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!

Java based Office...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, before people start railing on "how much memory this takes", or "how slow it will be" because its an app in Java, may I suggest you run over to Borlands site and tryout JBuilder. Most developers think its a C++ app, when, in actuality, it is a Java app.

And no, its not slow, and no, it doesn't have a major memory footprint.

They'd rather give SO to Apple

[JHromadka]

From this C|Net article [com.com]: "I don't want to sell StarOffice for OS X," [Tony Siress, Sun's senior director of desktop marketing solutions] said. "I want Apple to bundle it. I'll give them the code. I'd love it if I could get the team at Apple to do joint development and they distribute it at no cost--that it's their product. Nobody makes a product more beautiful on Apple than Apple." Perhaps Apple could rework AppleWorks to incorporate Sun's work.

Re:OS X already has an alternative

[Lev13than]

That may be fine for the 1% of computer users out there who actually use the tools. It's far more important to let joe-average user (teacher, student, homemaker, small business owner, retiree etc...) know that there is no real reason to spend extra money on microsoft office products. There are lots of viable alternatives out there, be it StarOffice, AppleWorks or whatever.

In my view the biggest problem is the lack of standards in document formatting these days. For example, if people would simply save word processor files as .rtf instead of .doc we'd all be a lot better off. File convertors are a clumsy non-solution - you don't see us 'converting' e-mails written in Outlook so we can read them in .vi, so why do we continue to operate this way with text files? The proprietary features of Microsoft products (PowerPoint, complex text manipulation in Word etc...) are only really required by a small percentage of business users, in which case the money spent is a good investment.

Re:OS X already has an alternative

[mr. marbles]

you forgot to add LaTeX, some people actually have to format their work.

Posting Stories without checking facts...

[jaaron]

The whole "problem" here has nothing to do with Sun or Apple, but it has everything to do with CNET running an inaccurate story that was picked up by the other "news" sites like Newsforge and Slashdot, thus furthering the rumors. This in turn created quite a fuss with the OpenOffice programmers who thought it would have been nice for Sun to tell them directly rather than getting the word through a news story.

The really interesting part of this little mixup is how quickly misinformation travels. While this episode might not be all that serious in the grand scale of things, I wouldn't be surprised if one day this same sort of mix up (ie- online news sites reporting some rumor story that spreads like fire through blogs and other online portals) will create a real problem or crisis. You watch. Information (thankfully) travels much faster and more freely these days, but that means the consumer of the information must pay more attention to filter out fact from fiction.

For those looking for more facts, check out the FAQ at [openoffice.org]
OpenOffice.org about the OS X port.

Behind the times???

[Andy Dodd]

While not fool-proof, MS's latest software (WinXP/OfficeXP) has much more antipiracy than previous versions, to the point that for once it's actually an annoyance for warezers. Probably 75-90% of those who warezed older versions of MS products won't bother with MS ProductXP. What you want is already here to a degree.

Re:Question: Macs & Unix Workstations

[FatherOfONe]

I don't want to start a flaim war... but I will take a stab at this.

Apple has ONE core market now and SUN has the other. Both could spend time and resources trying to get the other market but neither can afford the resources to do that.

Could Apple take FreeBSD errr OSX and make a huge million dollar server? Yes, but it would come at the cost of them getting OSX better for the desktop. Can they afford that? I don't think so.

Could SUN make a workstation for the masses... I personally don't think so. Sun is in a weird position now in that their threat isn't from Apple but Linux on X86. They are going to have some tough descisions in the next few years if the Intel 64Bit stuff takes off.

Re:What would be great

[bogie]

Its not about it being "threat" its about a good free product that can replace Office for 99% of Mac users. Feature wise it compares very well, and eveyone I know who has tried it has been impressed with this free program. Apple's market share is home users, schools, and artists. It is NOT Fortune 500 companies where Exchange is mandatory. You say how Appleworks is enough for you well guess what, your just like the rest of Apple's users. Have you noticed how poor Office X sales are?
OpenOffice is a great substitute for MS Office for Mac users.

Re:the problem is Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, of course, that would mean Apple would be expected to actually support the nightmare that is X.

That's absolutely ridiculous. X11 is a graphics API. It's much smaller and simpler than Carbon. It's mature. There is nothing to "support", and there is no "nightmare". OS9 support under OSX, now there you have a software engineering and usability "nightmare".

Sure it will open up the masses of X11 software to MacOS X users, but so what?

It would mean that my parents could actually get the software that they see running on my Linux machine. Right now, I have to tell them: "Sorry, it won't run, and there is nothing like it available for Macintosh OS X yet. Maybe in another year."

By the way, I love the notion that its "only a few hundred kbytes of binary" as if that were a valid measure of code complexity. [...] To paraphrase an old quote "Everything is easy for the person who doesn't have to do it."

It has been done, a number of times. It really isn't hard. Apple could buy it very cheaply. Or, for that matter, they could just bundle XFree86 and better support its further development. Without XFree86 on Mac OSX, OSX would not have seen the boost that it has.