StarOffice Dropped From Google Pack 135
Posted
by
timothy
from the stardom-is-temporary dept.
from the stardom-is-temporary dept.
Barence writes "Sun's StarOffice suite has been mysteriously dropped from the Google Pack of free software. The office suite has been axed without any warning or explanation on the Google site. Is Google trying to drive more people towards its own online suite of office applications? Or has it been stung into action by Steve Ballmer's recent comment that Microsoft Office faces stronger competition from StarOffice than it does Google Docs and Spreadsheet?"
Re:Why not OpenOffice? (Score:5, Informative)
StarOffice has some proprietary parts that couldn't be put into OpenOffice. In particular, Sun Microsystems licensed information about the format of Office files from Microsoft, to gain better compatibility.
Re:Support (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Support (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed. Most EULAs are pretty much this: a notice that states whether or not redistribution is allowed (usually it is not), a notice that states how many computers you can install it on, a notice that says not to reverse engineer it, and a complete disclaimer of all warranty and sometimes even a covenant not to sue.
You can, of course, usually purchase additional support, sometimes even warranty coverage.
How does this differ from free/open source software? Not at all. One can purchase support for any major free/open source software package and one can also often purchase some level of support for various small packages, in addition to free support for all widely used packages.
Re:Support (Score:4, Informative)
Really, what support from the vendor? Have you /read/ your EULA for any software you've used? Ever?
I know it's popular on Slashdot to claim that vendor support doesn't exist, but if you work for a large customer of a particular vendor and ask intelligent questions of the right person working for that vendor, you will generally get good support.
In most situations, it doesn't make economic sense for everyone to have someone on staff who knows the ins and outs of every product they work with as well as a dedicated support person at the vendor does. I tend to get into the nuts and bolts of what I support a lot more than most people would, but there's only so much time in the day, and I support a *lot* of different software for my employer.
My experience has been that - while there are some vendors who have terrible support overall - generally it's just the first tier that's like that, to act as a buffer because most people who call their vendor's support line are not highly technical and only need basic support (IE something they could have learned from the manual). If you are willing to do the necessary investigation beforehand and put together a package of information (network captures, etc.) you will usually get good results.
Re:Why not OpenOffice? (Score:3, Informative)
Last I checked, MS Office support in StarOffice was just as good/bad as it is in OpenOffice 2.0. I seriously doubt Microsoft would give anyone information about the MS Office formats -- this isn't exactly the days where WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 rule the earth anymore.
Re:Why not OpenOffice? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's because staroffice is slow and a resource (Score:5, Informative)
What do you think OpenOffice is written in ?? BASIC ? Perl ? Intercal ?
(Hint : it uses this esoteric language that has a name that starts with C and ends with ++)
Re:It's because staroffice is slow and a resource (Score:3, Informative)
Java?
Not especially. You can write extensions in a number of languages. Java is used in a few peripheral tools such as the database glue layers. The core stuff is C++.
It's still downloadable from Google... (Score:3, Informative)
...as I point out here [slashdot.org].
-- Nathan