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Sun and Apple Team Up for StarOffice for Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the victory-is-within-our-grasp dept.

An anonymous reader writes, "CNET writes about Sun and Apple getting together to create StarOffice for the Mac OS X." Apparently, the Java-based OpenOffice app will be released before year's end (a developer release went out on Thursday), with a commercial StarOffice release sometime next year.

4 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Summary by Dr.+JJJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    The main points of the article are:

    1) The relationship between Apple and Microsoft has been strained by the lackluster sales of Office v.X. Apple supports the porting of StarOffice because it doesn't want MacOS X to be cutoff from the ability to interact with the ever-important Microsoft dominated office file formats should Microsoft decide to abandon the platform.

    2) Development hurdles that Sun must overcome are removing and redesigning X11 protocol specific code to work with Quartz 2D -- Apple's windowing API -- and redesigning the user interface such that it conforms to the Apple Aqua guidlines. (That's a tall order, especially considering that much of the Aqua guidlines are incomplete and still being formed.) Currently, StarOffice uses its own interface toolkit, built from the ground up.

    3) The ever-pressing issue of how to make money by selling an essentially open-source product. Sun plans to do this not by merely offering support, but also adding special enticements to a commercial distribution that wouldn't be available in an open-source distribution. (An example is the bundling of commercial quality fonts with the software).

  2. Re:{Star,Open}Office preinstalled on Windows by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Findings of Fact in the Microsoft trial gives an answer to that. Back in 1995, IBM did ship PCs with Windows/Lotus Suite bundles, as well as OS/2 equivalents. Microsoft told IBM if they didn't stop bundling OS/2 or Lotus with their PCs they would not be licenced to offer Windows 95 IBM didn't back down until the last moment, which lead to a situation where IBM didn't even get a copy of the final version to test with their hardware until the hour before Windows 95 was released.

    Result: IBM, knowing a PC manufacturer who didn't support Win95 at that particular point in time, would sell virtually no PCs, stopped bundling both the Lotus software and OS/2 from that point on, affectively killing the commercial chances of both.

    I doubt any PC manufacturer is going to consider shipping a rival office suite for many years to come unless either they're so small they cannot expect decent treatment from MS anyway, or else the penalties levelled against Microsoft actually have some effect.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Re:Apple Convert by technomancerX · · Score: 5, Informative
    Switch, you won't regret it. I've used Linux exclusively for the last 3 years (including for Java development at work) and I recently got an iBook and haven't looked back. I think I've booted my Linux workstation twice since making the purchase.

    I develop 4 open source PHP/MySQL utilities, and have moved development of all of them over to OS X. Project Builder is pretty good, or if you use Vim or Emacs you can install X11 (I did). KDE is now in Fink, and Trolltech has also release an OS X native version of Qt.

    One recommendation: put in a lot of RAM. When I first got the iBook (700MHz) I though it was kind of slow, but now that I maxed out the RAM (640MB), it's very nice. Also, my wife has one of the 800MHz 15" iMacs, and it's really nice as well.

    --
    .technomancer
  4. Re:Apple Convert by askien · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've used PC's since the original IBM PC came out, OS/2 from 87 to 98 and Linux from 95-present.

    I got an iBook because I thought the hardware was sexy. I tought about installing Yellow Dog and a two button mouse. Guess what happened?

    I ditched Linux for MacOS X but kept using my old apps, like mutt and so on. I kept writing C code with vi, et all

    After 3 months, I found myself using the Mail app that comes with MacOS X, Project Builder, and Objective C.

    Cocoa is wonderfull -- get the Hillegrass book, it's good beginning stuff.

    I never intended to make the switch. It was the hardware that got me. Then, slowly I got hooked. I highly recommend the platform. I would never ever use a mac before MacOS X, but now I think of it as the NeXT box that I never got.

    Sometimes I think of the non-free nature of the whole thing, but the fact that Darwin, gcc, and a lot of other stuff is Open Source/Free, it makes me feel a little better. Besides you can run Darwin, X and GNUStep.

    --
    -- askien