Sun Denies StarOffice on Mac OS X

mattworld1 writes, "MacCentral is reporting that while development of OpenOffice for Mac OS X will continue, Sun is denying that a version of StarOffice is in the works. This is unfortunate, as it would be nice for Mac OS X users to have a good alternative to the expensive Microsoft Office." Apparently it's not all bad news, as VValdo writes, "The recent announcement of a collaboration from Apple/Sun on a Java-based version of StarOffice for Mac OS X shocked and angered many of the OpenOffice developers who had been left totally in the dark. After two days of intense programming on a proof of concept, they announced a first look at Open Office in Aqua." Neat!

Comments

Clarification

[Nomad7674]

My understanding is not that the StarOffice story was materially WRONG, but that it was a bit distorted.

Essentially, Star and Apple programmers have been working with the OpenOffice developers on getting out a version of OpenOffice (which the original reporter confused with StarOffice, the commercial version of OpenOffice) for MacOS X. But it is still under the aegis of OpenOffice and will be a called OpenOffice and will not be sold by Sun. It was never an official Sun-sponsored initiative and no one was given a paid position to support a MacOS X version. But Sun employees did some work, Apple employees did some work, and the StarOffice team provided informational help on the structure of OpenOffice, when asked.

This distorted reporting has spawned a lot of scathing commentary on all sides. Shows that having the right facts in the wrong order can be as bad as having the wrong facts, as far as the community is concerned.

What would be great

[bogie]

Is that if Apple bundled OpenOffice with OSX. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. This would make OSX even more compelling. It would also allow Apple to tell MS to shove that carrot they dangle over Apple where the sun don't shine. They are already overcharging their customers already, why not charge $10 more per machine to cover tech support costs for OpenOffice. They by this fall with Redhat and Apple including OpenOffice we would actually start to see some market share. If we are ever going to get out from under MS's thumb we have to start somewhere. Next is to port Evolution to windows, and Mac and get a free exchange plugin going.

Re:What would be great

[divec]

"overcharging" in a capitalist system means that people stop buying whatever you're offering. If Office is selling, then by definition they're not overcharging.

I can only be glad that you're (presumably) not in charge of enforcing ant-trust law.

Re:What would be great

[ivan256]

Just because they don't overcharge everybody doesn't mean that the retail box price isn't overcharging. Why do you think so many people pirate Office? How many people do you know that have gone out and purchased a copy off the shelf? The bulk corporate and OEM pricing is pretty reasonable. The single unit price is outrageous. Of course Microsoft has the BSA claim that the piracy is lost revenue, and works on copy protection, rather then addressing the real issue: People can't afford Office.

BTW, everyone I know that uses office at home (Not me, thank you. I don't use it) has "borrowed" the CD from work, or had it come with their PC. I don't think I've ever met somebody who has actually gone and bought it for a personal machine.

Re:Appleworks

[CJ Hooknose]

[Appleworks] always screws up something about formatting when I import [Microsoft Word] documents -- especially if you use the odd tab settings that Word likes to auto-format your documents with. I find that it doesn't do formatting of text around embedded images well, nor does it handle footnotes 100% correctly.

This is not particularly surprising. (experiment done in late 1998:) Take a document written in MS Word 97 on an x86, with a fair number of embedded images. Open this document in MS Word 98 on a MacOS 9 machine. Watch all the pagination and image formatting go to hell. Fix pagination and images, save document as "document-mac.doc". Open "document-mac.doc" on an x86 with MS Word 97... guess what, pagination and images are screwed.

Really, if slightly different versions of MS Word using the same document format can't render things in the same way, you've got to wonder what chance 3rd-party applications have at doing the right thing. Or if MS products do the same thing as Appleworks does, can Appleworks claim it as a feature?