No-Cost StarOffice Licensing for Institutions

eugene ts wong writes: "A while ago Sun announced that it was giving unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education. Well, it turns out that they announced that they are giving unlimited no-cost licenses for all education and research institutions." Many college students now get drastic discounts on Microsoft Office - but this covers a much broader range, from kindergarten up.

Comments

Re:Why?

[topher1kenobe]

StarOffice is OpenOffice with a bunch of added loot. Not everyone needs it, but hey, if it's free, why not get the fonts and clipart etc.?

Great News for the NW Schools!

[questionlp]

I think this is great news, primarily for those schools in the NW who were targetted with audits by Microsoft as they are moving towards Linux. Not only do they have a more stable/secure environment to work in but also a very nice office suite... for gratis.

So far, I'm quite impressed with OpenOffice.org 1.0 on my Windows machine, though some of the files that I need to open won't since it doesn't work with Macros or data pulls from a SQL Server or an Access file.

Re:Great News for the NW Schools!

[aero6dof]

Yes, but Microsoft is pushing a license that charges a fee for every machine that could run MS software - instead of charging for any that actually do run MS software. Under that scheme, StarOffice might not make any difference in the licensing costs until the institution is willing to swear off MS site licensing entirely.

Re:Why?

[moonbender]

StarOffice has some features that were left out of OpenOffice because they rely on proprietary code.
This is the part of the official FAQ pertaining to this:

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

For more information on components and services available for the OpenOffice.org product, visit http://www.openoffice.org site.

The main difference is probably the thesaurus and the database. OpenOffice has its own free spellchecker, don't know if it's as good or better than the proprietary one.

packaging

[EricBoyd]

I know that at Queens University, the students don't buy individual packages of software anyway, at least not the engineers. We buy a $200 package of everything we'll need for our 4 years there - MS Office, good telnet client, Maple, matlab, etc. etc. So I don't know that this will make that much difference - it's not like the engineers have a choice...

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon

Try it, you'll like it.

[Futurepower(R)]

If you haven't tried Star Office or Open Office, try Open Office. It's free. It's excellent. Of the free word processors, it seems to be the best.

I've had a lot of problems with Microsoft Word being quirky. Sometimes Microsoft Word will move a footer to the top of the following page, for example. I don't have a huge amount of experience with Open Office, version 1.0 was released on May 1, I think, but it doesn't seem quirky.

Re:Microsoft offered the same deal...

[captain_craptacular]

No, you may get it for "free" but whats really going on is your school pays M$ 4.5 assloads of cash for a site liscense. My school does that, everything was all good for the first couple years. Then the beast started contesting the liscenses of products on staff/faculty personal computers even when used solely for University related work. It went downhill from there.

My Mother-In-Law doesn't "Grok" StarOffice

[Geek In Training]

This is funny, since my mom-in-law was just in town last weekend and we talked at length about StarOffice. She is the director of a large educational outreach program in a large midwestern US state, designed to get poorer school disricts online with current technologies.

I love my mother-in-law, she is awesome. She has an advanced degree and an uncanny ability to understand where things are going and why they are important in the grand scheme of things. The devil is in the details though... she can't understand StarOffice very well at all, from a UI point of view.

All of her project schools are going to get StarOffice, and all of her staff is undergoing training. The problem is that they have been using MSOffice for so long, they dcan't be "untrained" easily at all. She says the third graders pick up StarOffice - piece of cake... but for the people in charge... teachers, administrators, etc, StarOffice is counter-intuitive.

So the question begs... even if it is free, and can do everything they need, will it work?

Just my thoughts on the matter.

OpenOffice for OS X already available (almost)

[xcomputer_man]

Work on an OS X version of OpenOffice/StarOffice has been underway for a good while now. In fact if you bothered to visit the OpenOffice.org web site you'd see that there is already a Developer's Build of OpenOffice.org 1.0 available for download.

You're right, free StarOffice for OS X would be a most excellent idea for educational institutions.