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

Institutions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do /. users get free licenses then? Most of them belong in institutions...

Microsoft offered the same deal...

[j-turkey]

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

College students don't really get a discount

[pogle]

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).

Go Sun GO!

[G00F]

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.

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.

Excellent, but one issue still for Sun to address:

[afflatus_com]

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.