What is the relationship between StarOffice and OpenOffice? I've searched the Sun site for details without success. Both of them are going through beta stages and I thought they both originated from StarOffice 5.1. Are they still linked and if so how? Dave Williams
On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 09:37, Dave Williams wrote:
What is the relationship between StarOffice and OpenOffice?
I've searched the Sun site for details without success. Both of them are going through beta stages and I thought they both originated from StarOffice 5.1. Are they still linked and if so how?
Same code base. Star Office 6.0 is 99% the same as OO.org 1.0. It has
some proprietary additions such as a Wordperfect filter, clop art and
templates. The way it works is that OO.org is developed by the OO.org
community of which Sun plays a major role - they provide the hosting for
the OO.org web site and programmers to work on OO.org development. Other
volunteers work on different projects eg marketing, CD-ROM distribution,
quality assurance etc. OO.org has regular releases, there has been 1.01,
1.02, and 1.03 is the current stable release. 1.1 is now in beta2 and
has more substantial changes such as PDF publication, faster operation
etc. Its very likely that when 1.1 is considered stable Sun will use it
as the basis for Star Office 6.1 which will again have differences in
respect to utilities and say clip art but fundamentally the same code.
Which to use?
If you want to be able to freely copy discs, regularly install the
latest and greatest as early as possible, look at the source code etc,
use OO.org.
If you want an official company backing your product, don't mind the
additional admin associated with vouchers and getting discs sent from
Sun, value the clip art etc then go for Star Office.
But better, why not join the OO.org project? Anyone can take part - very
good education experience for say kids to contribute to say Quality
Assurance or Marketing. They could, for example, press and sell their
own OO.org CDs. Great focus for an after school IT club, Young
Enterprise, Business Studies etc. Motivating too because they get to
work on a real project that is world-wide and worthwhile. Good for
international links as most of the lists are truly international. So you
have scope in IT, Business, MFL as a minimum.
Anyone interested but not sure what to do, drop me an E-mail. I am a
marketing volunteer for OO.org :-)
--
ian
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Dave Williams
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ian