Sun Denies StarOffice on Mac OS X

mattworld1 writes, "MacCentral is reporting that while development of OpenOffice for Mac OS X will continue, Sun is denying that a version of StarOffice is in the works. This is unfortunate, as it would be nice for Mac OS X users to have a good alternative to the expensive Microsoft Office." Apparently it's not all bad news, as VValdo writes, "The recent announcement of a collaboration from Apple/Sun on a Java-based version of StarOffice for Mac OS X shocked and angered many of the OpenOffice developers who had been left totally in the dark. After two days of intense programming on a proof of concept, they announced a first look at Open Office in Aqua." Neat!

Clarification

[Nomad7674]

My understanding is not that the StarOffice story was materially WRONG, but that it was a bit distorted.

Essentially, Star and Apple programmers have been working with the OpenOffice developers on getting out a version of OpenOffice (which the original reporter confused with StarOffice, the commercial version of OpenOffice) for MacOS X. But it is still under the aegis of OpenOffice and will be a called OpenOffice and will not be sold by Sun. It was never an official Sun-sponsored initiative and no one was given a paid position to support a MacOS X version. But Sun employees did some work, Apple employees did some work, and the StarOffice team provided informational help on the structure of OpenOffice, when asked.

This distorted reporting has spawned a lot of scathing commentary on all sides. Shows that having the right facts in the wrong order can be as bad as having the wrong facts, as far as the community is concerned.

What would be great

[bogie]

Is that if Apple bundled OpenOffice with OSX. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. This would make OSX even more compelling. It would also allow Apple to tell MS to shove that carrot they dangle over Apple where the sun don't shine. They are already overcharging their customers already, why not charge $10 more per machine to cover tech support costs for OpenOffice. They by this fall with Redhat and Apple including OpenOffice we would actually start to see some market share. If we are ever going to get out from under MS's thumb we have to start somewhere. Next is to port Evolution to windows, and Mac and get a free exchange plugin going.

Re:What would be great

[divec]

"overcharging" in a capitalist system means that people stop buying whatever you're offering. If Office is selling, then by definition they're not overcharging.

I can only be glad that you're (presumably) not in charge of enforcing ant-trust law.

Re:OS X already has an alternative

[rampant mac]

Sorry to say, but for professionals who require it, there's no substitute for MS Office.

It's like telling a graphic artist who relys on Photoshop to just "Gimp" their next project...

Besides, most Mac users barely use the command line...

Telling my Grandma to "emacs, join, sort, grep and cut" when all she wants to do is WRITE A LETTER will probably require a change of her adult diapers.

Re:pay for?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean people still pay for MS Office?

Some do. I wish Microsoft would come up with a totally fool-proof anti-piracy scheme. When you think about it, they couldn't do anything more to promote free software than to crack down on piracy. When high school and college kids can't warez the Office and Windows they'll end up installing open source stuff to get shit done.

Re:OS X already has an alternative

[jbolden]

I don't know. I look at lots and lots of "joe average user" docs. I've seen lots of OLE. I'm seeing lots of using of versioning and automatic document merging. I assume the rather good grammer and spell checking features are getting used when I compare to email. I'm not sure joe average user isn't getting quite a bit out of advanced features.

Even before word was popular why was everyone using WordPerfect 4.2 or 5.1? There were much easier to use (and cheaper) word processors and the WP format was easily convertable.

Re:What would be great

[FatherOfONe]

Ok I think that I know why they won't do this.

A TON of businesses switched to Windows95 from Apple when 95 came out. If Apple wants to maintain or even possibly grow their market share with businesses then they need Microsoft products. This includes the Exchange client (Outlook etc...).

So lets say that Apple ships OpenOffice with OSX. Microsoft could then stop or greatly slow development for I.E., Outlook, and Office for the Mac. This would force quite a few comopanies to switch off of the Macintosh platform. Or at lest take a long look at how a Windows XP machine would perform instead of a Macintosh.

My point with this is similar to Filemaker for the Mac. Apple now ships/supports mySql. That pissed of FileMaker and now they focus "most" of their development on other platforms. I realize that Filemaker is NO Microsoft, so Apple didn't really seem to care.

The best thing they can do is try and build OpenOffice to be a great Mac app. Then possibly put links for "free" downloads from their site. Even this might incur the wrath of Microsoft.

For everyones sake I hope OpenOffice gains a 20+% marketshare over the next five years.

Re:What would be great

[ivan256]

Just because they don't overcharge everybody doesn't mean that the retail box price isn't overcharging. Why do you think so many people pirate Office? How many people do you know that have gone out and purchased a copy off the shelf? The bulk corporate and OEM pricing is pretty reasonable. The single unit price is outrageous. Of course Microsoft has the BSA claim that the piracy is lost revenue, and works on copy protection, rather then addressing the real issue: People can't afford Office.

BTW, everyone I know that uses office at home (Not me, thank you. I don't use it) has "borrowed" the CD from work, or had it come with their PC. I don't think I've ever met somebody who has actually gone and bought it for a personal machine.

Re:Appleworks

[CJ Hooknose]

[Appleworks] always screws up something about formatting when I import [Microsoft Word] documents -- especially if you use the odd tab settings that Word likes to auto-format your documents with. I find that it doesn't do formatting of text around embedded images well, nor does it handle footnotes 100% correctly.

This is not particularly surprising. (experiment done in late 1998:) Take a document written in MS Word 97 on an x86, with a fair number of embedded images. Open this document in MS Word 98 on a MacOS 9 machine. Watch all the pagination and image formatting go to hell. Fix pagination and images, save document as "document-mac.doc". Open "document-mac.doc" on an x86 with MS Word 97... guess what, pagination and images are screwed.

Really, if slightly different versions of MS Word using the same document format can't render things in the same way, you've got to wonder what chance 3rd-party applications have at doing the right thing. Or if MS products do the same thing as Appleworks does, can Appleworks claim it as a feature?

I don't want Apple to do StarOffice

[TheBishop]

Because I think Apple would be better served by improving their own Office suite -- Appleworks. Not that I don't like Staroffice (or Openoffice.org). I would be concerned that if Apple "took over" development on Star/Openoffice for OSX that

• Apple would merge and have only "one" suite - which would be Appleworks + Staroffice as a blend. This would translate into less choice, not more for the OSX user.
• If Apple took it over, I forsee that 99.9% of the development would be by Apple itself. Yes Apple gives back to the community, but then the Star/Openoffice.org group would see that as a chance to slack off. What OSX needs more than Apple working on things is *other people* working on things. Diversity breeds innnovation. Apple is good, but they shouldn't have to do everything.

Appleworks has come ("free") with every iBook/G4 Powermac I've bought at our company since OSX 10.1 came out. It's default loaded in the dock even. That's the best exposure any Mac office suite can get.

Re:RTFM!

[vex24]

I'm very much aware of how to do it, it's just that running setup.exe for each and every user (or listening to them on the phone clicking and tapping) would be a harrowing experience at best.

If I had nothing but programmers or other computer-savvy people as users, this would be fine. In my case, it needs to be easier. MS Office doesn't require all this nonsense, and isn't that who OO/SO is competing against?

Makes me wonder why we need so many "settings" files for a single user who hasn't tapped a single keystroke yet...