Linuxcare and Sun partner on StarOffice for Linux

Anonymous Coward writes "August 31, 1999 -- Linuxcare announced today that it had reached an agreement with Sun Microsystems to provide a range of enterprise-class services for Sun's recently acquired StarOffice productivity suite on Linux. " Lotsa activity about StarOffice in the past few days-from being "community-licensed", to being developed into a Web application. Look for more news on this later on today.

Comments

Sun shoots itself in the foot once more

[Bruce Perens]

Sun continues to shoot itself in the foot with bad licensing in an attempt to hurt microsoft. The license connected with this software is horrible. Restrictions on modification, restrictions on commercial distribution, etc. Take a look at the way Sun is being eclipsed where Java is concerned - other people have come out with an Open Source VM, an Open Source Java compiler, etc. When Sun decided to get tough with Microsoft about its use of Java, MS just turned elsewhere, Open Source Java creator Transvirtual, to purchase Java software. Free Linux office suites will continue in development and will eventually eclipse StarOffice.

Thanks

Bruce

Star Office Macro Language

[daviddennis]

I'd say there would be little benefit in switching to StarOffice for Windows. It only makes sense to switch if you can move most users to Linux/Unix, since that's bound to substantially reduce "This worked yesterday! It doesn't work now!" type questions. It will increase the "How do I do this?" questions, but only for a while. In my experience, the clueless will still need help, and the clueful will figure out the differences pretty fast.

If you consider how expensive IT support is, it might make a lot of sense to do this, assuming StarOffice's functions are comparable.

It's pretty easy to learn a new macro language, and in my one check of StarOffice's, it looked like a virtual clone of MS's - it was so close it felt eerie.

The real disadvantage of Linux is that custom applications based on Access won't run. I wonder if StarDivision, flush with cash, has an Access clone in the works? It would be the next logical step.

Or maybe StarDivision's owners are lounging on a tropical island. I'm still flabbergasted at the price they got from Sun. I would have believed closer to $ 50 million than $ 500 million ...

D

----

Bundle StarOffice with Java

[bdrasin]

Sun should bundle StarOffice with JDK, and claim that it is "integrated" with java. See how that affects MS Office sales...

;-)

bye-Ben

Sun + StarOffice = Novell + WordPerfect?

[pobbard]

Does Sun buying StarOffice remind anyone of Novell buying WordPerfect in the early 1990s - i.e., a company trying to enter a market it does not understand or have a vested interest in, but only seeks to attack and scare their chief competitor (MS in both cases)?

Novell essentially let WordPerfect die before seeling it off to Corel; I fear Sun will do the same to StarOffice once the initial interest fades...

--Philip

Re:Sun + StarOffice = Novell + WordPerfect?

[Wah]

If they are giving it away for free, my guess is that they have some idea of how to keep it going. Wordperfect was still a costly program, iirc, making things free changes a lot. Of course, if they had truly open-sourced it, things would get better faster, but that's another story.

I do agree though that buying companies just to try and compete with M$ can be risky, but it's still better than sitting back and watching them rake in the dough.

star office vs ms office

[Anonymous Chemist]

An article in USA Today said that Star Office would be hard pressed to overtake M$ and their "100 million loyal fans". Were they smokin' something? Hmmmm....StarOffice for free; MS Office V xxxx ......$500 to $600, or as an upgrade $300?
I won't complain like some of the other posters, since if you really want to hurt M$, hit them in their pocket. The article said that M$ wouldn't take this sitting down, which would seem odd to me; since they couldn't match Sun's price (free).
Seems to me that everyone in open source should cheer, since Sun has made a major shot across the M$ bow. Quit complaining, and think how this could add to the woes of M$.

If they really open source it . . .

[Paul Carver]

. . . then it will be very interesting to see if the open source movement can really out do Microsoft.

I downloaded Star Office for the first time yesterday and took a look at it. It is very complete, far more functionality than any open source office software I've seen. It looks like it can compete with MS Office in the "side of the box feature list" department.

On the downside, however MS Office is at least twice as fast on identical hardware. Test machine is a Compaq Deskpro with a Pentium 200 something with 64MB of RAM. MS Office 97 on NT 4.0 loads reasonable fast and is plenty responsive for general use, even loading multi-hundred page Word documents with embedded graphics. On the same machine, starting Star Office on Mandrake 6.0 allows time to go get coffee. There are noticable delays and lack of responsiveness even when working with small documents.

Fonts, to be blunt, suck. Now maybe if running ttmkfontdir didn't crash the font server I might be able to get better fonts, but based on what I went through I wouldn't advise inexperienced Linux users to install new fonts. It essentially disabled my machine.

If Sun really opens the source I'll be waiting to see how many people join in the effort to optimize performance.

Sheesh

[eponymous cohort]

Just want to say that at least one /. reader noticed the humor in your post!

;-)