Sun’s StarOffice  

12/21/01

Sun is trying to get more market share for its Microsoft Office-compatible office productivity suite, StarSuite.  Now developed through OpenOffice.org, StarSuite includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software.  It runs on Solaris, Windows, and Linux operating systems. (The company was originally based in Germany and was acquired by Sun in 1999.)

Last week, Sun announced that it has signed a technology licensing and distribution agreement with three leading Chinese software companies to bundle Sun’s StarSuite software as part of their platform offerings.

Under the terms of the agreement, the three companies (CS&S Network Technology Co., Ltd., Red Flag Software Co., Ltd. and Beijing Co-Create Open Source Software Co., Ltd. (Co-Soft)) agreed to license and bundle StarSuite software as part of their Linux operating platform, which they OEM to PC vendors and also sell through retail and other channels.

StarSuite 6.0 is the Asian language localization or version of StarOffice 6.0.  Currently StarSuite 6.0 supports Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean languages.

The Chinese partners have also agreed to work on the future development and deployment of the StarSuite line of products.  We wondered what that meant – beyond Sun’s expected pronouncements of the huge opportunity in the Chinese market – and spent some time in email query hell.

Here’s what we confirmed:

The China IT industry is paying very close attention to the development of Linux. Enriching its upper layer application software will accelerate the development of the Linux platform and also help Cosix Linux meet the requirements of China's users.  As a Sun partner, Chinasoft will cooperate with Sun on the software joint-development information service.

Moving forward, the Sun China Engineering and Research Institute (SCERI) will assist in StarSuite localizations with emphasis on the Chinese locale.  Future projects between SCERI and StarOffice would include things like StarSuite Quality Assurance, and work on small devices.  Specific projects have not been selected yet, but these represent a sampling of development opportunities between StarOffice and SCERI.

Core development of StarOffice and StarSuite will remain in Germany and the platform ports (Solaris, Windows, and Linux) will also stay in Germany.

Should StarOffice Licenses Be Fee-Paid Not Free?

There is another Sun StarOffice rumor we thought you’d be interested in.  Recently rumors have surfaced that Sun is considering charging for its currently free office software product.  

Sources at Sun were willing to confirm that such discussions are occurring.  Corporate customers who are interested in considering StarOffice as a corporate software product are unwilling to use a free open source product, because they are concerned that this implies the product might not be properly supported or that an ongoing commitment to future development and support might be lacking. 

Sun has not decided whether to take this step, but we suggest that if they did it would not be the only way they’d offer StarOffice, but rather a special offering for those customers who prefer a priced and premium-supported product.

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