Sun to Offer Support for OpenOffice.org

An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge.com [ed. note: Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN] is reporting that Sun announced today they will offer both free and for-pay support for OpenOffice.org. The story says the cost will be about the same as that it is charging for StarOffice, the proprietary cousin of OO.org."

Comments

Good News!!

[CoboyNeal]

This is good because now Open Office will compete with Microsoft Office on *every* level.

While I personally can't see the need to pay for programs that are easier to use than my electric toothbrush or mom's VCR, I bet lots of less-than-dextrous-office-chimps have oodles of questions and concerns about the new office programs.

Where this really hits home is in those dreaded product direction meetings; now we can fight for OO by saying things like, "well it comes with Sun's free techsup and if we extra care, we can order it at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft product support!"

Buh Bye Billy Gates; I knew you shouldn't have pissed off most of your users.

Re:Good News!!

[KrispyKringle]

They already offered similar support for StarOffice, as I understand it. StarOffice has a decent penetration, but not compared to MS's. I don't see a huge difference here, since the cost of StarOffice was already pretty miniscule by site-licensing standards. And as stated in the article, most of the people using OO at the outset were individuals.

So I don't see any reason to believe that many companies that weren't interested in StarOffice will be interested in OO; the price difference between StarOffice and MS Office is so great compared to that between StarOffice and OO that if the first didn't sway them, the second probably won't, either (many simply want to use ``the standard'', often so they can implement VB plugins or macros or somesuch).

Re:Good News!!

[line.at.infinity]

This is good because now Open Office will compete with Microsoft Office on *every* level.

Are you saying that MS Office also provides free tech support? Even to those who haven't paid for MS products? If so, there should be more people taking advantage of this.

Re:Good News!!

[Frymaster]

While I personally can't see the need to pay for programs that are easier to use than my electric toothbrush or mom's VCR

probably very few people will opt for a support program, but that doesn't matter. in the corporate it world it often doesn't matter if you actually get the support package, just that there is one to get.

the logic is pretty simple, really - if a company is willing to support a product, it means the product is supportable, ie there is enough q-and-a done that the software is fit enough for the support department not to have to do so much work that it loses money.

lots of companies will only buy wares that have support, even if they never get the support itself.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it can't compete with MS Office in one asapect: Newb Friendlyness. Now, I know we ALL hate newbs, but, they do make up the largest user base.

Until OO adds things such as multiple templates and design wizards, it can't hope to compete with a more newb-friendly Office. :(

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are you saying that MS Office also provides free tech support?" Yeah that stupid paper clip guy doesn't cost anything at all.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

'Buh Bye Billy Gates;'

Just a reminder: Billy Gates is the richest man on the planet.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

While I personally can't see the need to pay for programs that are easier to use than my electric toothbrush or mom's VCR, I bet lots of less-than-dextrous-office-chimps have oodles of questions and concerns about the new office programs.

Nice troll, but in case you haven't noticed most of these Office programs are a lot more complicated than your average everyday application. You could probably spend weeks learning how to use the various features of Word alone. Sure, if you're going to use it as a plain text editor it may seem easy, but once you start getting into advanced formatting and embedding objects into the documents it gets much more complex for the average person.

Re:Good News!!

[cfuse]

lots of companies will only buy wares that have support, even if they never get the support itself.

I always laugh when Microsoft issues a end of life/end of support statement - I can never tell the difference between their support and their lack of support.

Re:Good News!!

[frodo from middle ea]

Oh yeah, the time i spent trying to figure out how to disable him was priceless.

Re:Good News!!

[Ingolfke]

Microsoft does provide free online support via their online Knowledge Base. Sun will no doubt provide something very similar.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

other than right clicking on it and selecting 'choose assistant'.

STFU and hide under a bridge troll.

Re:Good News!!

[Zork the Almighty]

This is good because now Open Office will compete with Microsoft Office on *every* level.

I don't think anyone can reasonably compete with Microsoft when it comes to annoying office "assistants".

Re:Good News!!

[spectre_240sx]

I don't know about that. Yes, the actual difference in price is smaller, but the percieved difference may not be. Free is one word which really tends to get peoples (especially executives) attention.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalization? Ever heard of it?

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Verbs?

Re:Good News!!

[BenjiTheGreat98]

Not quite.... OpenOffice does not have a database program. That in itself is enough to stop the organization we are at.

Re:Good News!!

[pr0c]

Except for OpenOffice/StarOffice offer nothing nearly as good as Microsoft Access. Many offices rely VERY heavily on Microsoft Access and are stuck with Office as a result of it. Of course they have no Outlook either but Ximian's Evolution is mucho good..

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft tends to declare support end-of-life at around 6-8 years after the product rollout, depending on the popularity of the product. NT4 support was just cut off this year, and it was released in 96. I'd say that's still pretty good.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good because now Open Office will compete with Microsoft Office on *every* level.

Except for Access, OneNote, InfoPath, all the Accelerator packages, integration with MS development environments...

I know people like to talk up OSS but you should probably at least know what you're talking about before you go and say stuff like this. It's not going to give the general population much confidence when they hear the hype, try out the software, and go away dissappointed.

Re:Good News!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, complicated as in obfuscatorilicious (and *very* convolutiplicadocious for more 'advanced' stuff). But, really, how many average users need that kind of ganja all too often(?)

The templates and clipart from Graphic Design Hell, Rings 7-9 are [invective] ..nice 'n' all, but no-please-stop you're-hurting-me.

Re:Good News!!

[Zeriel]

Even when I was first starting out (with Microsoft Works on a PentiumMMX Packard Bell, which had a grotesquely huge library of templates compared to Office 97/2000, natch), I can't remember finding the templates and design wizards to be useful at all.

Arguably, they were even more confusing than a blank page was.

Disclaimer: Haven't see the templates in Office XP/2003, don't know if they don't suck.

Re:Good News!!

[Zeriel]

I'm not saying that there are open-source alternatives for Access, but I AM saying that anyone using Access for a production project or anything but the basest prototyping or GUI access to a nice Oracle/MySQL/MSSQL server needs to be kidney-punched repeatedly for making stupid business decisions.

Re:Good News!!

[Vee Ecks]

"Buh Bye Billy Gates; I knew you shouldn't have pissed off most of your users." Yeah, you'll be able to say this when my mom starts using Linux, and...given that she's pushing sixty now and still terrified by Windows, I don't see that happening, ever.

Re:Good News!!

[builderbob_nz]

priceless?! He nearly cost me a replacement of my monitor through the temptation of punching his lights out. I'm not a violent person ether... well unless you count running around with a shotgun blasting aliens. Relax boys, I'm talking about in a computer... Ummm... I'm with the city transit authority can you please look this way {pulls out sunnies and silver tube}...

Re:Good News!!

[FreeBSDPete]

One extra thought to add to the various comments that only came to me after a few days of seeing what a couple of micro businesses really find overwhelmingly useful about MS office:

It's all about Outlook - the one piece OO doesn't have. The one thing that keeps OO from being the ultimate replacement for MSO.

I myself don't use Outlook for anything, but even I, who largely dislikes MS and most of their software cannot help to appreciate why small/micro business types really appreciate the slickness of the SMTP scheduling, built in contact manager, and email interface all rolled up into a relatively intuitive package.

If OO cloned it, and made it all from scratch, opensource style, and similiar enough for non-computer people to use, load up existing outlook profiles, slap in a palm conduit, and disable by default any potentially abusive scripting, it'd be the perfect thing.

When more end users are asked why they like MSO so much, the majority I've heard from say Outlook!

Just by star then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a reason then a user would not just buy StarOffice if they wanted this support? is it CALs?

Re:Just by star then?

[penguinoid]

Re:Just by star then?

In Corporate America, they teach you how to spell "buy". Misspelling "buy" is an unforgivable crime. Buy, buy, buy. Buy from us. From U.S.

Re:Just by star then?

[vondo]

Maybe OOo comes with your linux distribution or your XP pre-installed machine and you don't want to fuss with installing Star Office.

Re:Just by star then?

[trinitrotoluene]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like one of the few reasons to buy star would be for the tech support (the other reason would be the extra management features I guess). With support now available for OO, there's even less reason to buy star.

Further Enterprise Acceptance?

[xeno_gearz]

I welcome Sun's support to OpenOffice.org. With options such as this, OpenOffice will likely have more market penetration in the Enterprise Environment. It's interesting to ponder if perhaps this will provide more of an impetus for managers to shift from proprietary solutions to Open Source. As we are aware of, management often does not wish to stray form the "tried and true" (I recall the saying, "Nobody gets fired for buying Intel and running Windows").

Each time I demonstrate Open Office to a friend, they are surprised that such an interoperable (With MS Office) office suite exists. My favorite is to provide them with a copy of the Open CD, which has a number of free and Open Source Software distributions.

Re:Further Enterprise Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice will likely have more market penetration

I bet you know all about penetration. Anal penetration, that is.

Re:Further Enterprise Acceptance?

[FreeBSDPete]

I thought the original line was'Nobody gets fired for buying IBM' ;)

Clearly OO is a great piece of work, Non-profit and other organizations without any budget to speak of (very small companies) will have a huge impetus to consider OO and Shrike for the defacto desktop standard.

Especially companies with no interest in being vulnerable to the myriad of afflictions M$-based machines have, virii, trojans, major OS flaws.

They must also have no entreched application base that require windows, like some of the worse accounting packages. Love to see a port of Quickbooks and Peachtree to Linux at least, to help the masses be willing to think about it.

Enterprises fortunately aren't tied to these stupid accounting packages, and are already using distributed applications for the important stuff.

Re:Further Enterprise Acceptance?

[wed128]

I agree, Support for OOo is VERY beneficial to the open source movement...and since that /. story on the open CD a few weeks ago, i've shed the Open light on several people, and opened up new options to those who might have never seen them!

Re:Further Enterprise Acceptance?

[Wooky_linuxer]

In fact, that was "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" if you are old enough. Alas! IBM uses Linux , so...

Re:Further Enterprise Acceptance?

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A good thing

[line.at.infinity]

This means they don't have to spend as much money on usability testings... Use the customers for feedback.

Re:A good thing

[Plug]

Usability testing isn't about recording what customers want, it's about recording what they do. They are two very different things!

See Jakob Nielsen's First Rule of Usability.

Re:A good thing

[mandalayx]

This means they don't have to spend as much money on usability testings... Use the customers for feedback.

Right, the "Star Wars Galaxies" approach.

Re:A good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

No amount of watching what people do will make up for ignoring 2 minutes of letting them vent their frustrations. Users are, as Nielsen says, usually very bad at "blue sky" kinds of things- but if your real users say "x bugs the crap out of me" sit up and pay attention- it won't do any good to quote Nielsen at them or claim that the usability testers' "performance" with the software is up to par.

To me, this is what usability is about, not crank highly artificial usability testing which results in the "dumbed-down nonfunctional corporate desktop" feel of many of the projects which are proud of their emphasis on usability.

Re:A good thing

[TheRaven64]

If you get a lot of users phoning tech support and saying `I can't work out how to do x' then it's a good indication that a particular part of the UI. Outline numbered headings in OOo is a good example. It's far from intuituve, and I've had to help a number of users do it.

I LOVE CLINTON PORTIS

[Anonymous Coward]

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W00T!!

Java sucks, so Sun runs (clamors!) toward Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have thought that in 1997, heh.

now to show this to.....

[jr87]

my PHB

• this is the one thing he has been using against me for not adapting open office and sticking with microsoft. finally support is here and he is out of excuses

Re:now to show this to.....

[the_2nd_coming]

there is always the "hmm MS Office is higher quality"

PHBs don't live with Logic.

Re:now to show this to.....

[the_mad_poster]

A true PHB will NEVER run out of excuses, they'll just constantly come up with wierder and stupider ones.

My latest stonewall to implementing something quality vs. something venduh:

"We are pushing to remove all freeware because of liability concerns."

Which translates to:

"Even though we have hundreds of trial-expired, unlicensed copies of Winzip, countless installations of Acrobat Reader, numerous installations of unlicensed trial versions of system tools, IIS, etc., we're not going to let you install PostgreSQL for development testing because we're idiots and our heads are filled with warm, tasty tapioca pudding."

Re:now to show this to.....

[marko123]

I know you are angry, but please leave tapioca pudding out of this.

Re:now to show this to.....

[Anonymous Coward]

In many cases, I think the real reason companies, or managers, to be more specific, don't want to use free alternatives is simple CYA. Suppose a company buys a software package that doesn't work as advertised, say, from Microsoft. In a case like that, who catches hell from upper management? Not the manager who approved the purchase. Microsoft, or at least the sales rep, catches hell. This doesn't mean there'll be a satisfactory resolution to the situation, but it decreases the likelihood that the person who appreoved the purchase will get in hot water.

Suppose, OTOH, that a manager decides to go with OpenOffice on the advice of one of us here. Will OO.o work as well as MS Office? Most likely, yes, but that manager, who probably doesn't have much experience with it, will develop ulcers worrying about what might happen to him if something goes wrong. If he has money that he can spend on MS Office, he'd rather do that than get called on the carpet for trying to take the cheap way out and making a huge mess of things.

If you want to advocate open source alternatives in a business environment, you have to do so in a way that will present little risk that anyone's job security will be on the line. Making the software available for people to take home might be a good plan, as would be installing it on machines with no equivalent commercial software installed. For instance, at a company I worked for, the computers in our call center had no word processing software installed, and management was adamant that pirated software would not be tolerated. So, when some of us techs needed to write up a support manual, someone suggested StarOffice, which was then downloaded and installed. Many people had never heard of it, but it definitely made a good impression. Turns out that we were closed down before the software had a chance to spread to other desktops, but many people were exposed to it, and good exposure never hurts.

What I'd really like to see is some of the low-end PC makers bundling OpenOffice with their machines. This would add value to the machines in the minds of consumers, and it'd get the program some extra exposure. eMachines, Systemax, are you listening?

Re:now to show this to.....

[stefanlasiewski]

If support was really the only issue, why didn't you go with Star Office, which has support?

Re:now to show this to.....

[zulux]

this is the one thing he has been using against me for not adapting open office and sticking with microsoft. finally support is here and he is out of excuses

An easy way to wipe MS Office is to inform the BSA about all the piracy that goes on...

A few nasty letters from the BSA and OpenOffice looks wonderfull .

Re:now to show this to.....

[gad_zuki!]

Because Star Office costs money while OO is a free download.

SO: Retail MSRP $75.95

OO: Download here.

Obviously Sun is going to price OO "support only" much less than what SO costs with support.

Essentially, Sun knows these products are almost identical, OO is everywhere, and they could make some easy money and push SO by supporting OO in the office. Smart move if it works.

Re:now to show this to.....

[rc.loco]

This argument ("gotta have a throat to choke") is wearing thin anymore. Microsoft doesn't give a rat's ass if you have "problems" running your desktop productivity suite. They really don't. Read the EULA for Office2000 if you don't believe me. They are not responsible for jack crap if anything goes wrong.

The manager in charge of a deployment of an office suite would be better served by:

• planning a phased rollout with IT/help desk staff holding peoples' hands, as well as
• holding training sessions for users as the software is rolled out

Of course, this presumes that management will support the time and money needed to PLAN and TRAIN, which in today's economy doesn't happen as often as it should. Kinda hard to hold someone's hand when you are working your help desk shift 13 timezones away in India. :-]

YMMV.

Re:now to show this to.....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not going to be some technical issue that gets you into political hot water -- it's going to be user revolt.

Changing a fundemental piece of desktop software like MS Office is going to piss off a lot of drones, and some of them are going to be executive secretaries that can complain to the big boss.

In this situation, it helps somewhat to have a big vendor like Sun at least pretending they are taking your user's "feedback" under consideration.

Re:now to show this to.....

[Malcontent]

I don't think anybody argues that MS office is higher quality. The question is this. "Is it worth the extra quality?" In other words "is OO good enough for me to save a couple of hundred thousand dollars with?"

Re:now to show this to.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, users don't like change. I was going to take a job outfitting a doctor's office with a new network and converting much of his paper recordkeeping to electronic recordkeeping. The whole job fell apart when his office staff basically threatened to quit if anything was changed. They were terrified of changing the way they did things.

I know this story isn't related to open source, but it illustrates the point that people are creatures of habit and often react badly when their routine is threatened.

Re:now to show this to.....

[arkanes]

I get this argument alot in my pushes for open source at my job as well. After much arguing, I've discovered the source of it - it's not that anyone expects Microsoft to step up and provide support (certainly not unpaid support), it's all about someones decision making being on the line. If you can blame MS in a meeting, then you're safe. Basically, as long as you spend an assload of money, it's okay if it doesn't work, because then you can spend MORE money hiring consultants to fix it. If you have to justify going with a low-cost alternative that ends up not working out of box, then your job may be in jeapordy.

Yes, the corporate mentatility is wierd.

Re:now to show this to.....

[gnu-generation-one]

now to show this to my PHB...

If you ever wanted to demonstrate the level of support available, even prior to today, point people to users@openoffice.org

The support is orders of magnitude better than anything I've seen for a proprietry product

Re:now to show this to.....

[the_mad_poster]

Yes, the corporate mentatility is wierd.

If something lacks mental capabilities altogether, can it really have a weird mentality?

Re:now to show this to.....

[rc.loco]

And therein lies the problem.... I saw this happen a lot too in corporate America, but it's totally bogus. You end up wasting resources to cover bad planning. I know it happens all the time, but until this sort of behavior is no longer considered acceptable by businesses, they will be doomed to repeat it. :-) Just think of all the layoffs that happen ultimately because some incompetent managers botch resource planning? It may not be the majority of the lost jobs, but if something like this saves a few jobs (1 consultant == 1+ FTEs typically, in terms of capital outlay) and there's a lot of this resource wasting going on, doesn't it make sense to prevent the waste in the first place?

The best manager I ever worked for bucked the system, did the planning up front including confirming his moves with his staff and BAM! Win, win, win. He rarely had things blow up in his face unexpectedly - "measure twice, cut once" was his work ethic, which spread infectiously to those who worked with him. He was so successful that the company considered him nothing short of a "fixer" like the guy in Pulp Fiction. Whenever some dept. needing saving or near resurrecting, he would get the call. He was assigned to lead Development, QA, IT and Production/Operations all in the span of 3 years and he turned each and every unit around into a new, well-functioning entity. The company survived likely because of him.

So, yeah I understand why it happens. I just think it's time that American business grew up and learned how to manage itself a lot better than it typically does. Otherwise, it ultimately might be its undoing...

Re:now to show this to.....

[Planesdragon]

there is always the "hmm MS Office is higher quality"

It is. MS Office has a cleaner UI, better integration with Windows and Mac, and requires less adaptation from what the workforce learned on. (Either Wordperfect, Word, or some other WP equally distant from MS or OOo)

Don't try and say "OOo is just as good for everything." Say "OOo is good enough for what we need; the benefits MS has over OOo aren't worth $200 a seat for licenses."

Re:now to show this to.....

[stefanlasiewski]

My point is that there were 2 reasons: support AND cost.

No problems here, I just wanted to clarify.

Support

[rf0]

This is one thing that will help companies except open source is support. Companies are scared of open source to some degree as if something like OO goes wrong there is no-one who can offer support there and then.

Its nice to have someone to speak to on the phone who know what they are talking about as well as sometimes having someone to blame

Rus

Re:Support

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is one thing that will help companies except open source is support."

WHAT?
do you mean "Support is one thing that will help companies accept Open Source."

Features needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Either Powerpoint or OpenOffice needs to create an easy way to manage effects and animations. Both of them are terrible on this point, only Powerpoint is slightly better.

Bad Sun

[penguinoid]

Sun Microsystems took a couple of big steps forward to benefit the open source community Wednesday by announcing full-service support [...] for OpenOffice.org software and a free, trial-preview version of the its latest developers' package, now dubbed Java Studio Creator.

...so that you can compare them. Or am I being overly cynical?

Re:Bad Sun

[KrispyKringle]

Well, of course the free, trial-preview is so you can compare it and try it out. That's why its called a ``trial-preview.''

Re:Bad Sun

[cduffy]

Compare them?

OpenOffice is not an IDE; Java Studio Creator is not an office application suite. They're not competing against each other.

FILTHY LOSERS!

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU ARE ALL SMELLY LOSERS!

GPL is free if your constitution is worthless (nt)

[Sarojin]

nt

MOD PAREN UP !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. This is no lie...

Newsgroup support.

[ksheka]

I tried OO.o for a while. I was quite surprised to not find newsgroups particularly for OO.o. Would it be difficult to have these newsgroups created and propogated to the various servers? That way users can help each other in an easily reachable manner.

Re:Newsgroup support.

[Heartz]

Try the Open Office forums at http://www.oooforum.org.

I get all my tech issues resolved by the friendly folk over there.

Re:Newsgroup support.

[STrinity]

I tried OO.o for a while. I was quite surprised to not find newsgroups particularly for OO.o. Would it be difficult to have these newsgroups created and propogated to the various servers?

Depends. It's extremely easy to create an alt.* group, but as the majority of these are things like alt.john.smith.is.an.a--.h---, many servers (particularly the popular cis.dfn.de) don't accept them unless a significant number of people request it. Alternatively, if you go the official route, every major server will pick it up, but the process is very long, very hard, and requires a lot of work -- discussions, polls, creating a charter, etc.

Re:Newsgroup support.

[IM6100]

Why are the forums on a central single-source site? It could propagate more widely on Usenet.

Is someone trying to keep the 'open' forums close and under control?

Re:Newsgroup support.

[jrockway]

No, it's because if you can't figure out OO.org by yourself (click the disk to save!!!), you're not going to be using usenet. Even I stick mostly to mailinglists and web-based forums (slashdot!), and I can do more with my computer than OO.org :D

Re:Newsgroup support.

[pangloss]

where was this linked from? i was just looking at OOo for documentation/support and really, the mail reader interface for the mailing list archive they have is slower than bootstrapping gentoo on a p75 :P i was just thinking why on earth isn't there a web forum.

anyway, as for what someone might want support on: i was interested in the bibliography database and i was running into problems with formatting and publishing entries that weren't well-covered in the help files.

Re:Newsgroup support.

[William Baric]

news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.openoffice.* can be used instead of the mailing lists. Take a look at http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html for more details.

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Office suite support?

[neiffer]

To be honest, I can't imagine what kind of support you need for an office suite once it is install (maybe that's it!), however, if this means the leary will consider OpenOffice, woo hoo! I work in education and OpenOffice has allowed once-useless donated computers to become a real tool without massive costs for licenses.

Re:Office suite support?

[overbyj]

You need support for an office suite because people undoubtedly will call and ask "Where is that paper-clip thingy? I need some help from it."

Sad but true.

Re:Office suite support?

[neiffer]

That's funny, because always wanted to call Microsoft and ask them "how the hell do I get rid of the damn paperclip?" :)

Re:Office suite support?

[scrotch]

It should help me out. I don't use office suites since almost everything I type has to be in plaintext anyway. But, I've got users who need some of the 'advanced' features who are trying out OO as an alternative to Office. I helped one guy hook up to our MySQL server as a source for form letter information. That took way longer than it would have if we had had some help. Another guy has problems with the basics. Not because OO is really different than Office (as far as I know), but just because he doesn't know.

Everyone comes to me for help. Not because I know OO, but because I'm the 'computer guy'. It will help me if support is available and I can say "Call Support" rather than learn how to use the program for them. I hate having to do that.

Re:Office suite support?

[eegad]

Try building a master document with MS Word. You'll need support to keep it from jacking up your subdocuments or becoming corrupt. Oh yeah, I also love the background save feature which says it has saved (even though the network might have gone down in the middle of the save) and when you reload your document there's nothing but garbage.

Re:Office suite support?

[mysticgoat]

I followed the OOo users support newsgroup for several months. To be sure, a large number of questions concerned installation details. But there was also a great deal of help asked for, and given, concerning ways to convert procedures from MS Office to OOo, and how to handle interchanges of some specialized data files between the two. And also ongoing discussions of several things that could be lumped together as "best practice" development.

I think the support news group is one of the more critical parts of making OOo a success. There is a lot of good energy there.

Re:Office suite support?

[Zork the Almighty]

They took him out to get people to upgrade to Office XP.

Re:Office suite support?

[gnu-generation-one]

To be honest, I can't imagine what kind of support you need for an office suite once it is installled

"I am trying to develop an easy way for my son to create printed flash cards. I'm starting with an open office spreadsheet which is filled out in two columns. On the second sheet, the cells from the first sheet are placed in the order they should be to print out as labels, which I want to print out to a page of pre-perforated business cards. So, I am loading these as a set of lables in a regular document.

The problem is that the labels in the Open Office document can only contain a certin number of lines. Unlike other programs (i.e. Word Perfect for Windows), the extra lines are pushed into never-never land and not into the next cell. I was hoping to be able to simply add the necessary number of newlines manually to push the text into the appropriate cell. However, this is not working."

Oh, there's plenty of support you could want

The first one's free

[RealProgrammer]

Sun said that it will offer OpenOffice.org users free first-incidence support ... (emphasis added)

This is a good thing, though. Not because the Sun support will really help all that many folks, but because of the appearance of legitimacy it lends to OOO.

And a big plus: it flips a solar middle finger at Microsoft. Jyahh!

Re:The first one's free

[rmpotter]

Is this what it's all about: "creating the appearance of legitimacy" and flipping "a solar middle finger at Microsoft"? How about just plain old competition with some added leverage to push Microsoft toward open file formats. Get a grip and loosen up the tinfoil hat, dude!

Re:The first one's free

[tealover]

This is a good thing, though. Not because the Sun support will really help all that many folks, but because of the appearance of legitimacy it lends to OOO

Very true. This is really more about PR than anything else. Remember, it's much easier to promise support than to deliver it.

And a big plus: it flips a solar middle finger at Microsoft. Jyahh!

No, this is all about Sun trying to stay alive. They've been flipping the finger at Microsoft for years and where has that gotten them (same with Oracle). If they hadn't been so focused on Microsoft and tried to create strategies to combat the commodization of their hardware, perhaps they wouldn't be in the position they're in now.

I mean let's be realistic...if promising application support is big news from Sun, then they're about on their last legs.

Re:The first one's free

[zulux]

I mean let's be realistic...if promising application support is big news from Sun, then they're about on their last legs.

The 'SUN is dying' astro-tufers are out in force again.

SUN has five billion in the bank.

More FUD from the Microsofties.

Re:The first one's free

[tealover]

Much like the Stock Market, a company's future success has nothing to do with its past successes.

Sun is one of the historic companies in the Valley and has given the world some amazing technology. I want companies like Sun to thrive but unfortunately the vagaries of the business world suggest that companies that fail to adapt often become roadside litter.

You can chalk it up to FUD or whatever conspiracy you choose. Facts are facts. Sun is a company that is on the cusp of becoming irrelevant very quickly.

Re:The first one's free

[zCyl]

Sun is one of the historic companies in the Valley and has given the world some amazing technology. I want companies like Sun to thrive but unfortunately the vagaries of the business world suggest that companies that fail to adapt often become roadside litter.

Large companies with enough bright people on the payroll will survive changes in business model. It seems that Sun has historically been a company which has attracted and kept a decent number of intelligent employees, and their management seems to be smart enough to keep a positive image among their principle clients (geeks) during a time when it's popular for geeks to hate big businesses.

Re:The first one's free

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail to mention that Sun's management has also monumentally fucked up the last ten years. Java: brilliant, ground-breaking, world changing - not making Sun a cent. Sparc: fantastic hardware, clean, clear design - Sun now selling Opteron boxes. I could go on but it's all too depressing. What a business.

Re:GPL is free if your constitution is worthless (

[Sarojin]

GPL = General Palestinian License, a front of HAMAS! WHICH TERRORIST MODDED ME DOWN?

What will support include?

[amichalo]

Seems to me this is may be the sort of large enterprise lip-service support that comes with most software. Basically help with and install issue or maybe a bug, but if you want help with how to do something - you are still out of luck.

Better than offering support as described above (which should be free IMHO), would be to get O'Reilly et al to write looks about OO.o and the migration from office. Even specific edditions for Office 97/2000/XP would be applicable.

That would be better that someone helping me install the software.

Re:What will support include?

[WombatControl]

You mean something like this?

Good Sun

[penguinoid]

My bad. Sorry.

Also, after I read the rest of the FA, I found
Sun donated the source code for StarOffice.com in July 2000 to OpenOffice.org

Me a bad boy.

SUN to offer support for Openoffice.org

[Anonymous Coward]

KATE FENT STILL ON TEH SPOKE!!!111

My encounter with Kathleen Fent at a party...

I remember it well...it was my junior year in high school, and Kate and I were at the same party. She had been doing rails of coke all night and swigging Jack Daniels like nothing any of us had ever seen. You could tell this was something that she had done often, as the sheer amount of intoxicants that she had been consuming did not seem to affect her one bit.

I was hesitant to approach her...she was not really the type of girl I dated usually -- I went for the cheerleader/popular girl type who you were guaranteed to at least get a blow job by the first date. Fast girls -- not the kind of girls that required at least two dates to get a kiss on the cheek and a raging case of blue balls. Yet tonight was different. I was particularly randy, and Kate was there snorting enough coke to supply a small country. She was considered to be in the geeky chick group -- the girls that weren't hot, but were tolerable enough to hang around outside of school. But I didn't care...she looked like she wanted to get fucked -- and hard.

Finally I made my move. I had made eyes with her all night and I finally went to talk to her. I came over to her and before I could get out "Hi, my name is..." she grabbed my penis and started massaging it. There was a bathroom nearby, which no one was occupying at that moment, so I motioned for her to join me in it -- she accepted.

We enter the bathroom and lock the door, and she didn't even bother to kiss me or anything -- she dropped straight to her knees and whipped out my dick, and practically swallowed it whole. I'm no John Holmes, but they don't call me tic-tac either; I'm working with a good 8 inches or so, and she deep-throated it -- just like that.

I knew there had to be a catch to this. I felt around and grabbed her crotch, only to notice that she was on her period. I wasn't sure what to do, and then I asked her if she wanted it like a dirty whore and take it in the ass. Luckily, I had a condom with me that was lubricated, but it was obvious that she had been an anal pro and had already relaxed her sphincter to the point where my cock just slid in. It was the best ass I had ever had and she loved every inch of it in her ass. I couldn't last long -- her ass was still tight, surprisingly. I pulled it out and whipped off the condom, and unleashed my white wave into her waiting mouth. She swallowed every last drop of it. After I finished, I put my pants back on and wasn't sure what to say to her, but she smiled and left the bathroom. It was like she knew that I just wanted to fuck her and leave and not say shit to her.

After the encounter in the bathroom, I didn't see her for the rest of the night. I did see her occasionally at school and we exchanged smiles, but we never mentioned our hot anal session in the bathroom at that party. I still look back on it fondly. I'll always remember that 10 minutes of fun in the bathroom with Kate.

When Rob Malda was looking for a good wife, he figured out a way to tell if a prospective mate is a virgin or not. Whenever he saw a girl that looked all right he took her out for a ride on his moped. All of a sudden he would stop, unbutton his pants, and show her his tool. "What's that?" says he. "Why it's a pecker," the girl says. So then he would button up his pants. "You aren't what I'm looking for," says he, and back to town they'd go.
He kept on like that for several years, but all the girls gave him the same answer. Finally he found a pretty little waitress with yellow hair that worked in a hotel. Kathleen Fent was her name. They went riding on his moped, and when he pulled out his cock she just kind of giggled. "Why that's a tee-hee!" says Kathleen. Right then and there Rob Malda know she was just what he wanted. So he and she got married and they were both mighty happy.

About six months after the wedding, they got to talking about old times. "Honey," says Rob, "how did you come to call my tool a tee-hee, that fir

Returning to Open Office

[trinitrotoluene]

This might be enough to make me go back to OO. I'm using Office at the moment because my university centres its first year Computing-for-Idiots course around Office products, so using OO means extra work figuring out how to do things by yourself.

Re:Returning to Open Office

[acidtripp101]

No offense, but the two products are so similar that it wouldn't be too difficult to learn how do do things yourself. The ONLY major setback would be if your class utilized the scripting language of Office (in my experience, most Office-centric intro classes don't do this.)

Re:Returning to Open Office

[LnxAddct]

in some cases it is easier in OO. Back when I first learned regular expressions, we were told to turn on the wildcard feature in Find and Replace in MS Word and we were to use their own wierd version of "regular expressions" (if you can call it that)in order to find and replace things. Well I sure was excited to see that OpenOffice didn't replicate this feature, but instead actually uses real regular expressions which can be very useful and its not Microsoft's wierd thing(not only is MS's reg expr not standard but its rather limited). Sure enough I rocked those few assignments:) I sure miss those days.

Re:Returning to Open Office

[trinitrotoluene]

Not too difficult is sometimes too much work when you're cramming for a midterm the next day.

Note to mods: imposter alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

Prarent is an imposter karma whore. See the difference:

CowboyNeal (real name)
CoboyNeal (imposter parent)

Re:Note to mods: imposter alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a fuck, moderate on the content of the post not the messenger.

Re:Note to mods: imposter alert!

[Canadian_Daemon]

Why does it matter, CoboyNeal posted an informative comment, just because he is trying to gain karma points by having a similar name to CowboyNeal doesnt mean that his comments aren't good, dont moderate because of his name, moderate because of his comments, and if you have to, moderate me as offtopic/flamebait for defending him.

Re:Note to mods: imposter alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Collecting porn, are we?

Re:Note to mods: imposter alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

All I get is a load of text files showing paths. WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THEM?!

Re:Note to mods: imposter alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to consider for a minute that many of us are reading through these stories and comments to find out more about a topic, and couldn't care less about your "karma games". Comments like yours (and, I'll admit it, this one too) are irrelevant to the real comment.

Please take it somewhere else, if you don't mind.

More phone queues ... ;-)

[|>>?]

Yay, another phone number to call and wait in line for - I'm sure that MSO users will relish the benefits of installing OOo and waiting in the phone queue to Sun for support - can we look forward to extra fees too?

Seriously, this is excellent news IMHO, given that Sun already has the infrastructure to support SO, they can leverage the same for OOo.

As others have (or will) point(ed) out, this is no guarantee for more market penetration, but I'm sure that small business users will be able to at least feel more comfortable with the concept of a central support point.

Of course, it will take some time until end-users will leverage the Internet for support. To this day it still amazes me that users will phone me to solve their IT problem - generally in the form of: "I'm getting 'error 43b: The widget cannot be broken.' errors, how do I fix it?" - my response is to uhm and ah for as long as it takes to type the error into Google and hit return.

The user is continually flabbergasted that I know the answer. I then tell them that I just used Google, how I used it and that they could too - for some reason they still call me... go figure.

Go Sun!

Re:More phone queues ... ;-)

[erikharrison]

The user is continually flabbergasted that I know the answer. I then tell them that I just used Google, how I used it and that they could too - for some reason they still call me... go figure.

I am a tier two tech support agent for a large ISP. When a frontline tech calls me for assistance, the exact same thing occurs.

*sigh*

Not a surprise....

[echucker]

... for anyone who read the AOL PC story last week. AOL's ad clearly lists the Office suite supported by Sun.

Re:Not a surprise....

[keifir]

Interesting, maybe this is the main reason for them providing techsupport. Imagine Dell giving you an option to have OO bundled with your new system for free. Preinstalled OO! Now that would be competition for MSOffice on yet another front(ie home luser).

Re:Not a surprise....

[rmohr02]

It says "powered by Sun", not "supported by Sun".

OO, then Linux

[BortQ]

The switch from MS Office to OpenOffice is much easier then a switch from MS Windows to Linux. All the other programs will still work, yada yada yada...

But The more people that switch to OO, the more attractive switching to Linux becomes. If your company is already using OO then they could switch to Linux and let their users keep the same office suite.

In Conclusion: Go OpenOffice Go

Re:OO, then Linux

[Brandybuck]

But The more people that switch to OO, the more attractive switching to Linux becomes.

Don't stop there! The more people switch to OO, the more attractive switching to FreeBSD becomes!

I'm being serious here. While FreeBSD (along with most Linux distros) isn't ready for your grandma's home desktop, it's more than ready for the corporate desktop where systems are centrally administered.

Too optimistic a view ...

[foobsr]

if I recall what Szulik said, "Differentiated service skills around Open Source software will be in demand based upon the large transition which will occur over the next 10 years as businesses transition from proprietary to commodity hardware and open source software." [as in the original copy]

I imagine they (and others) are just preparing to get their share. IBM (of course) has long realized this, others begin to do so.

Tendency: Let a lot of unpaid unemployed (their low end jobs have been outsourced as we have learned elsewhere) coders (developers ?) do the work and gain on services.

CC.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone have a good explanation of why Sun is going to support users of OpenOffice?

Re:Why?

[acidtripp101]

My guess is that it's not TRUE support (ie You can't call up and ask how to align your margins just so).
It's more likely that this is just "Put the CD in the tray, click this, then that, etc."

OR, since StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are so similar, Sun feels that they can support both (I'm guessing this wouldn't be the free support). To be honest, it makes sence to try to open a new cash flow, because the products are VERY similar.

Re:Why?

[illumin8]

My guess is that it's not TRUE support (ie You can't call up and ask how to align your margins just so).
It's more likely that this is just "Put the CD in the tray, click this, then that, etc."

What the hell are you basing this on? Sun is providing true support, whatever the hell that means. If you have a question about any feature in the product, even if the person you're talking with on the phone doesn't know the answer, he can escalate it all the way to the guy that developed that feature if necessary, since he also works for Sun.

Is this not full support? Is there some other type of support you were thinking of when you wrote that like a personal assistant that will come over to your house and put your coffee mug in your coffee mug holder (CD-ROM tray) for you?

OpenOffice Problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't to critisize OpenOffice here, but i do have some problems with it. I have a Liebermann Mach 3.8 machine (A P4 clocked at 3.8Ghz with 4Gb of PC3600 DDR RAM) running Gentoo 1.4 with kernel 2.6.0-test12 compiled with -o4 -funroll-loops and Open Office 1.1.1 installed with Ximian enchancements.

I have been waiting for over 20 seconds for it to load, then it types very slowly. Normaly I can do around 50-70 WPM on my Microsoft Natural Internet Keyboard, With OpenOffice I'm lucky to get even 10 WPM. The problems don't end there. I won't even go into the Stabillity problems, the annoying lightbulb, the broken spell checker and the annoying Gnome bias (I'm a kde user).

Meanwhile, my Dell Optiplex with a Pentium II at 400Mhz, running Windows 2000 loads Microsoft Office 2003 in 2 seconds, and its predictive text and autocorrection means I can get around 80-90 WPM and get it all correct.

I'm sorry, but in the current state, OpenOffice is a piece of dog shit. Don't get me wrong, I love linux, I use it exclusiveley for games thanks to the Optimized gaming kernel and WineX, but as far as getting REAL work done, Windows 2000 is unbeatable.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Fnkmaster]

Have you tried OpenOffice on Win2k/XP? I tried it and recall it was pretty decently speedy - mind you this was a while ago, so my memory would be faulty. These days I use Office XP, despite the feel-bad MS factor, since I have lots of document exchange to do with Windows users, and I don't want my files to be imported "almost right".

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[acidtripp101]

compiled with -o4 -funroll-loops and Open Office 1.1.1 installed with Ximian enchancements

I'm hoping that was a typo, because I'm 90% sure that there is no -O4 option to GCC. -O(1|2|3|s) is valid, but -O4 doesn't do jack. (which might be why you aren't getting the performance you should.)
Another option would be to put your proccessor in make.conf (Can't remember where it is off th top of my head, but scan through make.conf and you'll find it). It will then use processor specific optimizations to speed up programs. This will effectivly make any binaries processor specific (ie p3 binaries can only run on a p3), but it should speed things up even more.

Gentoo 1.4 with kernel 2.6.0-test12
exclusiveley for games thanks to the Optimized gaming kernel and WineX

Sorry dude, but that just makes me thing you're a troll. Those two are mutually exclusive. You can't be running 2.6.0-test* while at the exact same time running the gaming sources. can't happen unless you are running bochs or something, in which case it's no wonder you're getting horrible performance.

My suggestion would be to install the binary port for openoffice (ie emerge openoffice-bin). Sometimes the larger programs seem to choke on certain processor optimizations. For example, I had problems when I compiled my own firebird, so I installed the binary version, and it fixed everything.
Either do that, or try recompiling it with the -Os option. Since it will be optimized for size, it won't take as long to load the binary into memory, and you'll (hopefully) see some performance gains. This seems to be the common consensus on the gentoo forums, anyway.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[rascal1182]

I had used a version of StarOffice on Windows 2000 a few years back, and found it to be somewhat slow and occasionally counterintuitive.

However, for ~6 months I have been using OpenOffice on my Windows XP box. I was prompted again to make the switch because I desired a German dictionary as well for the spell checker. It's a lot speedier than I remember StarOffice to be (and I'm still running on the same machine).

I have kept around MS Office at my wife's insistance, but I do all my work in OOo, especially because I work frequently on Linux at school/work (and am using it more frequently at home, too). I love the pdf exporter, and my documents (albeit, never very complex) have imported just fine.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[tomstdenis]

As I recall -On will use the highest valid. So -O6 will equate to -O3 for most platforms. It isn't in the GCC man page... damn you GCC!

Though given the size of OpenOffice maybe -Os would have been better ;) [30MB of ram is a bitch much to type hello world on a page...]

Tom

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the Liebermann computer? I keep hearing that the website is the biggest fake ever.

So I want to know, is the Liebermann refrence part of the troll since it's fake, or are the computers for sale on that site for real?

The old saying that anything too good to be true probably isn't true keeps echoing in my mind... but it looks pretty legit.

Anyone know for certain?

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[shadowofdarkness]

2.6.0-test12 You would think that someone from the future would have a faster computer. Or is time travel a new feature in test12 since I would upgrade for it. but really I wish that trolls stop using stats like that and non excistent kernels for a computer and at least try to make it believable.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no 2.6.0-test12 yet. And tinkering with the compile flags will do you more harm than good. There were extensive discussion about that on LKML, there was even a patch to compile the kernel with -Os that went into -mm for a while (I'm not sure if it's still there), but it was later found that it miscompiled some bits. Oh, and -O4 doesn't buy you anything -- gcc optimization limit is -O3, so you can even do a -O9, the end result is the same. Also, -funroll-loops will more than likely do you more harm than good, since it makes the code definitely larger and may or may not speed it up -- but the hypothetical increase in speed (probably just statistical noise in any comparison) is vastly lost in the cache misses because of the larger size of the code.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Trelane]

I run WineX 3.2 on 2.6.0-test11 (there is no test12, fwiw). Works beautifully, even on my ancient 450MHz K6-2.

An important thing to note when optimizing is that things that expand code size can result in cache misses (due to the size of the code) much more readily, resulting in slower code. I would recommend not unrolling loops unless they're Small, and running with -Os.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Fjornir]

"man gcc" is deprecated. See the gcc.texinfo or the Info file, both of which I currently lack access to so I cannot tell you if they have the information you require, but I'll bet they do.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no openoffice 1.1.1 in portage either.

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[tomstdenis]

I looked in "info gcc" under optimization... surprise surprise it's the same text from the GCC man page...

Anyways, yeah -O4 is fairly stupid on two levels. 1. Bloat sucks. 2. It's not meaningful to GCC beyond -O3 anyways.

Tom

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[Fjornir]

You're putting me on, right? Did you file a bug yet?

Re:OpenOffice Problems.

[tomstdenis]

No cuz

a) I really don't care

b) Someone else will do it [nice thing about OSS]

c) I love this show.

No support for Mac OS X

[daveschroeder]

According to Sun's official OpenOffice support page, OpenOffice 1.1 is only supported on Windows, Solaris, and Linux...in other words, only platforms where StarOffice also exists...

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would want to support Mac anyway? It has a smaller user base than either Linux or Windows.

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[acidtripp101]

Well, that would make sense.
My theory behind this support is that the two programs are VERY similar (they literally are based on the same code), so Sun is just trying to open another cash flow by offering support for a program that is essentially the same as the one they currently support.
For example, if you offered support for your own proprietary version of notepad, wouldn't it make sence to offer support to notepad as well. You get paid either way, so why open as many channels for money to flow through as possible.

So, the reason that they don't offer support for OSX is because they don't have any experience with it themselves, otherwise they probably would.

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Men who use Mac's, on average, have larger penises than those who use Windows PC's.

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[FreeBSDPete]

That's too bad, OS X users might actually call for application support. Most FreeBSD users won't give a crap whether or not there's a phone number to call or not. The part that's got me all excited is the idea of home and tiny businesses being willing to (not) buy it, and use Linux on the desktop without being scared.

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[IM6100]

Yikes. You mean OOo on NetBSD/mvme68k will remain unsupported?

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[IM6100]

Wow. Someone finally explained the goatse.cx man.

Re:No support for Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

someone needs to mod this "Redundant"! :-)

Any bets what M$ will do?

[turniponion]

If OO competes too well with M$word, then Micro$oft is likely to make their next version incompatible with OO or incompitable enough that people will be reluctant to switch. Then there's "shovel wear", the mass of M$ stuff that they charge you for (it's in the price for that new computer) but they pretend is free, which fools the masses into believing the only reason to use OO or other non-M$ wear is to save a buck.

Re:Any bets what M$ will do?

[Coryoth]

If OO competes too well with M$word, then Micro$oft is likely to make their next version incompatible with OO or incompitable enough that people will be reluctant to switch.

It begins to get double edged though. Do you upgrade to the new MS office which saves in file formats that your older MS Office intalls (and other people using older MS Office suites) can't read - or do you cross grade to OpenOffice where you can get free upgrades and (due to the open nature of file formats)no more file format issues on upgrading? Hmmm.

As long as the next Office with the major file format changes arrives before OpenOffice gets too much of a toehold, it will work. On the other hand, if it arrives too late it could blow up in MS's face.

Jedidiah

Re:Any bets what M$ will do?

[westyvw]

That already is in the works, and has been for some time. MS needs to change the format to drive sales of new office suites. The additional benifit for them is that OO will again be uncompatible.
Will this bite them in the ass? Maybe, since word pretty much works as is. Putting in DRM and changing the save format may piss some people off.

Re:Any bets what M$ will do?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If OO competes too well with M$word..."

I don't think that will ever be a problem, you candy a$$.

Re:Any bets what M$ will do?

[gsfprez]

I win the bet, because Microsoft has already indicated what they're going to do. Go nuclear... and use patents to squash the furtherance of the useful and scientific arts.

Microsoft has already informed everyone that, for now, if their software works with their patented Office 2003 XML schema, all they have to do is simply note it.

But there is nothing legally stopping them from charging an infinite amount of money or outright forbidding compatibility between MS Office files and non-Microsoft software.

Outsourced to India?

[dankdirk77]

Do you think the actual phone support reps will be in India? Just curious, not that its a bad thing... There have been a lot of slashdot stories about open source projects over there lately and it would seem to make sense.

Re:Outsourced to India?

[illumin8]

Sun does have a call center in India, but their largest call centers are in Broomfield, CO, and Burlington, MA. The call center in India is primarily located there in order to provide better 3rd shift support (due to the time differences, more engineers are available there during the nights here).

No, no, no.

[Angram]

StarOffice is Sun's product, designed for businesses; OpenOffice is what individuals use at home (why pay when there's no real difference?). Sun wants people to be comfortable with StarOffice and perhaps suggest/demand/support its use in offices, so what they're doing is supporting the home users of the almost identical home counterpart.

Basically, they're encouraging people to use a free product at home so that they can charge for it in the office. It's a very smart move.

Re:No, no, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said.

Re:No, no, no.

[KrispyKringle]

Possibly, but it sounds like the free support for OO is limited, and the pay support wouldn't be popular among individuals. The pay support implies Sun expects OO to be used in offices--individuals rarely sign up for software support contracts that don't come from the OEM--which makes little sense compared to their StarOffice offering. And if they really want to push StarOffice, they may as well give free non-commercial, individual licenses (sorta like Solaris's ``free'' $20 license).

Re:No, no, no.

[DarkSarin]

I would actually suspect something similar to what you say, but with small office types using OO.org with paid support, and larger businesses (>~50 - 75) using Star Office. This model makes sense, because the small office, unlike the home user (who wouldn't likely pay for support), is likely to want the comfort factor that a supported product provides.

Just a thought.

Re:No, no, no.

[Angram]

Quite right.

Re:No, no, no.

[water-and-sewer]

I can think of at least one reason: SO7 is *significantly* faster to load up. And if you're a student, you can get it for free. The latest OOo was just fine for me, but when I found out I could get SO7 for free I went for it and am happy.

Re:No, no, no.

[illumin8]

StarOffice is Sun's product, designed for businesses; OpenOffice is what individuals use at home (why pay when there's no real difference?).

Actually, do you remember when Sun first bought StarOffice and was giving it away for free? I think this was right around StarOffice 5.1 era. Anyway, Sun found that a lot of corporate IT managers wouldn't trust a product that was free, so they decided to start charging for it.

They didn't do it just to be greedy. The funny thing was, Sun wanted to give StarOffice away just to strengthen the Sun brand and attract more people to Solaris and Sun servers. You can blame the cost of StarOffice on idiot CIOs that don't trust a free product.

This is probably why Sun will sell a ton of the Java Desktop System licenses, because corporate IT just doesn't trust anything that doesn't cost money. Idiots...

Re:No, no, no.

[tiger99]

There are some differences between Star Office and OOo, for a start you get Adabas with Star (not that I have actually used it...), and IIRC there are more file conversions, I think WordPerfect was one, also lots more templates (but there are free ones for download anyway).

I actually bought Star a while ago, IIRC the licence allowed use on 5 PCs, so it really works out at less than people think. I doubt that many people would begrudge the cost, a fair bit less than Works IIRC, and it saves a lot of download time.

I do have Star on 2 PCs, but have OOo on four, mostly dual boot with Win 2000/XP and Linux including the 2 with Star, and the one with Win2000, as OOo or Star is an ESSENTIAL tool to rescue corrupt Word 2000 files! Works on Excel as well, but I have not got that at home or for my business, I have always had Quattro Pro and anyway Star or OOo are every bit as good as Excel, and a lot less buggy.

Having made these observations, I think this is a good move, although they may be disappointed to find that a number of businesses actually use OOo rather than Star. Either way, I wish them well, and see yet another place where the Convicted Monopolist's empire is starting to crumble.

Re:No, no, no.

[Angram]

"Star or OOo are every bit as good as Excel"

I don't know about Star, but OOo is certainly not as good as Excel. Shortly after I switched to OOo (uninstalled Corel WP Office 2000, but left MS Office XP), I had to start making graphs for a class - I was let down at every turn. OOo simply can't do what I need it to, but Excel can. Once OOo can match up, I'll be more than happy to ditch Office XP.

It's just a matter of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooner or later, MS is going to integrate MS Office into their operating system (in the name of enhancement)... deja vu... all over again..

Re:It's just a matter of time

[SonicBurst]

It has probably already happened (well, maybe in planning or alpha-stage somewhere anyway). We all know they switched to XML based file formats, under guise of "standards-compliance". Bullshit, I say. I think they are planning exactly what you say. Just think, the next version of windows could come with an fully integrated, nonremovable, XML parser/writer and bingo, instant integration. (in the take-it-in-the-ass kind of MS integration that everyone will have to pay for)

Re:It's just a matter of time

[Trejkaz]

Windows already comes with a fully integrated, nonremovable, XML parser/writer:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\msxml.dll

Re:It's just a matter of time

[SonicBurst]

Yes, that's been there for some time now, though I wouldn't exactly call a .dll nonremovable. I was thinking more integrated, like tied to this crap they call palladium or ngscb or whatever the hell it is now to avoid the DOJ on a situation like the IE/Win98 debacle. Not that I think it's a good idea, just something they would try.

Re:It's just a matter of time

[Trejkaz]

Hehe, actually I don't know how removable it is, but I know some program is using it right now so it can't be deleted. :-)

Hmmm... hardware XML parsing sounds like fun though. Nobody would bitch about performance issues anymore, and you could run Jabber bridged onto your ethernet card via the XML device. ;-)

WRONG AGAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

IN SOVIET CANADA, Tom Sawyer gets high on YOU!!

Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac users only have an impression of themselves that they have larger penises, to make up for the fact that they can't get dates

Wait, I'm confused...

[syphax]

I lost track-

Is Sun good (Open Office support, Java), or evil (SCO, Java)?

MOD PERENS UP !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

line-ucks is teh novel's futur!!!`~!1

broose!

Perhaps...

[MaoTse]

...they just won't to earn some good comments on /. ;-). Specially Eclipse was just turned down.

Seriously, I don't think it is problematic for them anyway. SO is not that diffrent and we've already seen many similar Sun moves in the Java world.

Finally, Maybe

[DynaSoar]

With support now for OO, and with their Java Desktop + Suse Linux (Due out Dec. 12) coming with tech support (including "migration support")they might JUST have a combination that can best M$, and actually compete for the average user's desktop. That is, if the initial install is at least as easy as Windows. I'll let you know next week.

Re:Finally, Maybe

[DynaSoar]

Looks like SUn is pushing for exactly this. On Monday they announce a deal with the UK government to supply Linux Enterprise servers and Java Desktop Linux users' systems.

AND, they're announcing a deal with the Chinese software consortium CSSC, which could amount to from 0.5 to 1.0 million desktops a year.

Re:Finally, Maybe

[timmarhy]

how many newbie users actually install window themselfs? if linux/OO came pre installed it would be just as easy to use, if not more so.

So what's the big deal?

[paul248]

Sun already offers support for all life on earth.

Re:So what's the big deal?

[trinitrotoluene]

So what you're saying is, Open Office is finally stepping ito the light?

This will change...

[Chordonblue]

...with version 2.0 - at least I think so. There are significant Mac OSX updates planned for that version. Right now, OOo runs as a straight Unix app on OSX - not something Sun would want to support.

I'd hate to be a grammar Nazi, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one thing that will help companies except open source is support.

Except: Used to differentiate excluded objects from an otherwise complete group; for instance, "All of the dogs at the park, except the two golden retreivers, are Welsh Corgis."

Accept: To welcome or tolerate; for instance, "People probably won't accept the fact that I'm trying to be helpful rather than pedantic with this comment."

What? Support and Free Open Products?

[Nazmun]

What... looks like you can charge for support for a open source product yet still offer it for free? OMG, somebody tell Redhat (I'm extremely disappointed that the only linux they offer for free is considered bleeding edge, semi-stable, and subject to be unsupported by them software wise after three months).

File format changes?

[Trejkaz]

Does file format for Office really matter anymore?

OpenOffice.org Writer stores its documents in XML.
Microsoft Word 2003 stores its documents in XML.

Since MS are highly unlikely to downgrade their own product, you can almost guarantee any changes to the format will merely require changing a few stylesheets.

Re:File format changes?

[dadragon]

Microsoft Word 2003 stores its documents in XML.

Not by default. MS Office PRO is the only one that even does it at all. They did it so that it could be integrated with XML web services on a corporate network.

Re:File format changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. All versions can output xml in microsoft's schema. It's just that only the pro versions support custom schemas.

Re:File format changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

stylesheet this!
<doc>
<binary>
092938739458720958670295867
234987234570610483576283475
239487293485784763874658378
</binary>
</doc>

What if...

[CoboyNeal]

... everything at home was free, and everything at work was twice expensive? My God I think I just figured out how to finance Utopia!

Risky move

[dmaxwell]

It would be something of a desparation move if they did. Right now, OSes and Office suites provide two distinct and large profit streams. It is common opinion that Windows and Office are the only things making MS money. In any case, that is where they make most of their money.

Sure they could integrate at least a significant portion of Office into Windows to kill nascent competition. But this would reduce them to one primary profit center that would be smaller than the two separate ones. I suppose they could sell an "Advanced Office Funtionality" package but it wouldn't be as profitable. It couldn't be. They would have to integrate at least as much functionality as OpenOffice provides and not significantly raise the price of Windows.

It might even make things easier on their competition. Since OpenOffice functionality becomes the basic benchmark, their competitors would know to explicity target the what the "Advanced Functionality" product provides.

If nothing else, such an integration move would tell me that Open and StarOffice have caused MS significant pain.

That logic is backwards...

[pr0ntab]

since most software get-ups are very poor about the quality of their "support", unless it's tiered and you select the most expensive plan, which essentially gets you a line to the desk phone of the development team.

No... the logic is that the company will never pay for support because they'll be wasting their money if the did pay for it. But it's a good safety net to appease any naive decision maker who hasn't actually called up the support staff before in their life, and feels they need some level of assurance.

(I'm not saying this is universally true of all software vendors, but generally true. If you work in IT, you can name the ones you'd actually want to deal with on the phone, so it's an informed decision there)

Sun to offer support.......

[redsilo]

To my way of thinking this is where the honest money in the IT business should be made: Support, Support, Support. Instead of paying lawyers bundles of cash protecting intellectual property, train and pay support personnel that can actually help people. I have the crazy idea that a lot of people might be willing to pay for such service especially if the service were effective and, hence, not outrageously expensive. There is, of course, the obvious caveat that the so called nerds that don't need that sort of thing won't be anxious to pay but there are still a lot of semi-computer-literate users out there that could benefit and know it. redsilo

Re:Sun to offer support.......

[Anonymous Coward]

this is where the honest money in the IT business should be made: Support, Support, Support.

Actually, this may be where Sun Support (SS) can make some dishonest money off of New OO Users (NOOU).
NOOU: Hi, I'm having trouble with this Open Office thing.
SS: Oh? What exactly is the problem?
NOOU: Well, in the spreadsheet program I can't figure out how to copy the contents of one cell down to several cells below it, short of copy and paste.
SS: Have you looked through all the menus?
NOOU: Yes.
SS: And you cannot find an answer anywhere?
NOOU: No. That's why I called you.
SS: (Aha, now I have him). Well, unfortunately Open Office doesn't have that feature (as far as you know, noob), but Sun's Star Office does, along with several other features that Open Office lacks. And you can order your copy of Star Office for only $79.95.

Re:Sun to offer support.......

[BenjyD]

An added bonus : it might save people like me (and I imagine many Slashdotters), whose family and friends have figured out know about "them computer thingies", from all those "my modem doesn't work" conversations.

Spreadsheet Copy 'n Paste question

[MichaelCrawford]

Inquiring minds want to know: when I copy a formula to a new cell, the cell coordinates found in the formula are offset by the distance that I moved before pasting.

For example, if I have the formula "sum( c4:e4 )" and I copy it to the cell immediately beneath the original location, the formula in the new place becomes "sum( c5:e5 )".

What I want to know is how I can fix particular cell coordinates so they always stay the same when I paste a formula in a different place, while leaving other coordinates free to be offset that way.

An example of why I might want to do this is if I have a single cell containing a currency exchange rate. I pay bills in both the US and Canada, and would like to figure my budget in either currency, while having the exchange automatically calculated. But when I copy and paste the formula, I have to go back and fix up the coordinate of the cell with the exchange rate, because it gets offset.

Thanks for your help.

Re:Spreadsheet Copy 'n Paste question

[JoeParker]

Hey why not try out the support services they just announced for a question like that? But in answer, you do it just the same way you would in Excel. Put a $ before anything you don't want to change, like "sum(c$4:e$4)"

Re:Spreadsheet Copy 'n Paste question

[j_w_d]

Precede the cell designators with a "$", e.g. $A$1, specifies A1 and only A1. It works the same in both an OO spreadsheet and in Excel.

Unfortunately, some of the calculations in OO also get iffy with larger numbers just as Excel's do. The stdev() function for instance starts to return crap between 10,000,000 and 100,000,000. If you take a small set of numbers like 100, 101, 102, and 103, and then pad zeros to yield larger numbers like 1000, 1001, etc., the stdev() value should be the same for each series. Around 1*10^8 rounding error creeps in and instead of properly calculating the stdev()it starts yielding a zero value. There is no warning that precision has suffered either.

Oracle going to Linux+OpenOffice on the Desktop!

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, Oracle's internal IT is rolling out Linux (based on RH AS 3.0) as a supported Desktop option to all its employees worldwide -- everyone from secretaries to salespeople to the hardcode RDBMS programmers.
They're including OpenOffice 1.1 in the mix (as well as Moz 1.5, etc)

Tried this

[gclose]

Um, I hate to rain on this parade, but I downloaded Open Office 1.0.2, used it for a couple of months, and was thrilled...at first. It was really great to be able to use free software. Worked great.

Using OO, I saved my existing files in the Microsoft file formats as .doc and .xls, just in case, and I am sure glad I did. After several months of use, I started to notice weird errors in my Excel files. The screen on Excel was all wigged out, and some of the formatting was trashed. I had to go back to older versions of my files, and re-enter data. Not fun.

After 3-4 months of this, I recently switched back to MS Office, whereupon I found that my Excel files had weird errors, which I now manually had to go fix. In addition, sometimes I couldn't type in the data entry box, or see what I was typing. Similarly, my resume in Word lost its proper formatting and bullet points. I am not at all a happy camper about this, and have fully switched back to MS Office.

Don't bother to write me about how much better OO 1.1 is, I've got work to do. I'm a small business owner, and I don't have time for this nonsense. It's easier just to pay the hardware vendor a couple of hundred extra dollars every 3-4 years, when I replace my PC. Time is money.

For the record, I don't use Macros or anything fancy, just normal Excel with some formatting, and I also use 'window freeze' and group/ungroup. This is all on Windows 98.

Re:Tried this

[William Baric]

I'm a computer consultant and I see a lot of bugs with MS Office too. Of course when Word screw up a document it's the computer's fault, not MS Office...

Also when you use OpenOffice DON'T save in the Microsoft file format. The filters are not perfect and sooner or later, you'll lose your formatting. Oh, and before you start complaining, MS Office filters are far worse than the ones in OpenOffice : last week I had to save several .doc to .rtf... Word was screwing up big time so I used OpenOffice in order to open the .doc and save them as .rtf (checked the documents back into Word and they were ok).

Re:Tried this

[faaaz]

It's really simple. When using any program the only way to keep formatting intact is to use that program's own format. Saving only to MS formats from OO is like saving your multi-layered photoshop projects only to jpeg.

Sun's Big China deal includes Chinese Healthcare..

[Anonymous Coward]

now the british health system... it's amazing how the same operating system that cio's thought of as a science project a year ago can get the big contracts with nothing more than a respectable corporate name on the outside of the box.

OpenOffice is StarOffice!

[pballsim]

OpenOffice IS StarOffice and vise versa.

Here is the history:
StarOffice was created by a group in Europe.
Sun Microsystems bought it and released it.
StarOffice 5.2 was free for a scaled down version.
StarOffice 6.0 they split it into two groups, OpenOffice the free version and the paid version. Open Office is like the free version of 5.2 (just version 6.0). It helps people with some confusion.

The only difference is StarOffice has better support and more features. Nobody can say "OO is better than SO" because it's the SAME DAMN THING. Yea OO is open source but in order to get it into program it has to be okayed by the committee.

MOD PARENT DOWN: PLAGIARIZED

[Anonymous Coward]

See exact same comment here

Show him an EULA

[Walles]

Ask him for the name of a software vendor that provides "liability". Find an EULA from said software vendor. Have your boss read it (and weep hopefully).

Re:Show him an EULA

[the_mad_poster]

I tried pointing out that the Microsoft EULA (for political reasons, we're an "almost all" Microsoft shop), like almost all others, disclaimed any reasonable responsibility for anything that happened and expressly disclaimed any warranty.

This did not make them happy. Apparently, there are BOFH's from the Microsoft camp as well :-)

DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN ADMINISTRATOR!

Buy The Name, FGS!

[heironymouscoward]

If there is one thing Sun could do to boost OOo that would be to buy the openoffice trademark so that the product can actually be promoted as "OpenOffice" and not "OpenOffice.org".

Avoiding compatability

[jesterzog]

If OO competes too well with M$word, then Micro$oft is likely to make their next version incompatible with OO or incompitable enough that people will be reluctant to switch.

Trying to steer away from standards and compatability doesn't always work.

It's intersting to note that back in the days when WordPerfect was the main word processor that everyone used, it too tried exactly the same file format tactics that Microsoft tries today. Before MS Word was popular, Microsoft went to special effort to support WordPerfect formats as reliably as possible. WordPerfect, on the other hand, only supported Microsoft formats on the order of 95%. (After all, why make it easy for customers to switch to the competition?)

There were several things going on, but certainly one of them was that people were deciding to go with the product that would most reliably support both formats than with the product that didn't support key parts of one of them. The result was that MS Word won out, having promoted full compatibility with competitors' products. Meanwhile WordPerfect faded into obscurity.

It might seem to be a disadvantage to be compatible with competitors. Sometimes it's a disadvantage not to be, though. This is especially true if the competitors initially have a market significant enough to be noticed (even if it's small), and offer full compatibility with your product.

I am paid by MS - Translation

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

Uh, I hate stupidty: Here is my translation to English:

"I downloaded OpenOffice 1.0.2, which is a year old by now. I used it for a couple of months. It "worked great".

Then, after 3-4 months without problems, I switched back to MS Office. The problems began. I noticed that MS Office has weird errors with excel files produced by other software. Then I noticed that MS Word has a problem with bullet points in OpenOffice-1.0 documents saved as word file. I did then not use OpenOffice-1.1, where all these bugs of MSOffice have been worked around, but I decided to STAY with Microsoft Office. In fact I won't use anything else in the future.

No I've got work to do and don't have time for nonsense. BTW, I still have time to post to slashdot.

For the record, I don't know how to use Macros, just Excel and formatting. This is all on Windows98."

IN SOVIET RUSSIA...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, "buy" teaches how to spell YOU!