Slashdot Mirror
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?
--=.=-- www.cyber2000.qc.ca
Do /. users get free licenses then? Most of them belong in institutions...
Many college students now get drastic discounts on Microsoft Office
;)
Microsoft offered the same deal that Sun did when I was a college student -- no wait, I stole it.
-Turkey
-Turkey
This is great news!
Here in Maryland, the state universities pay a massive license fee that covers every student attending, so they can pay for the cost of media only ($5, real expensive cdrs). But that money comes from your tuition anyways, so the savings are all only perceived...better off using StarOffice, and dropping that license, and saving some of that tuition money for better purposes (I want the old studen center made into a lasertag arena personally, but other improvements could apply too).
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Its nice seeing Sun take the ball and run, even though some of their thigns arn't making sense. (like the new cost of Solaris) I do like how Sun creates cross platform/os/network things. I just hope they keep them open once all the MS monopolies are broken and they have the lead.
This is a really good stratigy to moving(breaking MS "other" monopoly) into business. Open source/free program that can do most things Staroffice can, staroffice being a more polished product with more features being charged a low amount, but giving free to all places that where people would be inclined to bring it into a place where it could make money.
I haven't used the new star office yet, but I do know that the old one had major flaws with office files.(saving) Also, it has some anoying features I have to fight with, and can't find the options to. But other than that, its a very nice product.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
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.
Wow. The Microsoft hired trolls got here quick, didn't they?
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
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
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.
Having run a college lab, I know the major barrier to adoption was ease of use -- you don't want your lab CAs having to spend hours explaining a shell to drama majors (or professors, for that matter). But what about a very simple desktop (similar to Apple's old easyfinder (I can't remember what it was called) specially prepared for educational students?
I mean, throw together a dist that's user friendly, that has Star Office, some pre-canned ghost like functions (for labs) and a grading app for teachers, and I think educational instiutions big and small would be falling all over themselves to adopt it.
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
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.
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
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.
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.
That is one of the best news I've heard from Corporate America in a while.
Feel free to rip off businesses; they've got the money anyway.
But the schools should get free software, or at least heavily discounted, software.
After all, Let's think about the children!.
If you want cheap ms products(OS's, OFFICE, Visual Studio, ect...) Go to your local university, find a college bar and offer some broke student 50 bucks to log into the website and order the software for you. You can pick up visual studio, office xp, and windows xp for 30 dollars a piece. Add in the 50 bucks you gave the kid and you have the whole set for 140 dollars.
If you don't think many students would be interested, I think you have forgotten how broke students are and how much cheap beer 50 bucks will buy.
Now that any educational system can get StarOffice for free, we don't have to worry about our kids vandalizing computers when they see Clippy appear on the desktop.
It's terrible. I used the SO6 beta for a while, and switched to OpenOffice 1.0 when it came out, and ye gods the checker is awful. It's better than it was in the older betas, but it's nowhere near the quality of the one in commercial SO releases.
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.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I'm telling you, Sun's "Insanity First!" initiative is REAL! When you people start believing me? I was right about Katz being a mad-libs Perl script, wasnt I?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Sun must still address is how to increase their adoption in the corporate sector
;)
Remember Apple? They gave away free Mac's to schools. After the students graduated, a good portion of them found that since they were already used to using Mac's, it was easier for them to buy a Mac than it was to get a PC.
Sun is thinking the same way.
They're going to give it away to schools, the same schools where the future admins/managers/workers are coming from. If the admin/manager/worker has already worked with StarOffice and is comfortable with it, they will be more apt to push for that solution rather than paying $x+xxx for the M$ solution.
It's almost like drugs.. at first, you give it away for free. Eventually, they'll get hooked on it and come pay you for more!
---
I think, therefore I think I am.
As I understand it (and I may be wrong) the agreement only relates to the institution's computers. You would need to pay the full price ($79.95 US) for your own computer. That probably doesn't matter because it is unlikely you'll need any features not in the free Open Office.
would really work if they *gasp* made a version compatible with the system that HALF of all public schools use. It shouldn't be that hard to port the linux version over to OS X. Microsoft is just laughing at Sun for forgetting about HALF of the computers in schools.
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.
Actually, it's the other way round. Sun takes the source code of OpenOffice.org, adds extra stuff (database, etc), packages it nicely, and you get StarOffice. Ok that's not totally detailed, but you get the idea.
When I was a full time student I regularly checked on what discounts were available to me on various software packages. In general I found them to be not enough to be relevant. They didn't make them affordable to the average student, just less than you would pay through any other legitimate source.
Now that I've discovered GIMP and OpenOffice, though, it's largely irrelevant. They do everything I would use the various Adobe or MS packages for, and the price is right.
This is still good news, though. I would love to see StarOffice take over in schools. That would make things much easier for me as an OpenOffice user.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
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.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
...but this may be a place to start undermining that sad home truth. I wish more software companies (like Corel, hint, hint?) would do this.
As a WordPerfect freak (no flames, please, I'm a wordsmith and it's a crafter's tool) who works for a Corel VAR (among other things), I still sit in front of MS-Office all day. Why? Even though my current project is an ideal FrameMaker (or your designated alternate here) job, the guy on the other end wants Word files.
Similarly, when I don't have a job, it's convenient to be able to send resumes from home in Word for the clueless recruiters who can't (or won't) open anything else, since I don't imagine we're ever going to see complete M$/everything else document interoperability anytime before the Tuesday after Doomsday.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Microsoft offers a similar deal to K-12 students and faculty (for use OUTSIDE of the school, according to EULA. Microsoft doesn't typically release those prices to the public)
K-12 Students and faculty can get Office XP Full for $149 (a 70% discount).
Of course, Sun offers no indication of offering the products to students for use at home (for school related work, of course!)
One can only wonder HOW microsoft can legally enforce their EULA on the K-12 Office, as it only permits it to be used by students (not parents) for work relating to school.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
This LOOKS like this applies not only to traditional universities, but the for-profit Devrys of the world. Interesting, compared to the standard "non-commercial" stuff.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Believe nothing -- Buddha
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.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I don't know how much the dicounted Microsoft Office costs now, but IIRC in the UK 4 years ago it cost 149 pounds ~= $200 USD. Now, that would position _undiscounted_ Star Office at 1/3 of the cost of the _discounted_ MS Office. So not "Ngh..."
(If someone knows the real cost of the Student edition of MS Office, I'd be happy to hear it.)
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.
Am I a hipster-doofus?
I think that it would be great if colleges sold CDs with Star Office to make it easier for students who don't want to download the software. The students can pay for the disk and the time that it took to copy the cd. Is $5 asking too much?
testing out my trending skills
I hope that proffessors would encourage students to use Star Office by allowing them to hand in essays in Star Office format. Perhaps, the students can hand in the essays on disk or as an email attachment?
testing out my trending skills
Quark Express is the standard in layout and design software. It's also a horrible piece of crap, but we won't get into that.
A single-user license for Quark 5 costs (IIRC) $900. However, universities can buy an 8 license package for $800, with the ability to add licenses later for $99 each. Thus, everyone learns Quark in school, and it stays entrenched in businesses because it's easy to find people who know it (trust me, I really didn't want to buy Quark again, but I just did, because I basically have to). Plus, that's what most printing places accept, because it's the most popular...and so that's what they teach in schools so that their students can graduate and get jobs. Begin again.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
..." 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."
That is from here.
How is a person doing a network install costing their company $800 per machine? What kind of hourly rate is that?
... one thing that Sun must still address is how to increase their adoption in the corporate sector.
Sun says that's why they're charging for Star Office in the first place (rather than just open-sourcing it). They want to achieve penetration in businesses that are used to paying through the nose for tools such as Microsoft Office and think free software means amateur crudware.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's nice to craft your software for artists or the education market or even for the server market (and companies like Apple and Sun have done an OK job at these things). But what really keeps Microsoft flying high is that they cater to the biggest (but definitely NOT the sexiest) market: office workers and secretaries. If you want to beat them, you MUST play on that field.
i gotta mostly agree with you on this, but i'm not so sure that 150M$ goes very far with keeping a software/hardware company afloat such as apple. hell a dot bomb with 60 employees (and actual revenue) couldn't sustain for 18 months on that cash (been there done that).
even before going out to play w/ the adults we realized that apple wasn't going to be the thing to do. the colleges might have had some apple labs for use, but business, comp sci, and accounting students were using the ibm pc's for everthing. i don't know what happened to the marketing droids, but that's gotta explain why they're always have a floor of their own.
If I'm not sure how to spell a word I usually look it up at Merriam-Webster. If I don't know how to spell it, I'm generally not exactly sure of the definition/connotation, and so it's probably a good idea to make sure that's really the word I'm looking for. It's also pretty good at making suggestions, and if I'm not sure that's really what I want, there's also a theraurus.
I've always been a bit of a spelling nazi, so for me a spell checker is just a tool to catch typos. I find it really irritating when it keeps questioning me simply because I have a large vocabulary. It doesn't seem like it should be that difficult, especially for a company like MS, to give their office suite a real dictionary. Maybe they sell one as a seperate add-on to bleed more money from their customers? I don't know.
The spell checker is just an annoyance, though. It's the grammar checker that really irks me.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.