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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.
Why would anyone use StarOffice, M$Office? When openOffice is there?
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Many college students now get drastic discounts on Microsoft Office
Not quite. Typically the school purchases licenses from MS and then discounts them to students or, in the case of my school, just plain gives them a license (or 2 in the case of Office XP). Guess where the money to but those licenses comes from? Yup - tuition.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Firstly, this is excellent news.
However, one thing that Sun must still address is how to increase their adoption in the corporate sector.
The reason why colleges are requested to stock Microsoft Office is that is what the businesses use to whom they are applying for jobs.
My last university, McMaster University used to stock nothing but Corel office (cheaper, helped to support a local business), but in about 1997, they bowed to student pressure to replace it with MS Office since the commerce/science/arts/etc students wanted to have the "strong proficiency with advanced Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Access" on their resumes to compete for their jobmarkets.
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As the website states, "$85/campus for support". That's truly amazing, and especially so when you realize that they're going to get a ton of calls about some of the translation from M$ formatted docs to SO formatted docs. I'm sure that it doesn't seem so bad when you're looking at supporting small colleges, but what about the Ohio State's, Michigan State's with around 50,000 students per campus? Also, what about state systems like UC and SUNY? What constitutes a cam pus? Is SUNY-Albany covered if SUNY-Buffalo gets support?
The only caveat here is getting campuses to support two office suites, since you know that the overwhelming majority aren't going to just pick up and move over to SO and leave M$Office behind in one fell swoop. Initially, those who decide to adopt SO will have to transition users into using SO instead of M$Office, and that means more support costs for the campus IT personnel.
Of course, get a few students who want instant resume material (read: participated in a major campus-wide application migration project), and it might not be an issue.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
As a student I'm all for this; I like star office (well right now I have open office) better than the M$ stuff.
But sun isn't doing this out the kindness of their hearts. The idea is if student use their product from k-college then when they get into business they will buy full versions for companies. Apple tried something similar, but it never quite took hold. Also, becuase StarOffice is able to save as M$ formats, but M$ cannot read StarOffice format (atleast last I checked), well it seems to say that M$ does not have to worry about Sun, yet, but Sun has to worry about M$.
If sun is successful; we'll be seeing businesses switch to StarOffice, just as soon as the kids grow up. Does this mean that Sun thinks StarOffice will still be around in 20 years? Sure seems like it.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I'm surprised they're not trying to spin things like this the way most other software donations work. "We just donated one hundred billion dollars *coughOfSoftwarecough* to all the little kiddies."
Or maybe it's just because "We just donated infinity dollars..." would make it sound like the silliness it actually is.
Random and weird software I've written.
They are still not sufficient to be comparable with M$ Office.
What the Linux community NEEDS to get in its (collective)head is that the desktop will STILL be RULED by M$ until XXXOffice (Open/Star/etc) has a Word package that COMPLETELY pulls in ALL M$ Word docs AND something that TRULY functions as M$ Outlook and can pull in PST files. Until this happens M$ will continue to RULE the desktop.
I do not like M$ any more than others BUT I have to use Outlook to function in ALL of the large corps I consult to. The inbox, calendar, and contacts are a formidable opponent. M$ Exchange means that a large multinational corp can have every office around the world connected with the same global address book and the ability to make scheduled meetings with EVERYONE in that company. IF "alternate Outlook" existed that connected to M$ Exchange and worked completely (schedule, contacts, email), I would be ALL over that in a heartbeat, AND I would sell it to ANYONE who would listen.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY... WITHOUT something that can "BORG in" (assimilate) M$ DOCs, Outlook, and XLS there is NO CHANCE Linux will topple M$. The package does not even have to have "all" the capabilities as long as it can pull in the file (doc, pst, xls) not crash and have the file look "almost" exactly like it did in M$ Office and we have a chance for a REAL revolution on the desktop.
People seem to forget that the WAY to WIN is to ASSIMILATE. M$ proved that SO MANY times over. How did I get sucked into Outlook the first time before my Corporate experience? Fire up Outlook and it says "Hey I see you have a Netscape email account... Want me to pull that info into Outlook for you?" Sure I said just to see how effective it was and to my supprise is got everything without one error. So I used it for a couple of days... It out does ANY email system out there. The ONLY MAJOR caveat is the F*%king security problems and we ALL know about those. BUT, it is FAR more effective at email/scheduler/contacts controller than anything else.
MY $0.02
"Nonsense. No state institution that I'm aware of runs off of tuition. They almost all run off of massive taxpayer subsidies (state, federal). Tuition barely makes the vig at those places."
Gee, where does that 10 grand a year go to then?
"If you're in college and you feel oppressed by your university because they're holding back on what they "owe" you for your tuition, you're pretty sadly mistaken."
I think you're sadly mistaken on the point of this post: I work for the technology department of the school, and was recently involved in try to decide if it was worth the continuing license costs when less than 15% of the students use the option for cheap M$ software. That money could be put to better use, simply because its not cost effective. And whether the money comes directly from tuition, or from the taxes I get stiffed on every year (in reality, both), it could still be put to more beneficial use than offering an option that a majority of the student body doesn't know about or care to take advantage of.
When we can use M$ in the computer labs for the one+ paper(s) we need to type in a year, why buy it? And the other half of us got Office as part of a computer package from Dell or some company, and don't care if Office XP has newer stuff than their Office2k.
So regardless, my original point stands.
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But on a lighter note, this can only be good, folks. Hopefully, over the course of time, this will devalue the Microsoft Office suite to the point where Microsoft will either have to give it away for free, or will no longer able to charge such exorbitant licensing fees (a $79 version of Office wouldn't be bad...) Consumers, regardless of which office suite they choose, will benefit.
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