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Dept. of Defense Adopts StarOffice 204

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-almost-care dept.
Polar Pope writes "The Department of Defense has adopted Sun's Open Source productivity suite StarOffice (up to 25,000 units)." Honestly I don't see this as being that huge of a deal, but it sure is getting submitted a lot. Then again, 25k Linux boxes inside the DoD is cool.
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Dept. of Defense Adopts StarOffice More

Dept. of Defense Adopts StarOffice

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  • Re:The point is, it ends lock-in (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > Rather, people are crowing that the era of one-vendor lock-in for desktop OS's has ended at the DoD

    Yes, but those people are uninformed and cheering for something that doesn't exist. StarOffice is replacing a UNIX office suite they were using and not MSOffice. So now they (and they isn't the DoD, it's an independent subdivision) will be using MSOffice and StarOffice instead of MSOffice and Applix.

  • Re:Fixed Problems (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Man...what the heck would you call GOOD software. You guys act like NOTHING Microsoft writes is any good. I really wish people would keep their concerns about MS where they are really concerns - such things as licensing, and tech-world domination. But the software itself is quality stuff. There is simply no better browser than IE, there simply is no better office suite than Office. Windows, well, thats strictly opinion - but for what it does, it works pretty well too (try writing a multitasking windows-based operating system including all the COM stuff, server software, media, drivers, and more - then you'll understand why Windows has bugs - just ask the folks at KDE and Gnome if their software contains bugs and they arent even an operating system!). Point is, Microsoft does in fact write GOOD software. They just happen to want to cram it down your throat, and make you pay out the a**.

  • Re:Interesting article at ZdNet (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Driving people away? Hardly. In the DoD, they're used to paying a lot more to UNIX vendors than to MS and dealing with a lot more license issues. At one job I had in the USAF, I spent more time dealing with UNIX licenses and support contracts than getting real work done. MS has been getting a lot worse lately, but the price & convenience level of MS licensing schemes is still better than the major UNIX vendors.

    Of course, Linux is much better still, but many organizations need to stay with the big vendors because of legacy software.

  • No, of course you don't (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Honestly I don't see this as being that huge of a deal ...

    Of course you don't, because you don't start sporting a chubby until there is a little penguin involved in some way. For the rest of, who would like to be able to easily exchange office-type documents with other normal (read: "What's Linux?") people without having to pay the M$ tax, any news of widespread acceptance of a freely-available and well-supported product is welcome news.

  • Exactly! (Score:2)

    by mosch ( 204 )
    The biggest reason that MicroSoft Office took over the market, back when it had competitors, was because they got the government to use it. This meant that all the businesses who wanted to do business with the govt switched to MS Office, so they could be sure that their proposals and quotes would be properly displayable within the government. Why would anybody choose WordPerfect if it might cost them their next contract?

    To use Microsoft's words, the office suite is a cancer. If the DoD switches to another office suite, then many others end up having to switch as well. Then the people who do business with those businesses need to switch.... then the people who do busine... etc, et al, ad infinitum.

    --
  • StarOffice runs on Windows too, so it doesn't necessarily mean they have 25K Linux machines. Also, StarOffice isn't quite open source. There's an OpenOffice subset that is, but Sun doesn't have the necessary licenses to release source to all of StarOffice.
  • Sorry, had to get my ADA dig in there (it's a beautiful language, really. :) )

    Nice to see another branch of government taking Open Source seriously. I'm wondering what drove the directon to Star Office, and if it will also drive some of the 25K machines to be Linux (Yes, Virginia, there is a Windows Version of Star Office). Wonder if other branches of the US Government will follow. At least most of them disseminate their forms in .pdf format. Gotta give them credit for that. :)

  • ...or you could just use the old Ultra as an Xterminal and run SO itself on a "real" machine.
  • Frequently, those who use StarOffice receive embarrasing statements from those with whom they try to share Word-formatted files.

    In my experience, RTF files share better between SO and Word and back again than do .doc files.

    --

  • Interesting article at ZdNet (Score:4)

    by ChrisRijk ( 1818 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:48AM (#127572)
    Department of Defense adopts StarOffice [yahoo.com]

    They basically consider that Microsoft's continued screwing of their customers (mostly contracts, but they forgot to mention prices) is driving people away. Also that many large (government) groups around the world are considering similar stuff.

    btw, the DoD are basically paying $0 for this - they already have a support contract with Sun to cover support. Good for US tax-payers eh.

  • Yes, that is true. StarOffice most certainly did come first. That wasn't at all clear from my post.

    What I should have said was that StarOffice 6.0 will be the re-branded OpenOffice.

    And Open Office really is getting better. For one thing it no longer relies on the goofy Xprint extensions to print (it can generate Postscript). I actually have been playing with the recent builds and they are getting to be pretty darn good (although soffice still takes forever to start).

    I also agree with you about AbiWord and Gnumeric. The Gnome Office suite is getting to be pretty good. Either way it is nice to see an organization standardize on something besides MS Office. The fact that they are saving us taxpayers some money is also good news.

  • I suppose they would do it for the same reason that Netscape rebrands Mozilla as Netscape. Marketing folks think that changing the name on the free product lends the non-free (yes, both Netscape and StarOffice will be released under commercial closed source licenses) product some dignity.

    Personally I think that this particular trick has failed miserably. Mozilla is good enough to actually use as a browser, Netscape, on the other hand sucks. Right now StarOffice is certainly more stable and useable than OpenOffice, but once that is no longer the case I imagine that people will simply use OpenOffice (although your Sparcs will probably come with a copy of StarOffice).

  • Yes, if you want to fork the code base you can. If you want your source code to end up in their CVS repository, on the other hand, you will assign your copyrights to Sun.

    This is not necessarily a bad thing, however. The Free Software Foundation requires the same thing if you plan on submitting code to their projects. They do this to make sure that they can prosecute copyright infringers (only the copyright holder can prosecute), and to make sure that all of the source is legal to distribute.

    In Sun's case it also means that they can re-license your code under non-free licenses. Not that this matters to you. You still have your copy of the source, and you can do what you want with it (including creating a fork). You can't sell closed source versions of the software, however, because Sun owns a large part of the copyrighted material.

    In essence this sort of deal gives the originator of the code a slight advantage. Sun could, if they wanted, sell commercial versions of StarOffice with proprietary add-ons not found in OpenOffice. However, if they spent to much time on the proprietary add-ons then their userbase would probably fork their codebase, and Sun would lose the help of the Free Software community (and probably the bulk of their users).

    Believe it or not their are business reasons for using the GPL.

  • Re:What about OpenOffice (Score:3)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:52AM (#127576) Homepage Journal

    OpenOffice is the GPLed version, StarOffice is Sun's rebranded version of the same thing. Part of the fun with OpenOffice is that all hackers assign their copyrights to Sun. This allows them to relicense StarOffice as they please.

    It's sort of like the difference between Netscape and Mozilla.

    Just for the record, I personally think that this sort of licensing is good for all involved. Sun remains in control of their project, unless they are evil. In which case OpenOffice becomes the de-facto standard and StarOffice disappears. If Sun plays nice, everyone wins.

  • Granted, it's been a while since I was a sp00k for Uncle Sam [usmc.mil], but when I worked with the DISA systems, they all ran Solaris on Sparc hardware. The next giant leap for DoD will be to standardize on Linux for their other desktop systems and implement StarOffice or OpenOffice [openoffice.org] for compatibility across the board. When I worked on the non-secret squirrel projects, they couldn't decide on a standard office software package. Some shops used AmiPro, some used Wordperfect, etc. It varied across the board.
  • Sharing files problem is due to Microsoft not giving out the specs for its Office format (unlike, say, RTF or PS).
    Font ugliness and anti-aliasing are the responsibility of X, and do not show up in the Windows version.
    (granted StarOffice does not use the X fonts properly, and when I add TrueType fonts to X, SO52 doesn't grab them)

    Lightweight is something I doubt a complete office suite will ever be, just like wanting a complete browser like Mozilla or IE to be lightweight.
  • Man, you make me want to come over there and whack you with a "computers are deterministic" clue stick.
  • I work on the {Star|Open}Office msword import and export stuff. And in the latest versions we do reliably handle fastsaved documents. Get a shiny development interim milestone from openoffice.org and give it a whirl for importing word documents, it laughs in the face of fastsave documents. Anything that doesn't work is a bug and you can submit it as such through openoffice.org's bugzilla thingy, we can always do with troublesome documents.

  • FWIW, the next version after 5.2 will have an xml file format which is of course documented (pdf) [openoffice.org] at xml.openoffice.org.

    So anyone can create an import filter to import the new formats. Equally the xml format doubles as an api [openoffice.org] so creating import filters for OpenOffice is trivial enough

    C. (I work for them, so I'm completely biased, but don't speak for them, etc etc.)

  • I see a lot of posts here raving about "Hey! This'll be on a Linux/Solaris/Windows box!". One thing that should be rememberered is that StarOffice has one neat little feature: full screen support. I find it annoying, but think about this: they basically mimic the Windows style start button and desktop in this mode and basically, they could install this program on ANY type of supported OS and just have StarOffice run in this mode. Who cares what is the OS behind the scenes? It will look the same across all platforms (save for file paths, but that can also be worked out).

    I think it's neat.

    --

  • It could be with all the reports of security holes in MS Office and back doors etc that one part of the DoD has decided they'd like to run something where they can view and check all the source code themselves to make sure it's secure.

    Also, I'm sure the DoD has a lot more than 25k PCs, so this must be just for a small part or division where security is more important than features or compatibility.
  • > Hell, defence contracting is the only reason Ada exist today.

    How is Ada "outdated, dilapidated, and otherwise useless"? It's a object-orientated language with many of the features of C++ and Java. Ada programmers can write code based on the latest standard, which isn't true for C or C++ - heck, the GNU toolchain still doesn't use many features from the 10 year old C89 standard, for fear of incompatibility. It's in a number of non-DOD places where 100% reliability and formal provability is needed, so it's obviously not useless.

    Just because you don't like the language, doesn't make it stupid or pointless to use. There are many odd languages out there that keep their place because they do what they do better than their competitors.
  • > I have a copy of the annotated draft standard at home [...]

    Comparing apples to apples, the Ada95 standard is 800 pages, and IIRC the C++ standard is well over a thousand.

    > Ada was the right answer in 1979 -- C hadn't yet achieved its current prominence,

    Actually, C was taken out of the running by AT&T who pointed out that it was unsuitable for what the government needed.

    > design of Ada is not enough like its closest ancestor Pascal to be really familiar to anybody

    I don't understand why this is an issue. It's not far enough from any other imperative language to be difficult to learn. C has no well known close ancestors (unless you count B). Neither does Perl (a lot of ancestors, but you can't say that it's closer to any of them than Ada is to Pascal.)

    > it became rather antiquated [...] simply because it didn't catch on outside the defense industry.

    (Antiquated: so extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period - Wordnet.) I don't see how it not catching on outside the defense industry could make it antiqutated.

    > a niche product akin to Fortran
    Which sticks around in part because it combines the utmost in efficency with easy and powerful array and numeric handling in a way that no other language does.

    > As for calling it object-oriented, that's a stretch [...]

    No. It has proper objects with dynamically dispatched methods, so it's object-orientated by definition. It's not object-dominated like Java or Smalltalk, but then neither is C++.

    > OO was a bag on the side added to the system in the 1995 standard.

    Sort of like OO was added to C to make C++? It's no less elegant IMO.

    > Ada simply is no longer necessary

    True. OTOH, you can say the same about most languages out there - only one of Perl, Python, Ruby and the other scripting languages are necessary, but they all still exist and have their little subnitches.

    > it won't ever take the place that its supporters want for it.

    That's undoubtedly true. The question is, how much of the reason is technical, and how much is socipolitical?

  • > Ada83 was not OO in the sense we normally associate with the term -- no inheritance, for example.

    Ada83 wasn't OO, but Ada95 is. In any case, Ada83 did have inheritance - type foo is new bar with record ... end record; has been in the language since the first. What it did not have was dynamic dispatching.
  • Hehe, there are the DoD complaining that linux doesn't have CDE and Sun are looking to drop it in favour of Gnome, or so the rumours go...
    --
  • Performance is one thing Star Office is desperately needing. I don't have a problem with it on my home PC, but then, it has 384MB of RAM and a 600MHz Athlon; on a Ultra 1 with a 167MHz UltraSPARC it wasn't particularly hot, even with 256MB of RAM. On anything slower it was painful...
    --
  • I saw little in the way of Linux use in the DoD

    Linux isn't "Orange Book" Secure. Not really even all that close. SGI was making promises to work on that, using code taken from their secure-compliant version of Irix they sell the DoD, but aside from XFS, they haven't really made all that many releases of things to show any progress in this direction. Thus, Linux is not even permitted to be on the vast majority of DoD networks (private or internet-based).
    --
    You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)

  • What this is and isn't (Score:3)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @01:10PM (#127591)
    1. StarOffice 5.2 is being deployed, not OpenOffice. And when they upgrade, it will be to StarOffice 6, not a DoD-maintained fork of OpenOffice.

    2. It's being rolled out as a replacement for the creaky Applixware they run on their Unix machines, since StarOffice has better (but not perfect) MS file import/export, an easier interface to cross-train people on, and more mainstream macro languages in the form of Java and a clone of the VBA language (albeit with a different document object model) instead of Applix's own language.

    3. This is not part of a big switch to Linux. This is not part of a big switch to Unix. It is just a change in office suites for existing Unix-based groups in the DoD. Since the DoD doesn't run a lot of Linux on desktops, it's probably going to be deployed mostly on Solaris.

    4. This is not indicative of any kind of migration away from Windows and MS Office within the DoD or any other part of the US government. It is, however, something other government IT groups will be watching to see if they should do the same for their Unix-based departments. And it does leave the door open for Windows-based groups to start evaluating a move to StarOffice themselves, thanks to the feature parity and identical interfaces across platforms. It will also make it easy and painless for whatever small pockets of Linux desktop users there are within the DoD to install StarOffice, since no purchase will be required, unlike Applixware.
  • I suppose this will get modded as a troll, and I'm no MS lover, but StarOffice(OpenOffice, whatever) pales in comparision to Office 2000.


    Um, here on Planet Reality, Office 2000 has been rightly labelled as something to avoid. It's got lots of features, but it's just too buggy for professional use. I now have to go over my Word docs page by page in hardcopy to make sure that none of the cross-reference links have spontaneously failed on me (they do that now). Automatic numbering is broken. Version control is unusable (it causes bugs in automatic numbering of figures). Oh, and the Section Break bug from Word for Windows 2 is alive and well!

    In my opinion, Word's usefulness peaked with Word 95, which had lots of useful features and was fairly stable, but has been going steadily downhill ever since. It makes my professional life miserable (I'm a tech writer).

    Man o man I wish I could get a job at a Linux company so I could GET AWAY from Microsoft Office! Someday....

    Jon Acheson

  • Re:Fixed Problems - what problems? (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:50AM (#127595) Homepage
    whipping out MicroWarehouse - let's see:

    Msft Office 2000 Premium: $679.95
    StarOffice 5.2 Delux : $39.95

    Geez, the only thing that 'pales' in the general's
    face when he get's the bill for 25K X $679.95 so soldiers can make powerpoint presentations and type office memo's. And what not-being-able-to-print problem?

    I'm sure you like to recommend Gucci designer fatigues for the troops as well, Nike boots, gold plated M16's and diamond studded medals.

  • Re:The benefit of this... (Score:5)

    by deeny ( 10239 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @10:27AM (#127596) Homepage
    StarOffice does NOT reliably open MSOffice documents. If a doc has been fast-saved, the version you will get is non-deterministic. We discovered this the hard way at TiVo.

    _Deirdre

  • DISA != DoD (Score:5)

    by JohnnyX ( 11429 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:46AM (#127598) Homepage Journal
    I think that a headline proclaiming that the "Dept. of Defense Adopts StarOffice" is a little much. I'm working for the DoD, and we're using MS Office, as is most everyone else within the DoD. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is a major coup for Sun, but by no means have they taken the whole DoD.

    Yours truly,
    Mr. X

    ...don't buy the hype...
  • As you correctly point out, the article did say:

    StarOffice, Sun's open source productivity application suite that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database applications for the Solaris, Windows and Linux platforms,
    would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide, said Susan Grabau, the product line manager for StarOffice.


    What is interesting is what isn't said. To whit, 25,000 licenses bought. 10,000 are replacing existing Solaris Applix installations. Where are the other 15,000 licenses going? Quite likely, numerous installations on Windows or other boxes, replacing MS Office in those locations. Why? Because of price, performance, but most importantly, because of guaranteed compatability between Windows SO, GNU/Linux SO, and Solaris SO, and the ability for IT soldiers and/or civil servants to get at the source and fix a problem if a show stopper should arise.

    This does open the possibility of replacing Windoze boxes with GNU/Linux or FreeBSD boxes down the road, and the DoD almost certainly took this into account when making their decision. Bottom line, they will no longer be held hostage by a single, powerful vendor. Standard military doctorine requires a decision like this be made, whenever such a possibility arises. The alternative is a single point of failure and an unacceptable exposure to coercion (possibly, but not necessarilly, by Microsoft, either). Star Office is Free Software, which means that the DoD also retains the freedom to dump Sun if and when they choose, without losing access to their data and documents because of a proprietary storage format.
  • 25,000 units of StarOffice != 25,000 Linux installs.
  • This is important, because it is a implementation of Linux inside of the DoD itself. Having recently built a system for one of the armed forces, and being forced to deploy it on NT, because Linux was "not yet accepted".... This is a huge wonderfull foot in the door.
  • Does it matter? Most of the 25k users will have an OS simply to run Star Office on. In time these will become Linux (or other Free system capable of running SO). Either way you know Redmond is upset.
  • In my experience, in universities Office is not the killer app; Endnote is.


    What is Endnote? What is your experience that makes you conclude that Endnote is a killer app for universities (outside of your own)? From my experience, this would be an app specific to your university, but if the DoD adopted it, you bet your bloody tax dollars that every Fortune 500 company would quickly learn about it.

  • It is a big deal... (Score:3)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:09AM (#127617)
    A very large entity that has a lot of sway over what a lot of other very large entities use has chosen to go with an open standard. This is important. Can you even guess at how many outdated, dilapidated, and otherwise useless systems are kept in place just to be able to do DOD contracting? Hell, defence contracting is the only reason Ada exist today.


    My biggest beef against Microsoft (and yes, I see this as a blow against Microsoft), is their forced upgrade cycle that is made a hurricane by the careful manipulation of the network effects. This reign them in a bit. A corporation that wants to work with the USDOD MUST use DOD forms and formats. Just ask ANYONE who has EVER dealt with DOD contract compliance how picky the inspectors can be and how easy it is to lose a contract over something silly like incompatible font sizes and you will get more than your ears can hold.
    If Microsoft tries to force upgrades with incompatible document formats, they will either put in special features for the DOD, or the DOD will throw them out. Then all the corporations will be submitting docs in StarOffice format. And when the CIOs see the cost savings without the need to retrain or track liscences they'll skip the next forced upgrade. Look for M$ stock to start tanking.

  • What are you talking about? The article I read stated they would not pay ANYTHING as their existing contracts with Sun covered install fees and that the software cost was $0.

    Where did you read that price?
    --
    Charles E. Hill
  • If Windows is working out just fine for the non-high security systems

    Why should it work any better here than in any other situation.

    why would they switch to an OS that'll be unfamiliar to most of their users and cost a lot of time to install and retrain and offer few benefits

    What is this nonsense about being "familiar with the OS" these are users we are talking about, not programmers, administrators and engineers.
    As for the benefits these would be ease of installation and maintanance. As well as being able to make it impossible for anything to be saved on the local HDD, so if a workstation goes bang you can simply replace it with another. (Or use something like LTSP where setting up a machine is as simple as plugging it in and switching it on!)

    the average secretary doesn't care about reading the kernel's source code

    like they care about what the registry is, what registers the CPU has, what a stack frame is, defragmenting a hard disk, what clusters are. All the stuff they really shouldn't have to know, but end up needing to know

    In the unix world users use the machine. Unlike in the Windows world where they are also expected to perform system administration tasks.
  • Being Engineers they felt the need to play with their Windows boxes and effectively destroy them on a regular basis.

    But anyone sat in front of a Windows box can do this. They don't need to be an engineer. As plenty of people can tell you :)


  • I would be very surprised if many of the 25,000 don't get shuffled to Sun machines. They are extremely common in the DoD, and I think that Sun does make a StarOffice for Suns...

  • Good news, but... (Score:3)

    by bconway ( 63464 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:44AM (#127627) Homepage
    The title would make it seem like they're replacing M$ Office with StarOffice, which is not the case. StarOffice is being used to replace Applix on UNIX workstations (there is not a single mention of Linux in the article), which I guess is interesting, but not very notable. It's also not open source, as the article says. I'm still looking forward to the release of StarOffice 6.0, regardless.
  • Since it was WFW 3.11 and then Windows 95, it was especially easy. You can make such systems stable, but it requires picking the hardware and software you use carefully, and working around the bugs in that software. At least with Windows NT the system is pretty stable unless you have buggy drivers. Everyone had to have MS Office to be compatible, so we were limited to Windows and Macs. They were strongly discouraging the use of Macs, so that left Windows.

  • Re:It IS very important news... (Score:3)

    by flatrock ( 79357 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @10:20AM (#127637)
    Regardless, this is still pretty good news for StarOffice fans. I don't know much about DISA, but I did do computer support on an Air Force base once apon a time. There were departments which used a wide variety of computer systems with different OSs. They could definately benefit from having a productivity software suite that ran on many of those different systems. Specifically, there were a lot of Unix gurus who only knew enough about Windows to be dangerous. Being Engineers they felt the need to play with their Windows boxes and effectively destroy them on a regular basis. This created a tremendous amount of work for us "stupid tech support weenies", and never made anyone happy. I like the solution of giving them Star office for their Unix box, and letting them play with it. For the most part they were capable of supporting those systems on their own, or were at least too embarassed to call me and complain about the system being screwed up without thinking through what they may have done to screw it up. The ability to let them use the software they know best would have been nice in several cases. I can remember a couple times where I'd get someone's computer working, and I'd get an angry call the next day saying it was broken again and that I screwed it up. This would happen repeatibly with the same people. In a couple cases I was forced to prove that they were changing the configuration of the machine/applications while my manager and the engineer's manager watched. This was a very bad situation for everyone, and benefitted no one. The engineers were bright people whe were just out of their elements on a Windows machine, but otherwise were valuable employees. Once it was shown that the computer problems were because of things the user was "inadvertantly" doing the issue was dropped. If you're a contractor you don't point fingers and say it's all your fault. That will get you fired eventually even if you are right. The best solution would have been to give the engineer the tools he needed on the system he knew how to use, and had to use for a significant portion of his duties anyway.

    Just as a note, if you can't deal with people blaming you for things that aren't your fault, and you have no control over, stay our of computer support. Having people blame you for things they screwed up is part of the job, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. If you can't deal with it, then it's time for a career change. I guess it never bothered me too much, because computer support was just a job I was doing while working on my masters degree.
  • Ok, that story was better than the original one!

  • Does this mean that they'll also remove their own "start" button? When I booted up my own copy, I got freaked out seeing a start button on my linux desktop.... uggh

  • One of the huge issues with alternative non-Windows OSes is "does it run Office?"

    This is a small step in the major strength of Open Source products like StarOffice: cross platform dominance *because* of portability. It ran on the right platforms so it got chosen.

    This bodes well for projects like KDE and Gnome that feel the need to become a common desktop for *ix. This may also do interesting things for MS if they want to keep control of the entire supply chain. Porting apps to *ix (eg: IE) is not new to MS but this may hasten it and it's further involvement with *ix and open source code.
  • A brief history is given at http://www.openoffice.org/about.html [openoffice.org].

    Star Office was originally a closed source application by a German company. The German company was bought by Sun, and the product open sourced (under both the sun community license and the GPL, just to assuage fears about the SCL, I suppose), as an attack on Microsoft -- if the newly named OpenOffice was available free, there was less reason to switch to Windows.

    The old Star Office sucked more than MS Office of the time, which is saying something. After Sun took over, it got worse for a while when they started javafying it. Recent builds have started up pretty snappy however -- it's starting to get to Office level usability. At least, what Office was two years ago, that's how long it's been since I used it.

    I know of no one who has modified the code of Star Office. But then, I know of only one person who has modified anything in the linux kernel, and only a few who have made modifications that ended up in distribution packages.

    As far as "Jimmy the Haxor" making modifications, at least the DoD can examine the modifications, unlike the modifications made by "Bill the Haxor" working on closed source tools. ( It is likely that the DoD does license the source of many closed source tools simply for auditing purposes.)

  • Many usability professsionals have sharply criticized microsoft for the adaptive menus feature and Clippy found in Office 2000. Let me add that in Word 2000, there is no "one-stop shopping area" for all the user's configuration needs. Configuration choices are spread throughout the entire program, being found both in "Options" and "Customization" menu selections. One particularly stupid thing I remember was that many spelling options were found under "Options", but the option for the feature that corrects text as you type was found in "Configuration". Finally, those toolbar buttons in O2K are damn near useless. A toolbar button can serve two purposes: it can give a user a graphical representation of what a command does (if the icon is descriptive enough), and it provides a faster way to performing a command than navigating menus (if the toolbar button is large enough). If a toolbar button is very small, it is not fast to access, in accordance with Fitts' Law [asktog.com], which states that the time to access a target is the function of its distance and its size. If a toolbar button has a tiny and undescriptive icon, it really doesn't give a good graphical representation of the command. Microsoft programs (barring IE) generally have both these problems. If Microsoft had added labels to the toolbar buttons like they were supposed to do, the toolbar buttons would be far more descriptive and be faster to access. But that would make O2K more usable and microsoft is anti-usability, despite everything they say. One of the few things GNOME does really well is toolbar buttons: their toolbar icons are big and are labelled. There is a far, far greater chance that a user will use a GNOME toolbar button to execute a command than those tiny, useless things that clutter microsoft programs.

    Not that I disagree with the rest of the post. StarOffice is very inadequate in many ways, just like O2K. If you have the choice of inferior or damn inferior, the obvious choice is the first one. But there is advantage in StarOffice: you have the source code to make it not suck. If you can read all those code comments in German. ;)

  • CmdrTaco indicated that they were 25k linux machines. The article clearly shows that there is a smattering of various OS's, and talks more about "open source" than about linux.
  • While I agree with your basic message, I am a bit surprised at the $6 billion figure as well as how this stacks up in relation to the rest of MS's revenue. Have you got any links that can confirm that?
  • Taco's just having a bad day. Of course, he's not the only one. I'm sure that out there somewhere are overzealous geek evangelists shouting from the rooftops about how the entire US government now uses kernel 2.5

  • Hi!

    Uh...did anybody actually read the article? In particular, did anybody read the second paragraph? And, perhaps, think about exactly what it says? Here is it again, just to save you the hassle of linking back to ZDNet:

    StarOffice, Sun's open source productivity application suite that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database applications for the Solaris, Windows and Linux platforms, would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide, said Susan Grabau, the product line manager for StarOffice.

    The phrase that everybody seems to have missed here is "...would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide...."

    Well, gosh. So what does this mean? It is kind of a stretch to say that this is a win for Sun vs. Microsoft--Microsoft doesn't sell Office for Unix workstations. You could even view this as a win for Microsoft--now 10-25,000 DISA Unix workstations can read/write Office file formats. Which would seem to more permanently entrench Microsoft at the Dept. of Defense.

    My point isn't to be a Microsoft apologist, or to denegrate Sun. My point is that it seems we're all busy cheering about this wonderful event--and practically nobody has read this critically to see what this article really amounts to. Here's my take on it:

    • The article cites two obviously linked sources: a Sun sales exec and the DISA counterpart. Which is a surefire indication that this article is based on a Sun press release.
    • The article trumpets that the government has "adopted" up to 25,000 copies of StarOffice--and emphasizes that all these copies of StarOffice won't cost a thing.
    • The article mentions, lower down, that in fact the government is only installing 10,000 copies. The 25,000 number is an "upper bound" for the contract.
    • The article stuffs the notion that while it won't cost anything to install these copies, the DISA is currently paying a substantial amount of money to Sun for support--presumably of Applix. Those support contracts will continue--and will continue to provide a revenue stream to Sun.
    • In other words, the DISA is replacing 10,000 existing copies of Applix with StarOffice, under the terms of existing support contracts. Which is to say, this is a software upgrade.

    When you see an article like this, you really, really have to view it critically. A single-source article (in this case, two obviously related sources) is almost always based on a press release--and lots of the "news" you read consists of PR plants. (Generally a lot more sophisticated than this one--but PR plants nonetheless.) Sun did not magnanimously offer to remove 10,000 copies of Applix in order to promote the GPL among the Defense Department. What Sun wanted to do (and there is significant bucks behind this) is to continue an existing Defense Department contract for software support. Sun isn't working on StarOffice for free--it keeps Sun in the position as the incumbent supplier of Unix software, and helps Sun sell Sun hardware too. And that's Sun's bottom line: they're a hardware vendor, and they're out to sell hardware.

    A few years back I was fuming about the horrendous inefficiency of IBM's DB2 product running on the AS/400. A colleague reminded me of an important truth: IBM is in the hardware business--so they have no incentive at all to write a faster, more efficient database solution. Sun (or Compaq, or Intel, or Transmeta) is in the same position--at the end of the day, they want to sell you hardware. You can say the same thing about Microsoft: they're in the OS business. They'll prate about their wonderful vision for this, and their glorious plans for that--but at the end of the day they want to sell you tools that--what a surprise!--require their OS. If you saw a single-source article on ZDNet, quoting a Microsoft sales exec gloating about providing 10,000 "free" copies of MSN Instant Messaging to the DISA, you shouldn't think of this as a "win" for Microsoft, or a "loss" for Sun or the GPL. You should think instead, that what really happened was that Microsoft "gave" the DISA 10,000 pieces of software that require a Microsoft OS to be installed on the box.

    At the end of the day, Sun is out to sell hardware, just as Microsoft is out to sell an OS, Intel is out to sell Pentium or Itanium chips, and Frito-Lay is out to sell potato chips. And every time they do a deal with big numbers--like this one--it gives them a chance to issue a press release that they can spin as a "success", a win for the little guy, a bonus for the beleaguered taxpayer, etc. In truth, its just another software upgrade, an extension of a contract, and nothing more.

    When you see Dubya wearing a FreeBSD t-shirt, OTOH....

  • What I should have said was that StarOffice 6.0 will be the re-branded OpenOffice.

    Interesting. I wonder why Sun wants to re-brand OpenOffice back to StarOffice. Just building the corporate brand?

    Thanks for the info.

    steveha

  • Re:What about OpenOffice (Score:3)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @01:22PM (#127652) Homepage
    OpenOffice is the GPLed version, StarOffice is Sun's rebranded version of the same thing.

    Um, no. StarOffice came first.

    Sun bought the company that created StarOffice, and then decided that they didn't care about the revenue stream from StarOffice. As long as they didn't care about it, they went ahead and made StarOffice free. I think the management of Sun considered it a poke in the eye for Microsoft, and they probably enjoyed doing it.

    Anyway, Sun agreed to open up the source. But there are parts of StarOffice that are under license from other people/companies, so they could only open the source on the parts they own. When they first released OpenOffice it didn't even build. These days it builds, but it isn't stable at all yet.

    When OpenOffice is stable, and any missing features have been added back in, and they have split it up into separate apps (I hate the StarOffice desktop!), then I will look at OpenOffice.

    And then they can try to re-brand OpenOffice if they want to, but I can't imagine why they would bother. They are giving away StarOffice now; why would they care about re-branding OpenOffice when OpenOffice works?

    P.S. The most interesting part of the article, to me, was the part about StarOffice 6 coming out, split up into separate apps. I might be very interested in that. But right now I am mainly interested in AbiWord and Gnumeric.

    steveha

  • Re:The benefit of this... (Score:5)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @01:50PM (#127653) Homepage
    If a doc has been fast-saved, the version you will get is non-deterministic.

    Oh, fast save. Yah, non-deterministic is about right.

    Fast save works by just saving a snapshot of the data structures inside Word. Pieces of text might be in any sort of order, and Word needs to walk the "piece table" to sort it all out. The normal save takes the extra moment to sort everything out and write it in sensible order.

    This feature may have saved enough time to be worth something back when people were running Word on a 16 MHz 386, but even then I doubt it. (When you scroll around in the document, Word has to walk the piece table to show you the text, on the fly... so it's definitely fast enough for a save operation!) Back when I ran Word on a 486 I didn't notice any difference in speed between normal save and fast save. Alas, the default is for fast save, and people don't realize this.

    At a place I used to work, they were indexing their documents, and the indexer did a pretty good job, but it couldn't correctly grok fast-saved documents. You could search for a string and sometimes not find it, depending on where the pieces were broken up! Turning off Fast Save made things work correctly.

    steveha

  • The Cold War is back and this time it is with the incomprehensible and unpredictable Chinese.

    I could never understand what they were saying either. =/

  • It IS very important news... (Score:5)

    by aralin ( 107264 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:56AM (#127657)
    You forgot to put it in context with recent news that DoD is preparing 6 billion contract with Microsoft. This is about as much as one year revenue of Microsoft and the government is traditionally M$'s best customer. If we are going to win ANYTHING in the government, chances are that it will spread inside very fast. They like the policy of one vendor and also like to save some money time from time. This might be one of the most important news for a long time...

  • You know... (Score:5)

    by chris_martin ( 115358 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:39AM (#127665)
    They do make SO for Windows. I know DoD is progressive and all, but I'm sure that at least 1 or 2 of the 25K is for windows.
    -c-
  • In my opinion, Word's usefulness peaked with Word 95, which had lots of useful features and was fairly stable, but has been going steadily downhill ever since. It makes my professional life miserable (I'm a tech writer).

    Word 95, hell! Maybe it's because you're a professional, but as a casual user, I think that Word has been going downhill since version 5. I can't honestly think of a single feature that's been added since Word 5 that I actually use more often than once in a blue moon, but I can think of plenty of things that have been added that clutter up the menus and make it more difficult to use the features that I do use. I certainly know a lot of people who think that the Word 5-Word 6 transition was one of the worst changes in any piece of MS software. It got better between 6 and 7 (Word 95), but I still think that it wasn't as good as Word 5 was.

  • They basically consider that Microsoft's continued screwing of their customers (mostly contracts, but they forgot to mention prices) is driving people away.

    This seems to be a completely incorrect interpretation of the events described. The office suite that's being replaced is Applix, not Microsoft. The agency that's switching to Star Office is doing so on Unix boxes where MS software wasn't available in the first place. Of course it's possible (if unlikely) that they'll be so happy with Star Office on their Unix boxen that they decide to start replacing MS Office on Windows machines, but there's no indication whatsoever that it's likely to happen. This switch has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft.

  • That's because RTF is a documented standard [microsoft.com], whereas M$ guards the secrets of the .DOC format like the crown jewels (and intentionally made it as obfuscated as possible).

    To write an RTF parser, all you have to do is RTFM; to write a .DOC parser, you have to do some serious reverse engineering. SO's .DOC support is better than nothing, but it still munges all but the most trivial documents. Word and SO both munge RTF too, but not as badly.

    Try this experiment: create a document in MS word that uses has some fancy formatting (EG complex tables). Save it. Load it into SO. Save without changing anything. Load the SO'ed .DOC and see how badly it's munged.

  • Well, given some of the networks these machines might be on, it's not like they can download it off the Internet. I also think there are security guidelines that ask for a little more assurance that the software's the authentic article. Meaning, you take delivery directly from the vendor rather than assuming your download is safe. Besides, 1.2 mil helps the vendor keep supplying the software you rely on.

  • Re:You know... (Score:4)

    by Prof_Dagoski ( 142697 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:13AM (#127678) Homepage

    The article states that they're replacing applix on their unix machines with Star Office. Still, this helps prime the pump. BTW, the new version has got some really handly features like saving as xml. I need to upgrade.

  • sparc hardware is pretty cheap these days, and with free Solaris 8 binaries [sun.com] and source [sun.com] there are other avenues to cut the wintel purse strings.

    Higher clock speeds do not necessarily equate to better computing power .. and for 64-bit computing - Itanium stability in linux (or elsewhere) may be a long time in coming.

    .je

  • While I was in the Marine Corps, a couple of years ago, there was an initiative to remove all Solaris and other *nix type systems from use. The rationale was that it required less knowledge to maintain a WinNT based system. I did not agree with this thinking, but at least it appears that some of the more prominent people are seriously considering the benefits of using Open Source software.

    the_crowbar

  • Does the term "deadpan" mean anything to anybody here?

    The fact is that the DoD is using an Open Source product. The Linux comment was jumping to conclusions and should not have been made, but it's a good move. (And it's free to them as well, to those who didn't read that part -- it's already covered under their current support contracts.)

    Now if they'd just do it on some of their Windows hardware.

    /Brian
  • Ada is an overdeveloped mess of a language. I have a copy of the annotated draft standard at home -- it's an even more effective murder weapon than the third edition of the C++ Programming Language.

    Ada was the right answer in 1979 -- C hadn't yet achieved its current prominence, and the DoD had a Tower of Babel to deal with. I won't argue that point. But it also points out a danger of design by committee -- the design of Ada is not enough like its closest ancestor Pascal to be really familiar to anybody, and it became rather antiquated long before the Ada95 standard came out simply because it didn't catch on outside the defense industry. The fact that it keeps on going makes it something of a niche product akin to Fortran -- the only reason that it might be the best for what it does is that it's been what people have been using since '79, not because it's the best overall.

    As for calling it object-oriented, that's a stretch -- Ada83 is somewhat closer to Modula-2 in conception, and OO was a bag on the side added to the system in the 1995 standard.
    Ada simply is no longer necessary, which is why the USDoD revoked the Ada mandate a couple of years ago. It will keep being used because it's a major legacy component in the DoD's IT infrastructure, but it won't ever take the place that its supporters want for it.

    /Brian
  • Ada and C++ are both monstrosities. I think the difference is in their relationships to their ancestors. Ada just seems gratuitously different; there's more on this at the end of the post.

    That bit about C was something I wasn't aware of, but it was probably quite true in those days anyway. Old C is pretty slack compared to current C.

    Not so much not catching on in and of itself as the fact that the fact that it didn't has rendered it irrelevant makes it antiquated. I think Smalltalk sadly falls into the same category -- AFAIK IBM is the only company doing anything the least bit significant with it. It's a question of influence, and Ada has so far failed to be influential to the point where it looks strange even to Pascal programmers.

    Ada83 was not OO in the sense we normally associate with the term -- no inheritance, for example. I think it was a little closer to VB in that regard.

    Of course Ada and Fortran are both in the same boat -- niche/legacy languages with no likelihood of realizing the promise their supporters claim outside their sandboxes. As for technical vs. sociopolitical... I think the two overlap in this case. Ada, as I said originally, is a mess. The only reason C++ is what it is now is because it evolved that way as people were taking it up -- Ada was like that from the beginning and only got worse. As for languages no longer being necessary, Perl and Python coexist primarily for esthetic reasons; Ada and C/C++, however, seem to inhabit basically the same problem domain with only a little disjunction, and C/C++ simply has evolved to handle it better, warts and all.

    Just my opinions, of course.

    /brian

  • OS and the DoD (Score:4)

    by grue23 ( 158136 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:25AM (#127688)
    Having decent amount of work for a couple groups in the DoD in the past, two things:

    * There are a lot of Sun workstations floating around various organizations. That is probably the main thing they want to use StarOffice for. I saw little in the way of Linux use in the DoD, but there was a decent amount of *BSD use in certain niches.

    * There are at least a couple major organizations that have moved from alternatives to Windows NT for standard desktops. I would bet that the adoption of StarOffice is partly because there is more cross-OS compatibility with the hordes of NT boxes.

  • 1. Global Command and Control System [disa.mil] (GCCS) is the system used by the US military when it goes to war. It is a "system of sytems" [disa.mil]that is used for the planning and execution of combat forces. GCCS is the single most important program in the DoD.

    2. DISA has a very big say in the direction of IT in the DoD. It's in charge of planning IT needs on an Department-wide basis. Theoretically, DISA lays down the map, the Army, Air Force and Navy follow. Although this only impacts Sun systems, it will only be a matter of time before they apply the same thinking to the rest of the systems out there.

    3. Given the importance of GCCS, should there be an incompatibility with it and another system, that system will have to be adapted to GCCS, and not the other way around. Applying this to the StarOffice vs MS Office debate, the easiest way to avoid Office proprietary issues interfering with GCCS funtionality will be to replace Office with Star Office

    4. If the DoD saves $500 on software, that's $500 more it can spend on bullets/stealth aircraft/submarines. Most warfighters don't care who made it as long as it works. All it will take is one General to ask the obvious question.

  • Hmm, $25,000 toilet seats like they have before?
  • Honestly I don't see this as being that huge of a deal, but it sure is getting submitted a lot. Then again, 25k Linux boxes inside the DoD is cool

    Aside from the linux thing, this is still great. While not a US taxpayer, I think all of you that are should rejoice. The DoD just saved $15M!!! (~$600 * 25K).

    I just downloaded SO for the first time yesterday and started playing it. I work for the Feds here in Canada. In our department, we've got somewhere between 25K-35K machines. We're also in a budget crunch, trying to save every dollar we can. Not too mention that we're also in the middle of a big audit on our MS-Office Licenses. After looking at SO for only a bit, I really think its a feasible alternative. I'm considering writing up a proposal and sending it off to both the heads of the IT department as well as the Treasury Board (who does funding for all Federal departments).

    The only added cost would be training, but even sending a dozen or so of our folks to wherever to get an instructor led course would be far cheaper than spending the $$$ on licensing Office! As a taxpayer, I'd be extatic.

    Anyone have any good links on writing up such a proposal - or even a draft they'd be willing to let me fit to our situation? Any help is appreciated.


  • I don't think this is as important for open source or SO as people claim in the past 50 posts. It sounds like the military got wind of Microsoft's hidden security "features" and decided they didn't like the idea of confidential documents phoning home on their own. Why should the military trust the security of a corporation?

    StarOffice gives the DoD a starting point of some reasonably full-featured software, and they can nitpick through the source for all types of security issues.

    Open Source sounds like a good way for the military to still use 'modern' software without having to compromise security.

    Maybe this will be a boon for Sun and all goverment computers will run their own, modified open source OS and applications.


    ---
  • Didn't Sun buy Star as a going for-profit concern?
  • Sure, I'm familiar with deadpan. Buster Keaton is an old favourite of mine.

    I was just replying to the suggestion that "Sun started making SO for suns and later on it got free and ported to other platforms." by pointing out that Sun didn't start making SO at all -- they bought a company that had been actively selling the product for some time.

    What they did do, of course, was release it as freeware, and then open much of the source.

  • Linux is mentioned in paragraph's 2, 4, 11, 12, 13, 14 an 16.

    --
  • Read the article, it says "25,000" units of star office on "10,000 UNIX stations" and implies that the othe 15k copies will be for Other OSs primarily windows. I would be willing to bet that the lion's share of DOD unix is Solaris since they have "extensive support contacts with Sun". You need to remember that Unix does not automatically equal Linux, S.
  • I know this is a 'me too' post, but it suprised me (some, not much) that anyone would suppose just b/c a person/company/whatever starts running a program that is available under multiple platforms that it's assumed to be your platform, when you KNOW they have used a completely different platform for years.

    I know it's unconventional but some of us actually read the linked article for posting and, as a result, know the answer:

    StarOffice, Sun's open source productivity application suite that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database applications for the Solaris, Windows and Linux platforms, would replace Applix on more than 10,000 of DISA's Unix workstations at 600 client organizations worldwide, said Susan Grabau, the product line manager for StarOffice.

    Given Applix's current state, that move doesn't exactly shock me. When they start replacing MS Office with Star Office, let me know.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • I took a class at $TRAINING_COMPANY last year and noticed that there were 20 or so US Marines taking a class too. I asked which class they were taking and it was NT Administration. I also found out that they were flying in a whole bunch more Marines for that course.

  • No big deal... (Score:5)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:47AM (#127717) Homepage
    Honestly I don't see this as being that huge of a deal, but it sure is getting submitted a lot...

    ...now, had the DoD decided to install Ghost In The Shell or Princess Mononoke on 25,000 of their workstations, Taco would have been all over that in a second.

  • The reasons for this are more than obvious: Didn't the Chinese adopt Linux as their OS of choice? Well, if you want to be able to read all the secret docs NSA grabs from the Chinese, you better run the same system ;-)
  • Can you even guess at how many outdated, dilapidated, and otherwise useless systems are kept in place just to be able to do DOD contracting? Hell, defence contracting is the only reason Ada exist today.

    While I agree with the sentiment about Ada, I feel it necessary to interject that many European coders are Ada programmers. Ada is also used in the development of non-DoD vital systems.

    I still don't like the language.

  • "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers"
    - Princess Laia to evil Commander Guy from first Star wars
  • The government market is one of the largest and most coveted markets in the software business. And besides actual dollars spent, you can count on an insane degree of inertia once something is adopted across a department/agency/other functional grouping. Admittedly, 25000 boxen is nowhere near the totality of government usage, but if it represents any real kind of momentum toward use of open software by The Man, a number of businesses may have to rework their revenue estimates.

    OK,
    - B
    --

  • I would like to see how this works out. Frequently, those who use StarOffice receive embarrasing statements from those with whom they try to share Word-formatted files. The environment is bloated, and dealing with fonts is a nightmare (not to mention that they're ugly to begin with).

    Hopefully, as StarOffice gains momentum, we will see a greater demand for a more lightweight solution that has better interoperability, better font handling, and anti-aliasing.
  • 1) You can now tell your PHB that Star Office (and by implication, open source) is "Good enough for government work."

    2)If some DOD offices are using Star Office, corporations dealing with those offices will feel it's a good idea to install Star Office also. That 25K seats in DOD will probably multiply to over 100K seats in large and small corporations. I'm hoping that some of those corps will discover that Star Office is about as good as MS Office, and adopt it on a wider scale. Whether or not that happens, that many gov't and corporate seats will ensure the Star Office developers will hear what is needed to make it _better_ than MS Office. I think the chances just improved that my employer will let me move to Linux/Star Office in a couple of years instead of buying the lastest MS upgrades -- and from what I've heard, MS's present product line is really a downgrade from Win98 + Office97 which I use now, so I expect the 2003 version will be even lamer...

  • Nice, and complete. Although these I find StarOffice slow... In Linux world everything is slow: KDE 2, StarOffice, but I suppose this will improve
  • In Linux world everything is slow: KDE 2, StarOffice, but I suppose this will improve

    KDE 2.1.2 already comes with some optimizations (AFAIK, this is the main difference to 2.1.1) that speed up app-loading.

    And in a couple of months when gcc 3 is established and used by distributors, I would also expect a small speed-up (and AFAIK there is still room, so in later versions of gcc, KDE should become even faster.)

    Roland

  • The point is, it ends lock-in (Score:3)

    by Spamalamadingdong ( 323207 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:10AM (#127744) Homepage Journal
    it suprised me (some, not much) that anyone would suppose just b/c a person/company/whatever starts running a program that is available under multiple platforms that it's assumed to be your platform...
    This may be redundant, BUT: nobody's assuming anything. Rather, people are crowing that the era of one-vendor lock-in for desktop OS's has ended at the DoD, and the leading vendor is likely to have to compete on the basis of TCO rather than bullying customers because it's the only game in town. It gives Unix and Linux an opening, but only an opening. (When have we ever needed more?)

    This is good because it may lead quickly to a situation where software is easier to deal with, has fewer bugs, is cheaper, and sucks less in general.
    --

  • Fixed Problems (Score:5)

    by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:40AM (#127746)
    So I suppose that they fixed the whole not-being-able-to-print problem?? I suppose this will get modded as a troll, and I'm no MS lover, but StarOffice(OpenOffice, whatever) pales in comparision to Office 2000. That and IE IMHO are the only decent pieces of software that Microsoft has ever produced. Not excellent, just decent, usable and not overtly offensive.
  • > The DoD already has a measly budget

    http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2000/b0207200 0_ bt045-00.html

    > Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen today
    > released details of President Clinton's Fiscal
    > Year (FY) 2001 defense budget. The budget
    > requests $291.1 billion in budget authority and
    > $277.5 billion in outlays for the Department of
    > Defense (DoD).

    Measly...lousy even.

  • Hi. I work at SAIC [saic.com], a *major* contractor for DISA, the company that is doing the 25,000 copies of StarOffice.

    As you may or may not know, StarOffice will need to be segmented for the DII COE. Segmentation is the process of putting the program into a particular format so that it can be installed with no worries. As one of the lead segmenters in my division, I can tell you that we only develop segments for four platforms: Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX (10.20 and 11.00) and Solaris (2.51, 7 & 8). It will *not* be installed on Linux machines. I know that they mention it in the article, but that's not the way it is. DISA has, as far as I am aware, no Linux machines in production environments, because they don't consider them to be as reliable as Solaris. HP-UX is being phased out, but they still have a lot of HP machines, so it's going slowly. I'm sure they would use Linux, but where do you get support? They can't get the support Sun offers. When a Sun box breaks at my office, Sun has a guy there to fix it within an hour of our call. Linux just can't offer that yet.

    My point is this: Solaris is the platform of choice at DISA. It doesn't give us an opening - it gives Sun an opening, allowing them to say "hey, look, you can write Word files on Solaris! Don't buy Windows!" Linux isn't in use at DISA. The only group this is good for is Sun.

  • This is why people who want consistently high quality documents across multiple platforms (or even on just the one) use TeX.

    Good god, it's been proven and fixed for years, if not decades. It costs nothing. Use it. Incorporate figures with eps (difficult I know with MS-based printer drivers and Windows-based programs being piss-bloody-poor in this department) and you're off. Anything else is just fooling you.

    But very few people will and so the rest of us will have to live with the mad, crazy, incompatible, constantly changing, low quality shit that passes as document production these days from the earliest kindergarten My First Word Processed Story to scientific papers and publications and have no choice but to join in and use it too. Hurrah for choice!

  • Why not? (Score:5)

    by Blue Aardvark House ( 452974 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @06:43AM (#127757)
    It's flexible, operating across many OS's. And no licensing fees means it was less expensive. It's refreshing to see our government striving to operate on a more cost-efficient basis.

  • This switch to such an openly Communist product by the Department of Defense is just another example of the rapid decline of the United States. What's next, Open Source Stealth Bombers? Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.

    Have we as a nation learned nothing from the Chinese infiltration of our national laboratories? Even the Liberal Media sees Red China's hand in this:

    "The Chinese government is also very active in this space," Grabau said.

    Consider that admission very closely. The space we are talking about is our nation's defense. Write to your representatives in Washington - before it's too late! The Liberals are banking on your apathy.

  • As is typical with the Pentagon, they will be paying 1.2 million dollars for 2000 copies of the CD.

    Seriously, this dovetails nicely with the "Star Wars" missle defence project. It's not like the Military can use an Email client called "Out"look. Don't Ax, Don't tell...


    Carl G. Jung
    --

  • It was a joke. Relax for facial muscles for minute and smile.


    Carl G. Jung
    --

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