a bunch of words sorted into posts.

[Master of Reality]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25463.html

you have till midnight may 29 to get your free copy of Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 5.2 and after that it will cost $40 for 5.2; $60 for 6.0; $10 for stripped down 5.2; still free for OpenOffice.org 1.0, available seperately from www.openoffice.org.

well... i'm downloading both the full 5.2 for Linux and Windows

[ May 28, 2002: Message edited by: Master of Reality ]

[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Heru]

It's StarOffice 5.2 that is free for now(not for long).
StarOffice 6.0 costs 60-75 dollars depending on where you get it.

Openffice is at 1.0 and is free and open source.

Just thought I'd clear up any confusion between OpenOffice and StarOffice.

[voidmain]

And to add to that, OpenOffice.org 1.0 is the equivelant of StarOffice 6.0 (minus some minor proprietary items).

[Calum]

yeah, i've got staroffice 5.2 but i don't expect i'll ever install it since i also have openoffice.org 1.0 for bot linux and windows (although i haven't used it yet)

Sun are the ones charging, not OpenOffice, nothing wrong with that, but Sun probably "need" our money a little less than perhaps the name of this topic implies!  

[Master of Reality]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
Sun are the ones charging, not OpenOffice, nothing wrong with that, but Sun probably "need" our money a little less than perhaps the name of this topic implies!    

i changed the name of the topic.

[voidmain]

You still have the title wrong. Sun does *not* want money for OpenOffice. They are charging for "StarOffice".  Nothing wrong with that as it is their application.  They are nice enough to give the non-proprietary portions of it to the GNU community for what is called "OpenOffice.org". OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are nearly the same thing, except you will buy the version called StarOffice and get commercial support for it, unlike with OpenOffice.org. There are a lot of companies out there that will not use an app (even if it is free monitarily) because there is no company behind it that they can point the finger at when something doesn't work. I am extremely pleased that Sun allows the majority of the source code to be GPL'd for us cheap skates.

P.S. "OpenOffice.org" is the actual name of the open source version of the office suite and it can always be found at http://www.openoffice.org for no charge.

[ May 29, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

100% true as usual, i changed it so it's correct, of course aforementioned midnight has now passed, so it's really moot. still, i've got staroffice 5.2, and openoffice.org 1.0 on a CD, if anybody is in the UK and wants to send me a blank and an SAE, i'll do them a copy!

[ May 29, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Master of Reality]

I wouldnt mind a bit about paying for staroffice. I dont mind paying for good software, and i believe that staroffice is a fine piece of work. What i would not pay for is something like windows which is not good software. It is very convienient however that i got it (staroffice) for free.

Now... do they mean midnight GMT? Because if it is, then you can still get it for another 15 minutes.

[ May 29, 2002: Message edited by: Master of Reality ]

[Calum]

doh! 18 minutes past as i write this! anyway i already have 5,2!

I agreem they get to charge for it! fair enough! did you know though that staroffice wasn't originally a Sun Micrososytems product? Sun bought it, opened the code, and totally did a "netscape". Top good on them i say, can't remember who they bought it off but i'm sure somebody will fill me in...

 or they might even tell me who it was!

[voidmain]

A small company (one or two programmers if I remember right) called "StarDivision" originally wrote StarOffice.  It was closed source but you could get it for free. I used it before Sun bought them out. Very soon after Sun bought them out they GPL'd the code.

[Master of Reality]

quote:Sun are the ones charging, not OpenOffice, nothing wrong with that, but Sun probably "need" our money a little less than perhaps the name of this topic implies!

 

quote:You still have the title wrong.

 

quote:a bunch of words sorted into posts

this is why i will never be a headline writer for.. anything.

[voidmain]

That is correct. And I believe that's what I said. But OpenOffice.org (GPL) and StarOffice (Sun) come from the same source. StarOffice has some additional features like a database, some proprietary non-free fonts, etc. If you had read all of the articles leading up to Sun putting a price tag on StarOffice, their reasoning was "That's what companies are telling us they want".  Companies do not want to use a free and unsupported productivity apps.  They would rather pay a little and get support and have someone to call if it doesn't work properly.

Sure, you and I know that you can get better support from the "community" and if you don't need a proprietary database we can use OpenOffice with just as good of results.  Sun believes that they will actually chip away a larger portion of the MS Office market share by selling their product at a low price rather than giving it away for free. I tend to agree with that thought after some thought of my own.

It'll be interesting to sit back and see how it plays out. Sun will be giving out the Solaris version of StarOffice at no charge, unless they have recently changed their minds.

[hoojchoons]

I can't see what's wrong with Sun charging for Star Office. It's really their product and they're entitled to charge for it. It's their right. I wouldn't mind paying only for a quarter of what M$ charges for their so called Office suite. I'm still using Star Office 5.2 and I must say that besides being a bit slow, it's a damn good Office suite. And since Sun are friendly enough to give portions of their code to the community, one could also use Open Office as well. It's damn good too. There are really a lot of options  

[Calum]

quote:Originally posted by hoojchoons:
I can't see what's wrong with Sun charging for Star Office. It's really their product and they're entitled to charge for it. It's their right. I wouldn't mind paying only for a quarter of what M$ charges for their so called Office suite. I'm still using Star Office 5.2 and I must say that besides being a bit slow, it's a damn good Office suite. And since Sun are friendly enough to give portions of their code to the community, one could also use Open Office as well. It's damn good too. There are really a lot of options      

nobody said they couldn't charge for it! That's not what's at issue here!

how about this for an idea though - they could charge for the stuff that they are charging for now, but still release their source for free (or what source they feel they legally can and so forth), and this way the businesses who want to pay for support can do so, and the open source thing won't affect them, and vice versa, the open source stuff won't be affected by the fact that the program is charged for.

With openoffice.org, this is almost what is already happening, i can't really think of another program that has such a good setup as this, except maybe mozilla, but my suggestion is that they have it all under one roof, that staroffice in its open source form, would not replace openoffice, but just give people who didn't want to cough up for support that extra choice. Plus they can say on their CVs, "i use staroffice" instead of "i use openoffice" which may promote the response "oh yes, what's that then" or worse "isn't that some sort of free hobbyists' program?".

[voidmain]

But that's already being done. OpenOffice.org *is* the unproprietary portion of StarOffice.  They give to each other. OpenOffice.org will likely always be Free/free (read the FAQ on www.openoffice.org).  I personally don't see any issue whatsoever. The original poster *thought* there was an issue but had his wires crossed.