StarOffice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

StarOffice is Sun Microsystems's commercial office suite software package. It was originally started in the mid-1980s by Star Division, a German company, founded by Marco Boerries. The company and the rights to StarOffice were acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999.

Sun soon offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use. But they then went through a similar exercise to Netscape's release of Mozilla by open-sourcing most of the StarOffice code-base. The resultant open-source codebase is developed as OpenOffice.org and is contributed to by both Sun and the open source community. Sun then takes a "snapshot" of the OpenOffice code base, integrates proprietary and third-party code modules and markets the package commercially.

Added proprietary components include:

• Certain fonts (especially Asian language fonts)
• Adabas B database
• Some templates
• Clip art gallery
• Some sorting functionality for Asian versions
• Some file filters.

Traditionally, StarOffice licenses have been sold for around 70 USD, but in 2004, Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to Japanese customers for about 1,980 JPY (19 USD) per year (Becker, 2004). P. Ulander, a desktop products manager for Sun, acknowledged that Sun planned to expand subscription-based licenses to other countries, as well.

References

• Becker, D. (2004). Sun readies StarOffice subscription plan. Retrieved January 16, 2004.

The original article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice.
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