Slashdot Mirror
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!
From this C|Net article: "I don't want to sell StarOffice for OS X," [Tony Siress, Sun's senior director of desktop marketing solutions] said. "I want Apple to bundle it. I'll give them the code. I'd love it if I could get the team at Apple to do joint development and they distribute it at no cost--that it's their product. Nobody makes a product more beautiful on Apple than Apple." Perhaps Apple could rework AppleWorks to incorporate Sun's work.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
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.
The whole "problem" here has nothing to do with Sun or Apple, but it has everything to do with CNET running an inaccurate story that was picked up by the other "news" sites like Newsforge and Slashdot, thus furthering the rumors. This in turn created quite a fuss with the OpenOffice programmers who thought it would have been nice for Sun to tell them directly rather than getting the word through a news story.
The really interesting part of this little mixup is how quickly misinformation travels. While this episode might not be all that serious in the grand scale of things, I wouldn't be surprised if one day this same sort of mix up (ie- online news sites reporting some rumor story that spreads like fire through blogs and other online portals) will create a real problem or crisis. You watch. Information (thankfully) travels much faster and more freely these days, but that means the consumer of the information must pay more attention to filter out fact from fiction.
For those looking for more facts, check out the FAQ at
OpenOffice.org about the OS X port.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
For more information, check out the NewFactor article at : http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18805.html
0 15675.htm
Also check out this GeekNews story: http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Jul/gee20020731
(Don't need the Karma, I just want people to get the facts straight. I hate misinformation being spread around...)
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Maybe they are denying this news because in truth SUN AND APPLE ARE MERGING!!!
Wouldn't that make a great little conspiracy story? Come on, think about it. Sun has positioned themselves such that they need desktop software and Apple SHOULD be looking to G4/5 alternatives, particulary 64 bit options if they want to maintain any customers in the movie industry. The sparc wouldn't be a poor choice, since it seems like its roadmap goes farther than the vanilla powerpc chips.
Okay, it would be pretty un-applish to want to port Aqua to solaris rather than darwin, but you never know. Or the apple/sun conglomerate could maintain 3 difference unixes (don't forget that Sun has a linux distro coming out). It should would strengthen both companies pitch to the business sector since the whole office could come from one vendor (server, clients and office software). You can even picture what the new logo would be: a purple apple with sunbeams gracing one side, casting a shadow northward... no, farther north... yeah, past Oregon.. yeah, that far northward.
Come on silicon valley! Mount a RISC offensive against Redmond!
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
http://www.iceni.org/~peterlin/first_aqua.html
Well this post would be accurate for JBuilder 3.5. I believe earlier versions were in C++.
However, since JBuilder 4, it is 100% Java (they are now on JB7). Perhaps you haven't used JBuilder since 2000, which of course gets you a +1 Informative on slashdot.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
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?
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.