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StarOffice Significantly Delayed
Emil S Hansen writes "ZDNet has a story about StarOffice being delayed until late 2000. The reason should be that they need some more coding done. 'Remaining efforts necessary to complete the Star Product offering relate primarily to additional coding, testing, and implementation.' But they should go into beta around spring/sommer 2000. " The original release was apparently scheduled for the end of this year, so this is fairly significant delay. However, as the article notes as well, the main competition for them, Office 2000 will not be out until roughly the same time. I should have been more clear - this is in reference to the Internet versions of both Star and Microsoft Office.
Update: 11/12 04:47 by Nik. ZDNet have corrected this story. StarOffice is not delayed until late 2000, but until the second half of Sun's fiscal year 2000, which, confusingly, is the first half of the actual year 2000, which Sun had already announced as planned.
Yes, the posters here on /. are very mixed up.
Both Office 2000 and StarOffice are out.Both the desktop versions of Office 2000 and StarOffice are available today. But the web-based versions are still in development.
It is the web-based versions that the article was reporting on. I would be grateful if everyone kept that in mind as they posted responses.
-Brent--
Well, which Productivity Suite has the largest marketshare today? If you were going to develop and market a competing product, the main competitor would be the one with the largest market share.
Certainly Applix, Wordperfect Office, Koffice and others are competitors, but none of them have near enough marketshare to contend for the position as the main competitor.
-Brent--
Yes, it will reduce your TCO dramatically because it is developed for ASP's. No longer will you have to keep installing new versions and supporting the installations, because it is run over the Web.
-Brent--
Uh, what do you think would be cheaper and easier to implement, and much easier to sell to consumers. A phone capable of running Office 2000, or a phone capable of displaying Office 2000 running on a server across the web.
What about a set top box like WebTV. Is it more logical to be able to run Office 2000 locally, or over the web? I have the feeling that most consumers don't care where it's running as long as it is there.
Especially - why would you want to pay good money for the privilege?You have to consider the market that these vendors are focusing on. Definately low-tech consumers, who just want a low-cost way to get on the web, send email, and do word processing. That don't want to deal with installing software and keeping it up to date. A $99 box with a $20 monthly fee is exactly what will interest them.
-Brent--
I suspect that this will play out as a trend in Open Source and quasi-open source development projects lead by the likes of Sun and Netscape(Aol). Large companies will decide to release the source to something, and fail to see the value which Open Source projects employ in the release-early-release-often model. This is unfortunate, since releasing a not-quite-there-yet, but promising version as "alpha" would get other people finishing features and fixing bugs that they needed to scratch. This is what I think Mozilla has done wrong. They release these non-functional Mx releases as code benchmarks, but fail to work on getting a nice looking, feature light version out the door so that large masses of people will USE it, and eventually have some of them join the project. They've already forgotten how fast the Australians were able to impliment real crypto back when everyone thought that Mozilla would be a usable browser in 2 months.
NOTE: I'm not involved with either effort, but if my statements are incorrect because of my lack of inside knowledge, then they are likely to -- even more accurately -- reflect what the average Linux/Open Source user is thinking....
It's a pity that they haven't really announced it, but applix's web based office suite is up and running at applixanyware.com.
Maybe it's still in beta, but it worked for me when I had to convert a word file to html a while back. I'd use it more, but I'm stuck at 26.4.
For a long time, even after Sun announced their intention to develop an applications portal, Microsoft claimed that consumers *didn't* want to run applications over the web. It wasn't until shortly after Sun's announcement that MS also announced their plans.
We wouldn't have a web-based Office 2000 from Microsoft if it hadn't been for Sun. I think Microsoft made that quite clear before their about-face, that they didn't intend on developing one.
Most of their products were developed, not becuase of Microsoft innovation, but because someone else announced that they were going to do it, or were already doing it and Microsoft wanted that market, possibly to also protect the markets they had.
Look at IEFirst, would there have even been an IE if Netscape hadn't existed. Microsoft developed IE simply because they were scared of Netscape.
Second, Netscape 1,2 and 3 were undoubtedly better then IE. It wasn't until Microsoft had closed Netscape out of the market that Netscape didn't have the funding to be able to continue to innovate. The only reason that IE is better then Netscape now is that Microsoft cut off Netscapes only way of generating the income to continue to innovate.
To say that IE is better then Netscape because Netscape wasn't as good is like me tripping you in a race and claiming that you lost because you were too clumsy.
Also, when Mozilla comes out, then we'll see which is better :)
-Brent--
Does anybody have an idea when K-office will be finished. Last time I checked things looked promising. I'm particularly interested in K-Office, I'm a framemaker user right now but I'm not really happy with its interface.
Jilles
I am wrong, but only sort of. Actually, there are a few different markets that this will do strongly in. Intranet usage will be huge, I agree.
I just was focusing on one market segment, the one that would tend to use iPhones and set-top boxes. Not to imply that there was any other, or any bigger markets.
-Brent--
How do you define "shoddy"? Often the word is simply defined as "not Microsoft.
The press is biased. No matter how hard you try, if it's not a Microsoft product, then it is not any good.
-Brent--
They'd make it into a client-server system using something like ActiveX or Java (or something similar).
It's going to be small - and there's no reason to think you'd have to download the plugin (or however they set it up) more than once. What you're doing is spreading FUD... About Microsoft. You're just as bad as anyone else.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
If you go back to my original post, you'd notice that I pointed this out as a example of the rewards of real competition. Sun here has the same position as AMD. Would we have had cheap "Celeron" chips from Intel if it hadn't been for AMD? I would say most likely not.
but I don't feel you can accuse them of anything illegitimate here. Why attribute it to malice when it's explained by simple stupidity?My point wasn't to accuse Microsoft of anything at all here. My purpose was to point out that without the innovation that Sun pursued in, we'd have never, or at least not for much longer, seen Microsoft use their "freedom to innovate". And there's nothing wrong with innovating. I believe that Microsoft should and does innovate. I just don't believe it comes very often without competition threatening to innovate first.
Not that I am suggesting such a remedy is unnecessary for other aspects of MS's business.You inspired faith in me again. :) No one at all, not the DoJ, the judge, or competitors is claiming that Microsoft doesn't have a freedom to innovate. The case was about Microsoft preventing others from competing, which is illegal in America and has nothing to do with your ability to innovate. Indeed, as I tried to point out, the lack of competition often breeds a lack of innovation.
If Microsoft really wants to innovate, the best thing they could do would be to allow and even help competitors compete strongly with them. Then we'd really see some innovation.
As I mentioned previously, it is a symptom of a healthy market that Netscape's existence would pressure MS into responding with a competing product.Yes, and as I mentioned above, I think that Microsoft had a right to develop IE and compete with Netscape. However, it was illegal for Microsoft to prevent Netscape from competing.
Maybe if they had competed fairly IE would have still been better then Netscape and everyone would have been using it anyways. But we'll never know and now Microsoft is guilty of anti-trust violations. And they deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law.
I don't want to argue that MS didn't try to supplant Netscape unfairly because they appear to have done so, but there is ample reason to feel that they also produced a better browser while they were at it.Certainly no one denies that Microsoft was able to develop a quality browser. And no one denies that the browser Microsoft released this year is better then the technology that existed 2 years ago. However, what *can't* be substantiated is whether Netscape would have failed to create a browser better then IE 5 had they been able to compete in the market.
-Brent--
For a LAN however, Sun's whole idea is to subvert the PC paradigm. At my company, for example, we don't have hard disks on our desks. We use Sun servers and NCD X terms. Every time we need to do some word processing, we pull up a Citrix NT session in an X window and run Word.
Yes, it sucks. It really sucks. But that's how dominant MS Office is. Even at a committed Unix shop, we need to be able to generate and read Word files to interact with the rest of the world.
So, for an office without PCs (what Sun wants everywhere) running StarOffice over X is a hell of a lot better and cheaper than running an NT session + MS Office over X, which is what we're doing now.
When you look at the BIG picture, the TCO of going with X terms or the new SunRay type appliances is much less than a PC environment for a large company. Removing the WinFrame/Word part of that equation makes it look even better. StarOffice may not integrate effectively into the PC paradigm, but that's not really the point.
The point is that Sun doesn't have to compete with Microsoft on the PC desktop. They just have to make it possible to do business without a PC desktop, without any MS products. Then you can run your office on SunRays or super PalmPilots or that neato FreePad thing. It blows the whole thing wide open when you break the Word monopoly, which is really Microsoft's crown jewel.
Contrary, Judge Jackson did feel that Java was a competitor to Microsoft Windows platform. That's why Microsoft went to such great lengths to subvert it.
Sun, the manufacturer of StarOffice, has by no means been "prevented from competing", nor is there any realistic means by which MS could accomplish such a feat.Well, yes, Microsoft hasn't prevented Sun from competing by developing a StarOffice portal, that's agreed. And would seem unlikely that Microsoft would be able to prevent Sun from competing with the StarOffice portal in the future, seeing the nature of the distribution channels. Although, I'll admit, not impossible.
Now, if you are saying that Microsoft hasn't prevented Sun from competing in the market with their Java, I'll let you go read the FoF to find out in what ways Microsoft did that.
Only if consumers prefer MS Office to Star Office will SO go by the wayside.Only if Microsoft would close of all distribution channels to StarOffice would StarOffice not be able to compete. It has nothing to do with choice or quality. And if Microsoft can be kept from blocking Sun from the distribution channels that are necessary for consumers to get the StarOffice product, I think we'll see more of the 40/60 market share that you'd expect in a market with strong competition.
Why "innovate" when what you have already works and has survived the challenge of a competing system?Because, uh, Microsoft claims to have a "freedom to innovate". Violating the anti-trust laws *isn't* innovating. And as you so clearly point out, it even destroys the incentive to innovate. So if Microsoft really was interested in innovating, they would have allowed and encouraged other companies to compete with them.
Not having competition, and therefore no innovation hurts consumers and causes advancements in fields to happen in an untimely manner, if not ever.
-Brent--
Sun absolutely should not try to compete with MS on its own turf, that being marketing and fast releases, quality be damned. It'll never beat the Redmond hype machine. Sun's strength is in a high-quality product with better value. It should stick with that strategy because it's the single biggest advantage is has over MS.
Your insinuation being that Microsoft Office2000 is a shoddy piece of work, slapped together hastily as grist for the upgrade mill.
I have not found this to be the case. I use Outlook2000 and Word2000 in my regular daily work, and have few complaints. O2k is leaner, faster, and more reliable than O98 while at teh same time added features I've been lacking. Word2k has some excellent XML features that make my job a ton easier, and it still boots in a matter of eyeblinks.
When I downloaded StarOffice at home (nine hours - gak) I discovered that their metaphor appears to be "steal from the superficial appearance of MS Office but don't supply the back end support". I wasn't satisified. While I did observe crashes and bugs, their development would require heavy feature implementation rather than patches if they want to supplant the MS Office titan.
Microsoft Office may enjoy it's dominance partly due to the monopolistic operating system structure MS holds, but I think you would have a difficult chore proving that it is not the most complete, powerful, and intelligent office suite around.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
For a long time, even after Sun announced their intention to develop an applications portal, Microsoft claimed that consumers *didn't* want to run applications over the web. It wasn't until shortly after Sun's announcement that MS also announced their plans.
Which is perfectly above-board, sensible, honestly capitalist, and also their prerogative. This is the way businesses compete. You may wish personally to ridicule MS for being wishy washy, which is understandable, but I don't feel you can accuse them of anything illegitimate here. Why attribute it to malice when it's explained by simple stupidity? And note that this healthy relationship between competitors exists prior to any "solution" imposed by the DoJ. Not that I am suggesting such a remedy is unnecessary for other aspects of MS's business.
First, would there have even been an IE if Netscape hadn't existed. Microsoft developed IE simply because they were scared of Netscape.
Second, Netscape 1,2 and 3 were undoubtedly better then IE. It wasn't until Microsoft had closed Netscape out of the market that Netscape didn't have the funding to be able to continue to innovate. The only reason that IE is better then Netscape now is that Microsoft cut off Netscapes only way of generating the income to continue to innovate.
This is really a foolish pair of assertions. As I mentioned previously, it is a symptom of a healthy market that Netscape's existence would pressure MS into responding with a competing product. And as for the notion that the "only reason" IE is better is that M$ cut off Netscape's innovation budget, I would have you remember that Netscape's "innovations" frequently took the form of feature bloat (communicator, anyone?) or spec-packing (uh.. blink) - tactics people here on slashdot frequently profess to despise.
There is also the fact that Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 was in development simultaneously with Netscape 4.x and introduces essentially no "innovations" other than speed, reliability, and compliance with XML, CSS, and other IETF specs. That is why the browser wins reviews and market share, not the "radio bar" whatever that was.
I don't want to argue that MS didn't try to supplant Netscape unfairly because they appear to have done so, but there is ample reason to feel that they also produced a better browser while they were at it.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
> The new features offered in Office 2000 however useless do seem to be more abundant.
The uselessness of features is generally true of about 95% of the functionality for any given user of an office suite. I agree that most of the features in O2K are decidedly not the type of functionality that the average person is interested in; it is important to note, however, that for each time that a user actually does use one of these obscure features, the following generally hold true:
- That user experiences a major boost in productivity because an otherwise tedious or complex task has been automated or simplified;
- A document that has used one of these obscure features can be edited by pretty much any other installation of that office suite (assuming either full install or ready access to the installation source);
- The more a user can use the obscure internal functionality of an office suite, the fewer obscure function-specific applications the user will need to acquire, run, and distribute;
- The fewer specialized applications an office needs, the less of a support headache that office is going to have.
Thus, the average word-processing user has little use for things like column layout options; multi-editor, multi-version markup tools; flowcharting; advanced statistical analysis tools; and other niche functionalities. To users who need that one little feature, though, the ability to use the same office suite as everybody else in the office saves incredible amounts of time, effort, and frustration.$0.02,
Sundiata
Remember, kids, it's only premarital if you plan on getting married.
The article is actually refering to the MS Office version that is supposed to be "Internet Distributed" like the plans Sun has for Star Office. Sounds like typical MS Vapourware to me, I wouldn't fancy downloading the 5 MB Word EXE file (not to mention all the accociated DLLS) just to type up a letter.
Even Corel Office for Java (I've still got the beta lying around somewhere) was smaller than the whole word exe file. I wouldn't fancy downloading it on demand.
-- Hulver's site
So is StarOffice. But the web versions of either product have not been released yet.
And don't forget, if it wasn't for Sun, there would be no web version of MS Office. Now that's what real competition does for consumers.
Microsoft does nothing on their own. Whatever they do, it's because someone else tries to do it better. The problem is that they prevent the competition from competing and then go back to doing nothing again.
-Brent--
The post wasn't very clear, but the article is about the versions of the software which will be accessed over the internet.
And don't forget, if it wasn't for Sun, there would be no web version of MS Office. Now that's what real competition does for consumers.
A situation which existed well prior to the DoJ case. Sun has always pushed Microsoft in new directions, primarily because the market is so incredibly fluid that even the basic client/server PC model that Windows relies upon cannot be assured for the next ten years with any certainty. Though the Hon. Judge Jackson feels otherwise, Sun's java model is a product that competes with Windows and has done so for some years
Microsoft does nothing on their own. Whatever they do, it's because someone else tries to do it better. The problem is that they prevent the competition from competing and then go back to doing nothing again.
Sun, the manufacturer of StarOffice, has by no means been "prevented from competing", nor is there any realistic means by which MS could accomplish such a feat. Only if consumers prefer MS Office to Star Office will SO go by the wayside. At which point, further "innovation" by Microsoft (by which you apparently mean dramatic revolutions in underlying software structures) would not only be pointless, but also demonstrably not what consumers want. Why "innovate" when what you have already works and has survived the challenge of a competing system?
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I'd love to get a copy of StarOffice that worked under libc-2.1. If anything that should be their primary emphasis, but I have a feeling it's more like Sun wanting to get their portal integrated in it. Sun's pledge was primarily aimed at integrating Sun's portal and advertising Sun products through the word processor and not at improving the word processor itself. But any delay is a good delay. It just allows us unemployed C++ coders to show off while the suits with their PhDCS credentials and certification watch their schedules melt away.
The will is there, due to Microsoft's pricing, for corporate IS shops to give StarOffice a try. They'll try it now, or they'll try it in six months, because MS isn't going to drop their prices any time soon.
What corporate IS shops don't have is the will to keep trying it. They'll allocate the resources to give it a test run once. If they find it to be a piece of junk, there aren't likely to be any second chances.
Sun absolutely should not try to compete with MS on its own turf, that being marketing and fast releases, quality be damned. It'll never beat the Redmond hype machine. Sun's strength is in a high-quality product with better value. It should stick with that strategy because it's the single biggest advantage is has over MS.
When Hemos says it'll be out in the same timeframe as Office 2000, what I think he meant was it'll be out in the same timeframe as the internet version of Office 2000. Yes, Office 2000 has been out for a while now.
I'm just hoping that sun has the money to invest in compatibility with current MS Office formats. Especially .xls. That is one of the points that I find staroffice lacking in. Otherwise I interchange fine with the rest of my office mates and thier Office products. The only reason I need really good excel compatability is for the expense reports ;)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
(You are complaining... why? If you're actually any good I can get you a job yesterday. In this economy, with some of the developers I know we have signed up recently being in their late 30's-early 40's, I have to assume that any C++ unemployment is by choice.)
StarOffice is becoming another Sun fiasco and will hopefully be ignored once AbiWord, Gnumeric, Achtung, and the like (or their KOffice equivalents) are finished.
StarOffice is great, but Sun will do their best to screw it up, and no one needs a PhD in anything to predict that.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
They really should have said something about the fact that the article was about the web-enabled versions rather than the normal ones.
Personally, I don't see *any* reason you would want to run an office suite off the 'net. Just makes it easier for them to deny you access to critical software so that you go out of business. (Outta be great for M$, whenever they want to control a new market, they just make sure that the competitors are using O2K web version, and poof, they no longer can make documents.)
Maybe running one off a local server, like X can work, would make sense, but not for anything but *maybe* a spreadsheet, or a database. But since hard drives are dirt cheap, why would you want to waste your bandwidth like that? You'd have to upgrade to gigabit just to survive. I mean, 100 single user version licenses probably don't cost any more than 100 multi-user server licenses. Oh well.
Netscape was there first and that didn't prevent Microsoft from preventing them from competing in the market.
If nobody -sees- the new Star Office, how can they buy it?Thankfully, the web version doesn't require the OEM and other channels that bundled applications required to be successful. Marketing a web version of an Application Suite is no more difficult then marketing Amazon.com or eBay.
Of course, that won't prevent the MS press from loudly proclaiming that Sun has a shoddy product and everyone should use Microsoft's web-based products.
-Brent--
I wouldn't fancy downloading the 5 MB Word EXE file (not to mention all the accociated DLLS) just to type up a letter
My understanding of how web-based applications work is that the application code stays on the server - and the user inteface is presented to you over the web by some means. This of course implies that you have to pay for time and space on the server in some way. Maybe just by reading ads?
The whole idea isn't completely ridiculous - look at the phenomenal success of web mail. But it's still somewhat ridiculous. Why would you ever want to do that when you can run the apps on your PC, or telephone (next years model:) or whatever. Especially - why would you want to pay good money for the privilege? I imagine there will be a few people - on the road or whatever - that can get access to a browser but not an office suite and therefore would be able to get some use out of something like this, but they would be few in number compared to the massive hordes of people with laptops onto which the applications can be loaded in the usual way. I have to ask again: what is the reason that people would pay good money for this?
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
The SEC filing specifically states that the delay will be until 2nd half of Sun's fiscal 2000 year. However, Sun's fiscal 2000 year is 1st July 1999 to 30th June 2000. In other words, this means the final product will be out and shipping in volume by the 1st half of calender 2000. The beta will be coming out by the end of this year.
Still, it does mean StarPortal will be 3-6 months later than previously stated...
on a happier note, Sun have had over 1,000,000 StarOffice 5.1 downloads in the last 2 months. See Press release. They have a download counter on their homepage, or go here for a direct link to the image. They also have a download counter for Java 2 SDK, and Solaris - though in the latter case, this is the number of "Free Solaris" orders... not downloads...