sales of Star Office (being able to install on 5 computers is very gracious of them), but I'd rather not pay 3x what I can get Microsoft Office for.

I'm sure students like myself would snatch up Star Office (download version only, to save on boxed-set material costs) for $25. It's hard for me to justify a $75 purchase for features I'd only occasionally use just in the name of my support of Star Office/Open Office. I'd rather spend $25 on SO, then spend that $50 on some other open source software or donation to my favorite distro - Debian.

Re:Student Version?

[vidarh]

Then just download Open Office. It is free, it is mostly the same codebase as Star Office. What you don't get is printed manuals, support, Word Perfect import/export and a few other minor things.

The Star Office price was set because corporate customers of Sun has asked for a shrinkwrap version that includes support, and because they wanted certain features that Sun hasn't been able to donate to Open Office because they contain third party IP.

Re:Student Version?

[eclectric]

Well, real "academic" copies of MS Office are priced at $99-$149 for basic, and $199 for pro. (with Access). What you are getting (or seeing) for $25 is most likely a special deal your particular university may have with the company. For instance, my university has a campus-wide license, which means students can simply download all of MS office and install it, or purchase it on 3 cds for $15. WinXP can also be had for the $5 cd price (it is not available for download.) I've personally never seen academically priced Office for less that $99 US.

assistance

[commodoresloat]

The commercial version includes a talking paper clip.

Hints for Sun

[Karl Cocknozzle]

And the home user who recieves MS Office for "free" with their computer? Why pay $75 extra to do what you already can? Again, if it were a twenty-five bucks less, it sounds a lot more reasonable to test it out.

I agree, a volume price break to around $50 would make this a totally reasonable choice for businesses of 10+.... Offer a 10-pack for $500, and you'll get a lot of attention. That's about $20 more than the off the shelf price for Office XP pro for just one person. To be fair, though, I don't know how much MS discounts Office to its biggest customers/victims.

Great hint for Sun (if they're reading) is to setup a promotion where the user gets a coupon on the box for a $25 instant rebate. Instead of $75, it's 50, and that's a very reasonable price indeed for software that can accomplish what 85-90% of the $400+ suite use their software for: Document generation and word processing.

I would like to point out that users who get Office with an OEM machine are paying extra for it somewhere--it's never free.

I also encourage Macintosh users who are interested in non MS word processors to check out either Appleworks or the AbiWord beta for OS X (which requires XDarwin.) Obviously, those wanting support from an "established vendor" will pick Appleworks. Those wanting to participate in an open source project should get AbiWord...

Re:Seems a bit pricey...

[homer_ca]

Does anybody else get the symbolism yet? 76? As in 1776, Declaration of Independence, freedom (in this case freedom from Microsoft).

$76 isn't dirt cheap, but it's pretty cheap considering its liberal licensing terms. According to the press release, the $76 single user license can be installed on up to FIVE computers. Enterprise licensing is about $50 per seat. The only catch for the low price is bare bones support. You get online support (not a bad deal if it's as good as the Sunsolve Solaris support website) and one free support call. Presumably they'd charge more for higher level support contracts. The sad part is, Microsoft's support for a $700 retail Office XP isn't any better than Sun's lowest level support on $76 Staroffice. Do you even get a free support call with retail Office XP?

Gosh, how appropriate!

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Sun has ... [made] an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.

Like 2 peas in a pod ...

Getting them ready for the Ministry of Java, I suppose.

Re:For the lazy ones, here's the FUD briefing

[fferreres]

FUD Part 1:
"Companies considering a switch to StarOffice or a competing product won't find the move cheap. Gartner estimates that the average cost per user would be about $1,200, which works out to about $800 for labor and $400 for productivity. In contrast, companies upgrading to Office every two years would spend about $550 per user, or $700 every four years. That means many businesses would take eight years to recover their initial investment.
" (note: Was Gartner the company that made some pro MS statements in a report, and forgot to clean the MS-signed footnotes? Can't recall but i think it was them)

FUD Part 2:
"Whenever you put StarOffice on the desktop, you're taking a risk," Smith said. "You're moving to something that's not tried and supported...There's no guarantee that file compatibility won't be a problem."


Are we happy now? :)

Re:Applixware?

[vidarh]

StarOffice continues to thrive because of the free alternatives. Star Office is based on the same code base as Open Office, remember, which is an open source project. While Sun provides a lot of development work for Open Office, a lot of other people work on it as well. Open Source reduces Suns development costs.

The reason Sun cited for charging for StarOffice 6.0 was customer demand for a shrinkwrap version.

StarOffice 6.0 versus OpenOffice.org 1.0

[chris_sawtell]

What do I get in my $75.95 product purchase that I don't get in the free project?

Educational Licenses

[Jeppe Salvesen]

From the Sun pages:And as always, education customers can receive copies of the StarOffice 6.0 office suite for the cost of media and shipping. . I assume this would make the Chinese deal less shocking. It's not totally free, but it looks like students or parents looking to pinch pennies can pinch a few thousand.

Of course, if you're content with openoffice.org, then download and burn for free.

Re:"Next-gen" office from Microsoft, also XML-base

[peddrenth]

I've even heard of one person who was still on Office 95.

While the rest of us were happily using word 6 and access 2 until we switched to openoffice (or in my case, LaTeX)

Price Tag

[Tony-A]

That's the one thing you always get with StarOffice that you can't get with OpenOffice.
I wonder how many corporation will buy StarOffice and use OpenOffice. It's not really as crazy as it sounds.

Office 95 ain't that bad

[tkrotchko]

I bought a copy in...probably '95, and I still have the CD.

I think Office 95 is great for use with older laptops. Its disk requirements are very small compared with '97, 2000, and XP/2002, and it seems to be quick and fast.

If you can track down a copy at a hamfest, its a good product.

Forking

[mgkimsal2]

"Fork" always seemed to me to have the idea that someone took code and changed it to make it do something different. In this case, they're taking the openoffice.org codebase and adding extra pieces before they package/ship it.

Taking a project and adding extra graphics, templates and a manual doesn't feel like a 'fork' to me. From what I understand, as code changes in the openoffice.org project, that'll make it's way into future star offices too. 'Fork' would imply that they would only be doing their own development on that entire codebase from now on, and I don't think that's the case.

The best things in life are free

[Tony-A]

To complete the irony, the $80.00 StarOffice is a much better product with the free OpenOffice running around. Seems like Tech Support is designed to handle "user error" not things like bug fixes.

uhhhhhh.......what good is this?

[AppyPappy]

by making an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.
-

China doesn't pay for software. For all intents and purposes, MS has done the same thing. They just don't know it.

OK, there is no pirating in China. I made it up.

You are missing the trojan

[horza]

As soon as I heard about Sun charging for Star Office, I switched over to OpenOffice. I haven't noticed any loss of functionality.

What I have noticed is that on a modern(500Mhz+) machine, Open Office is fast, relatively bug-free, and can open and save MSOffice documents easily. I rather like it.

I could see paying to support the project, but I don't see people paying $75 en masse for something they could get for free with OpenOffice.

So you've noticed that Open Office is fast on your 500MHz machine, and you rather like it. After a while you'll get used to it and any of its little quirks. When it comes around to renewing Office licenses at work you'll be able to say, "hey save 75% of the cost and get me an Star Office license because that's what I'm used to using anyway". Your company saves money, Sun gets their $75, part of that money goes back into improving your free Open Office that you use at home. I can't see anyone important that loses out in the deal :-)

Phillip.

Re:One problem [offtopic]

[saintlupus]

If I were you I'd try to find myself an old junker Pentium 200Mhz or more (as long as the thing can boot off of a CD).

I'd recommend trying to find an IBM PC365. It's a pretty common machine on eBay with a PPro 200 and a 2 gig drive. I got mine for about 30 dollars, if I recall correctly. It even supports a second processor if you want to play around with SMP.

--saint

Re:Open Office

[danro]

Calling MS Access a database is kind of an overstatement.
Besides, development on the JET engin (used in Access) has stopped, and Access itself is scheduled for a slow death.

It's only there for backwards compatibility, more or less...

Hell yeah!

[JCCyC]

I can almost see the big ad campaign next July: "Spirit of $76!"

Maybe they can hire Mel Gibson?

mod up parent (plus o/t rant )

[Cally]

extremely well said, it's a shame this comment is currently just at +2 ( ). It's been said before but it's important to keep on saying it as long as people accept corporate propaganda without question (which, let's face it, the vast majority of us do.) Someone here used to have a sig quote (from The Usual Suspects, I think?) along the lines of: "The cleverest thing the devil ever did was to convince the world he didn't exist." Well the smartest thing Disney (corp.) ever did was to boil the frog so that gradually the idea that we might have intellectual freedom has become an outlandish, bizarre idea that most people just don't Get without a lot of careful explaining.

Re:Proprietary vs Open source, Episode MVXXI

[fmaxwell]

So you are suggesting we make a donation to Sun Microsystems?

Not at all. I am suggesting that undermining their business by encouraging people to use free alternatives is just playing into Microsoft's hands.

I already did that, I bought some of their %^%## stock.

That's not how stocks work. When Sun initially sold the stock, they were selling off partial ownership of their company. If you bought the stock from Sun, you paid to own a percentage of their company. If you bought the stock from another investor, Sun got nothing from you.

It really doesn't sound like you should be investing on your own. You might want to hire a financial advisor if you have a sizeable sum to invest and protect.

Why not just wait for Gobe Productive?

[foqn1bo]

I have the utmost respect for Sun, but if you're going to spend ~80$ then you may be better off waiting for Gobe Productive to come out. Which is here. I have been following these guys since the Beos days, and v 3.0 looks like hot shit. And Ars Technica seems to think so too. The Linux version is coming out soon, and if you buy the Windows version at its introductory price(~80$) they will send you the Linux version for free when it comes out.

ZDNet: Why StarOffice and not OOo?

[SteelX]

I wonder if anyone still reads this thread. Anyway, here's a pretty insightful
ZDNet article that talks about why somebody would want to pay $76 for StarOffice instead of downloading OpenOffice.org for free. One interesting part is where the author mentions that since the codebase for StarOffice and OOo are sync'ed daily, a company can actually just buy one copy of StarOffice for $76 (to get Sun's support) and deploy OOo company-wide.