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OPEN OFFICE PRODUCTS RELEASED

Brian Grainger

In the beginning there was Microsoft Office. This became very popular, but it was only available on the Windows and Mac platforms. The followers of Linux and the anti Microsoft brigade could see the need for a similar but competing product.

Star Office was born, initially for Linux but also ported to the Windows platform. This was originally free of charge and available from the Star consortium in Germany.

Then, Sun, a Microsoft arch rival, decided it could benefit from an office product and therefore took over Star Office. It even produced one update to the product, so that Star Office v.5.2 was released free of charge for Linux and Windows platforms.

However, Sun are no more philanthropic than Microsoft and decided that the next version would not come free of charge. To keep the free software community happy Sun forked Star Office so that an open source project was started, while at the same time Sun would use the open source base and add its own proprietary extensions. The open source project was called Open Office while Sun continued to trade on the goodwill of the Star Office name. Just recently the first release of each product appeared.

Star Office version 6 recently appeared at a price of £52.99. Much cheaper than Microsoft Office of course but not free. We get the usual guff from Sun that they would provide technical support and that costs, but nothing can detract from the fact they took a free product and started charging for it. Also the 'support' comes via forums and FAQs. If you want personal contact via e-mail or telephone that costs extra! £14.50 for e-mail queries and £18 for telephone queries. They do give you 1 free enquiry when you buy the package. One other justification for the cost is that Sun have added database support to the Open Office project. The latter could be regarded as a MS Office Standard equivalent whereas Star Office is the MS Office Professional competitor.

For those of you who wish to support the free software concept, OpenOffice.Org version 1.0 has now been released and has appeared on cover disks of the August 2002 magazines. The Linux version appears on Linux Format and the Windows version on PC Advisor. Cost, £3-£5 with a free magazine thrown in! Those with broadband access could download it from the web site at www.openoffice.org. A Mac port of OpenOffice is being worked on.

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