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SUN and Star Office's Licence agreement. 183

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
DaveHowe writes "Interesting speculative piece in ZDnet about SUN's long term plans for StarOffice and of course it's development into StarPortal; It's a little TOO anti-SUN not to be taken with a pinch of salt, but does raise a couple of interesting points:That the licence for current downloads is non-redistributable, and requires registration, and That there is no guarantee that Sun won't withdraw StarOffice at some point after StarPortal is active, leaving the Linux community high and dry."
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SUN and Star Office's Licence agreement. More

SUN and Star Office's Licence agreement.

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  • "Non-redistributable" SO WHAT?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If _I_ spend a lot of money developing something, I'm well right entitled to do anything I want, including:

    1. Let you use it for free, but not redistributing it.
    2. Not allowing you to sell or give away support patches.
    3. Accept your contributions with your implicit acknowledgement that you decline to sue me in relation to it.
    4. Establishing in the license how I'll be allowed to reuse your stuff, eg: non-exclusive license, copyright sharing, etc.

    If you don't like the license, don't take the offer. Or pay for a different license. Or write your own stuff.

    Note that I'm not condoning 'Net hijacking by greedy and/or technology-impaired corporations, though.
  • Sun will want to supply the servers.
    Sun's primarily a hardware company - tho it's hard to tell now days.
    Microsoft is a software company - despite it's huge size - they've pretty much stuck with software (disregarding small devices like mice and keyboards). They design specs for devices like Palm-Sized-PC, Handheld PC etc, make the software and let the hardware companies take care of the rest. It's this kind of thing which has lowered the price of devices - not increased them like people think (look at the trend of PC hardware prices).
  • Good to hear that it works fine for you.

    However, IMHO, the point of the story was that SUN might not be good for the product StarOffice. And thus not good for the users. End user applications is really not Sun's core business.

    With standardized file formats, this whole [MS|Star|K]Office{95|97|2000} thing would not really bother anyone. So, it's good that there are more and more end users, who "just want to get the job done". And are not religious about any OS or application.

    Anyone know how XML is getting along in this area?

  • Am I confusing you?

    Star Office Portal does not run your laptop. Am I still confusing you?
  • Why do people always get this wrong? They were not picked out because of giving the browser away for free, but for BUNDLING IT into the OS, thereby leveraging their dominant/monopoly position in the OS market to obtain an unfair advantage in the browser market.

    We know this, but we're talking about publicity and FUD. Sun is fighting a publicity war as much as it's fighting a server/OS war. Release free software, open up it's code to Open Source development. Even if they can knock down M$ a few pegs, don't you think they'd want to step around the issue carefully. The average consumer and occassional headline browser is going to remember that M$ was sued for anti-trust and monopoly issues, and that part of that was a result of the spotlight on the browser wars?

    Yes, the more correct statement is as you placed it above. M$ used their market power to push out competition by giving away software for free (embedding/integrating it into their OS as a feature enhancement). Could Sun not do the same from the desktop application arena? Sun wants a piece of the action. They want to sell their thick server/thin client solutions. Why not give away a desktop application for free to muscle their way into server/OS market. Gain recognition, give the consumer a good feeling, and persuade them to move over to an NC environment running on their hardware and software over a PC environment running on M$ software.

    Why jeapordize a possible influx into a larger market by drawing the public's attention as Micro$oft did? By using Micro$oft's own tactics, which are well publicized and recognized by the majority of dedicated computer consumers, Sun would most likely get more than a few fingers pointing their way. "The DOJ nailed M$ for it! Precidence! Sun should be hit too!" Slow down distribution and fewer fingers would be doing the pointing...

    Publicity, FUD, and market share. Who said capatilism was boring?

  • First off, Sun is a for profit company. Can you image a for profit company NOT pulling MS style tactics? Of course nto, its how they make profit.

    Second, any one touting SUN as the great liberator from MS is about as washed up silly as the standard MSheeple saying that they have no problems.

    Third, have you used star office and compared it to MS Office? Most folks have not, and after doing so need to resort to name calling and rhetoric waving as thier only resort to looking like an idiot for endorsing Star OFfice.

    Fourth, When this all gets out to teh consumer public, do you really want to be a supporter for that level of hype? Do you really want your name attached with either side of the media mess?
  • This was from Jesse Burst's Anchordesk? You'll be a lot better off when you stop reading that article...I know I feel better since I quit 6 months ago. Kinda like beating a horrible disease. I believe the hype, he's on the MS payroll. I've always liked Sun. I can see the points posted here, but like someone else posted, we (the Linux community) don't NEED StarOffice. If they start to charge someone will develop a GPL'd "office" program just like SO. That's the beauty of Open Source!
  • They discontinued Wabi pretty abruptly though. What about the customers who bought into it? Wabi 3 was supposed to emulate Win32, like WINE. If they really wanted to help they could release all the source for Wabi 2.2 and 3beta to WINE.

    He just noted that they have shown a habit of discontinuing products whenver it suits them, without warning.
  • You don't have to run KDE. You just need the QT libraries. Ofcourse, there maybe KDE specific features (like system tray icons and clipboard etc) which you don't get - stuff like that happens (and when it happens on windows for same reasons - people yell microsoft is trying to corner the market - DLL conflicts - fragmentation etc etc FUD FUD FUD).

    It's kindda fragmented development...but i don't care - it's their time :P.
    Personally, I think KDE will succeed. They have better and more complete applications. Gnome is rather buggy - and I don't like GTK+ over QT.
  • A compiler company (Greenhills?) sued for restraint of trade because most vendors were giving away a Pascal compiler with their UNIX release.

    Wait a minute! A *compiler* company sued because vendors bundled software with the hardware that the company sold? As in the compiler company couldn't sell their compilers because the OS had compilers pre-installed, and you didn't need another one? And they Won?

    Something comes to mind... Netscape. IE. Microsoft. Netscape. Windows. Netscape. Bundled. Trial. Precedent. Netscape. And the *accusation* that Netscape couldn't sell their browser because *they* failed as a company? It's all clear now.

    -Brent
    --

  • StarOffice and distribution (Score:3)

    by Brian Knotts ( 855 ) <bknotts@NOSpam.cascadeaccess.com> on Monday September 27, 1999 @03:05AM (#1657540)
    DISCLAIMER: I (my company, really) have already bought and paid for a commercial use license for StarOffice (just prior to the Sun acquisition), so I have no dog in this race, so to speak.

    That said, I am scratching my head over the way Sun has licensed this.

    What is the real goal here? I presume, like many others, that the goal is to "cut off Microsoft's air supply," by going after their big cash cow, Office.

    If that is true, the current license (as well as the SCSL, under which the source, when released, will be licensed) doesn't accomplish the goal, due to its limitations on redistribtion.

    Why not, at the very least, allow unlimited redistribution of binaries? That would get StarOffice into more hands, which gets Sun closer to the goal of damaging Microsoft's revenue stream.

    Presumably, Sun isn't going to make a lot of cash selling StarOffice, since they are giving it away. So, why not let others distribute? I really don't understand the reasoning behind that.

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • I attempted to load a demo copy of pre-Sun StarOffice and was shocked to find that I could not complete the installation process without a registration key - which I was unable to obtain even after I registered at Sun.com. My next solution (as I have no modem on my Linux box)was to purchase StarOffice 5.1 media from Sun for $9.99 plus $9.00 shipping and handling. Although Sun bashes Microsoft it appears as if they have passed Bill Gates 101 with flying colors.
  • When will there be a version of KOffice based on another toolkit than Qt?

    You need to check out the Gnome Workshop [gnome.org]. KOffice is nice, but there's nothing from with having multiple applications that do the same thing in different ways. It causes innovation.

    -Brent
    --
  • This isn't troll talk

    Are you sure? :-)

    it is slow compared to MS Office. On Linux it takes about a minute to load

    I just started it. It took 8 seconds, on a Celeron 300(450). That's not really fast, but it's not that bad.

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • K Office is coming along quite nicely and actually looks better than Star Office anyway. There already KLyx for those that really need something like that. KOffice will force Corel and Sun, maybe even Microsoft (by then who knows) into at least keeping their suites "free beer".
  • Remember, this is completely speculative. Sun could do any, all, or none of these things. Let`s just wait and see before we start flaming, shall we?

    As it happens, personally I don`t see anything wrong with server-based applications - in the right situations, of course.
  • Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday September 27, @11:33 WET
    from the doh! dept.

    do {
    I think this was already posted ( Is Sun Truly A Friend of Linux? [slashdot.org]) a week or so ago.
    while (1);

  • Actually, IIRC, you do need to have KDE (or at least its libraries) installed. You just don't have to be running it. As long as the files are there everything should be functional. It would be just more hard drive space wasted to have both KDE and Gnome installed, but it wouldn't affect your ability to run whatever window manager you want. Right now I can run KDE's apps because I have the libraries, though I use straight WindowMaker.
  • Having adminned Solaris 2.3 and 2.4 machines, I am pretty sure they did not.
    --
    Brandon Hume
    hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

  • There were a few parts of the article that I did agree with:

    Sun is as deep into control as Microsoft

    I'd have to agree with this. I'd be willing to bet that Sun will eventually discontinue support for Star Office for Linux. They did so with wabi.

    Just ask yourself this what exactly has Sun ever done to help the Linux community? If your answer is lxrun, then your are wrong that was just to help Sun.

    Just my 2 cents...........

  • Give Ivo a cigar. Desktop-environment-specific applications are a drag, especially given the fact that CDE, KDE and GNOME are giant, bloaty, memory- and CPU-wasting piles of dung. If I wanted Windows, I'd use Windows.

  • KOffice is irrelevant at this moment. It's a promising product but a finished version that can compete with MS/Star/Wordperfect is a long time away for us.

    I don't think SUN has bought Star Office to make money on it. At least not directly. What they are hoping to do is boost server sales (hardware that is). For that reason it wouldn't surprise me if they will be giving start office portal away for free or for a relatively low fee. Once they finished it their main concern will be to get as much copies in the market as possible (running on sun servers). Asking a lot of money for it won't help so they won't.

    I think one month or so ago when sun bought Star there was this guy (forgot the name) who claimed that if Sun would not get their suit onto 5 of the most important internet portals, it would have failed. Seen in that light it is very likely they will give the software away for free.
  • My company came across some old Sparcs (SPARCclassic and SPARCstationLX) that had Solaris on them. REALLY slow, so we installed RH 5.2 on 'em. Not perfect, but they were finally usable. Linux did for these Sparcs what's it has done for old x86 machines: save 'em from the round file...
  • What is it used for anyways? So you can run Java apps in the SO web browser? Or is there something else?

    "Microsoft is the epitome of innovation and product quality."

  • The only thing that has changed about StarOffice registration since Sun bought it is that now you don't get 30days to try it out before handing over your details. StarOffice always said that to continue using it after 30days without registering it was illegal so I don't really see what the difference is. The only major problem I can see with the change is the modification to the distribution model in that it becomes less easy for people to give it away free on Cover Discs and such like. As for Sun's desire to take over the world in place of Microsoft, who knows only time will tell about any of these things.
  • Um, NOT.

    Firstly I don't have the office toolbar loaded (it really is a bit bloated)....secondly that wouldn't matter cause Word starts in a seperate process space from the toolbar.
  • was it ever proven the code was stolen - rather than just reengineered in the stac case?
    just interested in knowing.
  • Um, but I was comparing it's speed with ms office.
    Even if you compare star office on a linux machine or windows machine with ms office on a windows machine - ms office wins out. it's faster and more responsive. it's generally not linux's fault - it's star office.
    which makes me angry about all the complaints of microsoft's sloooooow software. in my experience (take office and internet explorer as evidence) ms make really fast software - especially when you take into account features. but then they have those extra engineers sitting there optimising code (like prolly not loading up some uneeded modules with office - although office still seems responsive when doing things).
  • You're right, it's been a few months since i've run gnome seriously ;).
    hey, it was buggy last time i looked :P.
    I still think KDE has more potential - it has a very nice easy to use library set (much like MFC) which will attract many programmers.
  • Check your start menu. I bet you have the office quick start thingie (whatever the hell it's called). In any case the reason office loads faster is that most of the DLL's that it uses are loaded by windows. When you turn on your windows it pre-loads a bunch of dlls that office uses. MS has an advantage there in that they control the OS.
  • As far as I know they loas the case and had to cease and desist. I think they ended up paying stac so they could keep using the code.
  • If _I_ spend a lot of money developing something, I'm well right entitled to do anything I want, including: 1. Let you use it for free, but not redistributing it. 2. Not allowing you to sell or give away support patches. 3. Accept your contributions with your implicit acknowledgement that you decline to sue me in relation to it. 4. Establishing in the license how I'll be allowed to reuse your stuff, eg: non-exclusive license, copyright sharing, etc. Sure, you have a right to do all that. Just don't act like you're part of the Linux community. The problem that I (and many others) have with Sun isn't their business practices, per se, but rather the attempt to be Microsoft while acting like they're far above such practices. At least Microsoft isn't dishonest...
  • ...that I disagree with your characterization of Sun as worse than Microsoft.

    Unlike Microsoft, Sun actually delivers some high-quality products.

    Just this morning, some bozo's scripts drove the load on an UltraSPARC-based web server up to ~38. No problem...I went in and killed his processes. The machine was still responsive, even under that kind of a load.

    Solaris is still more scalable than Linux (although I prefer Linux for most uses these days).

    Java is an excellent language, even if the runtime implementation is subpar.

    Sun makes a lot of good stuff. Yes, we have to make sure we don't get cornered by them or any other vendor, but to compare them with Microsoft is unfair, IMO.

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • > Presumably, Sun isn't going to make a lot of cash selling StarOffice, since they are giving it away. So, why not let others distribute? I really don't understand the reasoning behind that.

    Short answer: they'll know exactly how many copies were downloaded, so when (if) this numbers exceeds the sales of MS-Office (TM) they can tell the press.

  • The compatiblity with MS Office is greatly exaggerated.

    My anecdotal experience with interoperability highlights some significant limitations, primarily the limitation that StarOffice is more interoperable with Office2000 than previous Office95 or Office97 releases. I took a number of spreadsheets I use frequently and was unable to import any sort of chart from Excel95 into StarOffice (including pie, bar, scatter, and line charts.)

    The point of spreadsheets and manipulating data is to A) understand what's going on and to B) cleanly and simply express what's going on to someone else. Thus charting constitutes about 50% of a spreadsheet program's value, a fact not reflected by Sun's 95%+ interoperability claims. (For those interested, Sun's precise interoperability claims are documented in hundreds of pages of documentation, [sun.com] mostly comparing to Office2000.)

    The irony is that to get interoperability with StarOffice, such as ability to import Excel charts, corporations will have to first upgrade to Office2000 and save all files in that format before moving to StarOffice!

    So I wouldn't spend too much time paying attention to StarOffice; it won't be giving MS problems any time soon (unfortunately for all our pocketbooks.) For offices/homes not needing such a conversion, I imagine it'll work fine, but currently poor compatibility will prevent it from harnessing network effects and getting a positive feedback loop going as an Office replacement. It's just cheap software.

    Sigh.

    --LP
  • >> What is the real goal here?

    I gotta think that Sun's real goal is to reduce Microsoft's profits. MS is said to make 40% of their revenue from MSOffice, and if Sun can make any dent in that, it will play to their advantage.
  • "Epeeist" touches on this, and it is something that is often forgotten in debates like this. There is the corporate market and the home market and their needs (and their budgets) are different.

    The user at home does not need an office suite, and, as someone else posted further down the stream, are often better off getting individual, separate packages. Don't need a spreadsheet app? Don't get a spreadsheet app./Don't get a bloated office suite. And cost is usually more important a factor to the home buyer than it is for the corporate buyer.

    Corporations have to consider "total cost of ownership" which includes such things as:
    - cost of maintenance,
    - cost of installation (And installing the app once on a network server rather than 'nnn' times on individual workstations is a no-brainer!)
    - cost of interoperability between your apps and data and outside sources.

    Add into that the importance to a corporate network of having everybody use the same version of the software. ("I'm sorry, could you please redo that data you sent me? I only have [your version number - 1].")

    Sun is aiming at the corporate office. That is where they expect to see their money made. I get the impression that they don't care about the home market.

    This does not preclude a universe where Sun servers provide network apps to a network of, say, Linux clients.

    In a word, be calm. Take a deep breath. Sun is not going to destroy Linux.
  • I'll pass; I am already Catholic. One religion is enough for me. ;)
  • If they really wanted to help they could release all the source for Wabi 2.2 and 3beta to WINE.

    Wasn't the Windows source in Wabi licenced from Microsoft? If so, a source release would be impossible.

  • Sun's super-slow online store (some advert) indicates that workstations start at $2520 -- In short not much more than business PC hardware (aka not your $600 Office Depot jobs).

    Don't forget that a standard Gartner Group piece of wisdom is that an enterprise PC costs something like $10-15,000 per year to support. If the promise of lower support costs with UNIX are actually true, Sun comes out looking like a bargin.
  • I wouldn't worry about it, if Sun did as stated it would just be a big PR mistake for them. every buisness has two faces, the concerned, friend of the community, and the "money-grabbing" back-stabbing "who cares about the customer OR the Community" face. personally, I would just stick with one of those High quality Open Source programs like Koffice when it comes out, or just use maxwell, or klyx, or just get wordperfect 8 if you want a commercial product.
  • Remember the guts of the matter...

    If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, don't use it.

    If you don't like it, and you don't use it, use something else or write something you _do_ like.

    If you end up writing something else, GPL it _only_ if you want to.

    Problem? :)

    If I had two cents to rub together, this would be them.
  • A) You can't run KOffice while running Gnome, UNLESS you installed KDE's libraries. That's a) cumbersome and b) novice users won't know this, let alone how to do it.
    B) I sometimes run KDE apps under gnome: a) it looks ugly, b) I can't dnd between them. c) I can't ... etc.

    The basic point is that I think that an application like an office suit has little reason to depend on a desktop environment. All reasons it has should in my opinion be solved by little shared libraries and not by an entire set of desktop environment libs.

    Greetings,
    Ivo
  • > A few nights ago on NPR there was mention that M$ was activly developing a console game system.


    The german computer magazine c't has an article [heise.de] on this on their newsticker [heise.de] (In german). There's also this News.com article [cnet.com] on the subject... Hope this helps!

    --

  • I think the point is that one shouldn't bother developing for it. Don't know whether or not I agree, but it does sound accurate. If you can't distribute your changes, why bother?
    This was from an admittedly biased source (they killed a product that he had been involved with [somehow]), but this doesn't mean that he's wrong when he says "Don't let this happen to you". KOffice may be a better bet, even if it isn't as done yet.
  • There's no point in both the KDE and GNOME camps kicking the same old can.

    Yes there is. And the point is innovation. Microsoft has loadly proclaimed the superiority of having only one choice. But is that the best? Does Microsoft really innovate, or do they just care about changing the software enough to keep people forking over the dough.

    Competing against yourself is a very good idea. Many companies do this, especially when there isn't other competition. It's like running. You may run fast by yourself. But you'll run faster if someone is chasing you with a knife.

    It could be said, "Yes, but we will always be trying to keep ahead of Microsoft, won't that cause enough innovation?" I'd have to disagree. Sure, right now maybe Microsoft is ahead, but it won't always be. But in the future, if KDE is the standard platform, they won't be able to stagnate because there'll be Gnome right behind them forcing them to keep ahead. Likewise, Gnome will be forced to keep innovating to try to get ahead of KDE.

    The best thing Microsoft could have done a few years ago was split Windows up into 2 different divisions. Each division would have been responsible for developing and marketing their OS independently. They would have had real innovation, and also would have self-restrained themselves from being able to violate anti-trust laws.

    Let's learn from Microsoft and realize that having both Gnome and KDE are a good thing. Don't make the mistake of thinking that we only need one desktop environment.


    --
  • Hey, this only seems like one more reason to suport the development of software like the gimp, gnumeric, abiword and the like. Who needs staroffice? There's a complete GPL office coming around in a short-medium time. They even have component integration (bonobo) which leads to spreadsheets being integrated into abiword and vice versa, as well as gimp images, and stuff like that. Let'em block linux, as if it would be good for them.

    Now... Sun ain't stupid... they know that... so they won't be doing that a moronic move. So I don't worry.

    And so this is my 2c of insightfullness.
  • > This isn't troll talk - it is slow compared to
    > MS Office. On Linux it takes about a minute to
    > load, on windows, around about the same. ewww.
    > MS Office takes like 2 seconds (per app).

    Windows generally preloads the libraries
    for Office into RAM so that bloated pigs
    like Word will start faster. Try closing the
    Office toolbar and then opening Word and
    look at the difference in load time.
  • I would guess because JAVA is very slow for this kind of applications. Staroffice , as it is - writtent in C or C++ is slow, imagine how slow must be the Java version.
  • Actually, I'd include the positive points too! Is the story interesting, or simply a rehash of what everyone else is saying? Is it funny? Is it mindless drivel (i.e., flamebait)? I think it could be a valuable piece of information.
  • Something puzzles me:

    I was under the impression that MS hadn't changed the .doc, .xls and .ppt formats between Office97 and 2000. I thougt the only change was with Access2000, related to the new DAO stuff. So if they (StarOffice, Sun) optimized Staroffice for 2000, I don't see any real problems with the 97 version, or am I totally offcourse here?
    --
  • I don't think this 'installing two desktop environment library kits' is a nice option.

    First of all, the target group (novice users?) won't be able to do that. Besides that, I think it's just Fundamentally Wrong. I can run koffice while using gnome, but than the applications don't operate with eachother.

    Greetings,
    Ivo

  • Sun is a for-profit company. I like Open Source as much as the next guy, but you just can't expect them to GIVE AWAY (in the speech sense) the keys to the fort.

    Will SO stay freely available? Well, in the long term, who can say? But in the short term, probably at least a couple of years, it MUST be free, since this is Sun's marketing strategy to combat Microsoft. The whole idea is that they give away what Microsoft makes you pay for, thereby stealing market share from Microsoft and hopefully making them a weaker company. Our reasons may be different, but I think we in the OSS community all want this.

    As for comments about "What has Sun done for Linux?" Sun DOES NOT exist to help linux. They exist to make money. Despite this they have done things in the past that have benefited the Linux community.

    Remember people, Sun can't give away EVERYTHING, or they will not be able to continue as a company. Wether anyone likes it or not, we still live in a capitalist economic structure, and for-profit companies are necessary. Stop being so selfish and small-minded.

    dmartin@lancity.com

    Linux
    -----

  • And Sun didn't even make lxrun, which was invented by an SCO employee [caltech.edu]. Lxrun was running for many months on OpenServer and UnixWare before Sun took advantage of its open source license to port it to SolarisX86.

  • What is the real goal here? I presume, like many others, that the goal is to "cut off Microsoft's air supply," by going after their big cash cow, Office.

    If that is true, the current license (as well as the SCSL, under which the source, when released, will be licensed) doesn't accomplish the goal, due to its limitations on redistribtion.

    I believe the answer lies in a few motivations. One, as one /.'er quoted earlier, Sun is as much of a control freak as Micro$oft. I will not reitterate any of the points for this, since it seems pretty self evident.

    Two, Sun may be jumpy about the whole licensing issue in the wake of the DOJ lawsuit against M$. M$ was partially picked out because it gave away Internet Explorer for free, whereas NetScrape was still being sold commercially. If Sun tries the same aggressive "push-out" with free software that M$ did to NetScrape, we may see another lawsuit in our news headlines.

    I agree that Sun won't get the effect that it's striving for, but I believe its because they're remaining conservative in order to save their own arses.

  • You didn't listen to what i said. Ever heard of a process space? The only thing i can think of is cacheing of DLLs so that office loads faster (off memory) - that is possible - but the DLLs cached by windows are standard windows libraries - libraries which ALL applications will benefit from. Windows doesn't go and secretly make a process space for office and load up some office specific DLLs whenever windows starts up - trust me.
    The smart star technology stuff isn't to do with preloading either (what the hell is it with these people talking about preload - and besides - nothing's stopping sun from doing the same with star - it's no special 'need windows code' trick - in fact it's a trick that doesn't exist anyway :P) - smart start is to do with relocating clusters in the order which DLLs and other files are loaded.

    BTW, I don't have OSA etc etc loaded - MS Office loads in 2 seconds despite not having all these programs you keep insisting i have open open.
  • Perhaps the accusations of reckless Sun-bashing might be addressed in
    this followup column [zdnet.com].

  • n a real test scenario you should have each application on each platform and compare the startup times then. Well, I do not have access to a MS Office on Linux version. But startup on Windows is NOT slower ( assuming of course you did switched the start 60% of MS Office with the OS box of for realistic comparement, of course). But startup of Star Office on Linux IS slower than startup on Windows and that while more than 90% is really the same source code.

    I don't agree that this is a realistic comparison. A test of the default installation of both products is the realistic option. I fail to see how crippling one product makes the test fairer.

    If Sun made it so that some of the libraries for Star Office loaded at boot time, then Star Office would load faster. At the moment they don't.

    Most of the other Office Suites on Windows pull the same trick. Would you cripple MS, Lotus and Corel to make the test fair if those programs were included in the comparison?

  • Sun may have done some things that have helped promote Linux in some quarters, but as Scott McNealy said: Linux is "a great way to get to the wrong answer" [techweb.com]. Remember when people were getting excited about the Linux Java port? - as soon as it got onto a Linux CD, Sun's attorneys became "alarmed" and the distribution was put on hold until that was sorted Sun's way. Sun is a platform vendor and they're not interested in free software except how it helps squish Microsoft.

    Bungee-Ware [bungeezone.com]: Free Software with elasticated strings attached.

  • > I've been stuck with Word for years b/c my the
    > equations and graphs in my existing
    > documents never came out right in other on
    > other word processors and spreadsheets....
    > until StarOffice, which seems to work pretty
    > well.

    Nothing beats TeX and its derivatives for ease
    of use in making equations.

    This is not to say you shouldn't try Word,
    WordPerfect, StarOffice... but Knuth developed
    TeX BECAUSE existing equation editors sucked
    rocks. And still, TeX has the easiest to use
    and most flexible implementation. And it was
    made to make documents - not made to draft
    a one page letter.

  • "Yes there is. And the point is innovation. Microsoft has loadly proclaimed the superiority of having only one choice. But is that the best?"

    But one of the benefits of Open Source is that you don't end up with just one. Sure, right now, while things are developing rapidly, only a few branches can focus enough energy to keep up (possibly this is like the radiation of the phyla), but later on when things stabilize (2-3 years?) then people with diverging needs will implement diverging features, that may not seem important enough to be integrated back in, or may even conflict with the interpretation of other diverging branches. So over some longer period one would see different species of product evolve. At a guess the word processor used by mathematicians may not merge with the one used by chemists, although the basic document format would be the same. One can hope that sufficient effort will be put forth that each will be able to read/print the others files, but even that much isn't guaranteed.
  • Some time after IE5 runs on Wine. Probably long after. :-)
  • Woah, woah, woah. Wait a sec.

    Just this morning, some bozo's scripts drove the load on an UltraSPARC-based web server up to ~38. No problem...I went in and killed his processes. The machine was still responsive, even under that kind of a load.

    Uh, duh. This has nothing to do with Solaris and Sun. This is plain ol' UNIX. As much as Sun would like to think they invented UNIX, they didn't. (And they suck at what they did - NIS)

    Solaris is still more scalable than Linux (although I prefer Linux for most uses these days).

    Okay, on what platform? Let's see. Oh, yeah! SPARC! ONLY SPARC. Gee, who makes SPARC processors? Hmm, Sun! Give the man a bone. I bet if Intel and MS were merged together, they could have some neat scaling archs too. But, they aren't (luckily for us).

    Sun makes a lot of good stuff. Yes, we have to make sure we don't get cornered by them or any other vendor, but to compare them with Microsoft is unfair, IMO

    (I can't believe I'm going to say this...). In the grand scheme of things, Microsoft does not truly have dominance over anything anymore (they never had control over hardware a la Sun). What they do have is control over people who buy into their dogma (i.e. Windows). If you use Windows, you don't have much of a choice (but it is still a far better choice than Solaris's SW options). Microsoft will control you if you are part of their little cluster. If you are outside (i.e. in UNIX land), you can pretty much ignore Microsoft entirely.

    That said, if Sun has their way, everyone would be in their "little" cluster. They would control everything from start to finish. (HW->OS->Browser,Prog. Languages, etc.) I'm a lot more scared of Sun screwing us than I am of Microsoft.

    At least, I know what I'm dealing with when I buy a Microsoft product (something that should work and there will be fixes released EVENTUALLY). Sun is always revoking products (or ignoring them) because they decided that it no longer interested them - a la the defunct WABI, their Java IDEs, and I bet that Solaris/x86 won't be around much longer...)

    Justin
  • I'm posting this now from an Ultra-2 machine, running Caldera's Open Linux 2.3 (sparc64 version). Very impressive installation (boot cdrom, click a few buttons, play tetris, reboot). Though I haven't done any benchmarks, it seems a fair bit more peppy than the Solaris 2.6 installation it was running previously. If I could only get a decent (native linux sparc64 compile) web browser, I'd be much happier. KDE's kfm does okay (at least /. reads well), but I'd be much happier with Netscape or Opera (hint-hint!).
  • TummyX makes a good point about Sun being anti-Microsoft. However, I think that somebody has to stand up to that juggernaut.

    If KOffice works well, then who cares about StarOffice, which appears to be well on the way to proprietary anyway? Besides, even though I love OpenSource stuff and the cohesion of this group, money does make the world go 'round, and paid developers and their software have always been preferred because of their support backing.

    Just my thoughts...
  • A good package system should ensure that the required components are installed automatically, when the novice user attempts to install KOffice (or the Gnome equivalent).

    The Gnome and KDE groups are working together on common communication protocols, so presumably the applications will (eventually) work together.

    However, I do think it would be nice if some of the office projects were combined into project with a single "core" with multiple GUI bindings.


  • Two, Sun may be jumpy about the whole licensing issue in the wake of the DOJ lawsuit against M$. M$ was partially picked out because it gave away Internet Explorer for free, whereas NetScrape was still being sold commercially. If Sun tries the same aggressive "push-out" with free software that M$ did to NetScrape, we may see another lawsuit in our news headlines.
    Why do people always get this wrong? They were not picked out because of giving the browser away for free, but for BUNDLING IT into the OS, thereby leveraging their dominant/monopoly position in the OS market to obtain an unfair advantage in the browser market.
  • The only way of selling starportal is to have a broad userbase among different platforms, so it would be totally counterproductive NOT to keep on developing the Linux, Solaris whatever version.. Remeber sun is plannnig to push staroffice to all major PC-makers, like Dell, etc...
    I would be very surprised if not more ports will appear rather than less..

    /kisses from Sweden.

  • Sun & StarOffice (Score:3)

    by dkh2 ( 29130 ) <{dkh2} {at} {WhyDoMyTitsItch.com}> on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:12AM (#1657653) Homepage
    While the downloaded installation does prompt for registration (once) I have been able to install from a Zip disk of the installation package to several machines. Each has asked for registration but none have required it.

    Our users are very happy using StarOffice on their Win32 systems. It would really kick ass if KOffice is also released in a Win32 version for those cyber-lightweights not yet ready to change operating systems.

    I have a whole department full of "marginal" computer users who don't have either time or incliniation to learn an OS. Just want to sit down and type a report. Another office suite that is not built around Word or WordPerfect but reads and writes compatible files would be welcome by them.

    D. Keith Higgs
    CWRU. Kelvin Smith Library

  • The registration is Sun's standard registration for any of their products, not specifically for StarOffice. Once you register for one of their products you can download any of them with the same registration. This is no different than for any other software you download from commercial organizations (for example, Acrobat reader, Real Player, etc).

  • Re:we don't need star office (Score:3)

    by Ivo ( 26920 ) on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:16AM (#1657655) Homepage
    And what if someone doesn't use KDE?

    Oh.. if only applications were 'desktop environment independent'. Unix has a history of having lots of tools doing useful stuff, which can be combined in lots of useful ways. I wish graphical applications were more like that.
    I don't like the idea of having a "gapplication" and a "kapplication" for everything. That's a lot of unnecessary duplication if you ask me.

    But hey, that's just me.

    Greetings,
    Ivo

  • When you are given the opportunity to moderate, it would be nice to be also allowed to moderate the main story.

    If a story gets moderated down as redundant by too many people, it would be removed from the main page (but still accessible from the search page or other cross-references). That could help a bit in reducing the duplicates that pop up from time to time on /.

    For the main story, the effect of moderation would only be to hide the story if it gets many negative points. The score would not be displayed on the main page. Positive points would be ignored (except for cancelling the negative ones).

  • Sun and freebies (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:18AM (#1657657)
    A famous economist once observed that if you could find a way to clean up all the air pollution in the entire US at a total cost of $2 per state, someone would still object. That quote comes to mind when I see people bitching about corporations not doing enough for or giving enough to the Linux "community". Honestly, some people sound like spoiled little brats who want the world handed to them on a platter, and when they get it, they complain about the shape of the platter. Let me make this clear: Linux is already a juggernaut. It will take over a significant chunk of the desktop market. We'll have more good software available, both free and commercial, than we can shake a mouse pad at. What Sun does with StarOffice won't matter one bit a year from now. Take a deep breath. Step back from the keyboard. Repeat after me, "The war is over. We won."

  • Stay Open Source (Score:3)

    by Macka ( 9388 ) on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:24AM (#1657658)
    Whether this is true or not is neither here nor there. But the only way to play safe and avoid being 'shafted' by a commercial offering is to stick with Open Source where possible. Me, I'm waiting for KOffice. Star Office doesn't even appear on my radar.

    Macka

  • Who cares if they pull it back.. This gets us buy until KOffice is finished.

    For crying out loud.. Sun is a business trying VERY HARD to survive.. it would not be smart at all if there was NO catches .. who knows though.. Today marketshare seems to have more value than product. :) Maybe Sun is sacraficing the pawn to create just that.


  • Keep on a' codin. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:28AM (#1657660)
    Star Office should be viewed as an 'intermediate' step - a usable, temporary solution until a more suitable true, GPL'ed Office suite is available.
    There are some good starting points AbiWord and Gnumeric spring to mind. Thing is, it doesn't seem that most folk need all that software anyway - it seems they've been 'convinced' that they need it.
    Yes, it is too early to speculate what (if any) changes Sun will make to Star's availability/terms of use, so we should wait and see. However, at a minimum (for me to use it on my home linux box anyway), the licensing must be compliant with the Open Source Definition [opensource.org]. Sun doesn't like Linux - their membership in Linux International [li.org] seems to be just to sell hardware. They want you to use Solaris, and pay them for their compilers and development licenses.
  • This is a very interesting precedent on software bundling. Can someone find any ref to the original case and publish it somewhere?

    On a site that can survive a slashdot assault if possible...
  • I'm guessing that the point was that gtk is available on Windows for free, where Qt is expensive. I haven't looked into this recently, but the last time that I did Qt was too expensive for me to even think about on the Windows side (I don't have a large budget). If I remember the license correctly, one could distribute the software at a reasonable price (either a percentage, or it was free if you didn't charge), but getting a license to develop the software (i.e., access to the libraries and interface guides) was ... large. Over $1000. (I did say my budget wasn't large? Basically I just noticed it was too large, and forgot about it.)
  • Skipping the comments on whom do they resemble with this practice you are indeed right:

    All support for the pre-Sun age has been discontinued. There is no way you can verify licence codes, reclaim support or whatever (at least from the Sun site at the moment).
  • I am wondering if anybody was able to use ttf fonts with Staroffice ( both , on the screen and on the printout.)
  • I constantly hear people bitching about MS office file formats being proprietary and generally incompatible with anything on the market. I wonder if abiword and ,say, KWord will be able to exchange data _without_ loosing any formating information.
  • This leads to innovation?

    Well.. sure, normally choice leads to innovation, but not in this case. This is about koffice vs. goffice. You don't choose koffice because it's better than the gnome apps, you choose it because kde happens to be your desktop.
    kde vs. gnome is good. That leads to innovation for your desktop environment.
    gapplication vs. kapplication is very wrong if you ask me.

    Hmm.. I keep on making this argument over and over again. :-(

    Greetings,
    Ivo

  • SunOS 4 (the BSD-derived OS) shipped with a K&R C compiler (i.e. not ANSI. No function prototypes). It lived in /bin/cc, and was used to link new kernels. People also had the bizarre idea that they should use it to compile software from the net, which is the main reason unprotoize scripts are still included in many GNU packages.

    SunOS 5 (Solaris) never included a C compiler.
    The old /bin/cc only generated a.out format executables, not the ELF format Solaris uses, and was thus never included in Solaris. Sun included gcc on a number of demo CDs over the years.

    Sun sells their professional compilers as separate products, called "SunPro" I believe.
  • What the hell are you talking about?
    "The war is over. We won." What???

    Nobody won anything. One of RMS's key ideas is that we must be weary of "open source" companies retracting their code at some point leaving us "high and dry." This is a very real threat.

    Actually, StarOffice really blows. I've used it more times than I care to admit. Each time I get a little more frustrated with it. IMHO, it is a poorly written program that needs to be hit over the head because it wants to do too much (don't copy %*$%& Office - you can't copy its feature set - they don't have the sheer number of people that MS does). And, StarOffice can't even do those things very well (or even passably well) on ANY platform (I've tried on Windows, Linux, and on Solaris).

    Sun just bought StarDivision to placate some people in OSS community, then they will start charging through the nose for the software. Remember that Sun does not like giving away products. You DO know how much a Sun workstation costs? An Ultra-5 can easily run $5k. Their mid-level servers are about $100k. Their enterprise level servers are $1m and up. This is of course not including all of the software that you must buy. If you want their development studio (C++, etc with an IDE), it is about $5-6k as well. I have heard that it is very good, but it is very hard to justify the cost for it.

    Sun was never going to buy StarDivision and keep it for free. They plan to make money (lots) off of it. Sun wants nothing more than to become the next MS.

    Face it, we lost. You just don't know it yet.

    Justin
  • At the university here, the unix sysadmin group (Hi guys!) claimed that Star Office had a poor networking installation mode, and performed poorly in a client/server architecture.

    Can anyone else confirm this?

    Andrew
  • /. seems to love an opportunity to Sun-bash. At least three threads will spawn, regardless of the actual topic.

    1. Sun hasn't released the source code to
    . Sun is EVIL!
    2. Thin clients are a terrible way to run Quake.
    3. Sun should abandon Slowlaris and run Linux on
    those 64 processor E10Ks! (note: calling it
    "Solaris" when comparing it to Linux is
    strictly verboten, it must be labelled
    "Slowlaris").
  • Would you Linux cheerleaders get over Wabi? SunSoft discontinued Wabi ACROSS THE BOARD (not just a stab at Linux) because it was outdated can could only run Win16 applications. When most applications drifted into the Win32 arena, Wabi was irrelevant. Case closed, stop whining.
  • It's so easy to bash companies with a profit motive. But bashing Sun or bashing StarOffice or whatever anti-Microsoft solution (though bashing Microsoft is fine...) misses the point, IMHO. At best, the referenced piece on ZDNet is ignorant. At worst, it'll be influential FUD-fodder. To me, Linux is an important product (and way of building and distributing a product) that serves an important goal: widening the horizons of corporate IT types and regular computer users the world over to an \alternative\ way of thinking about software and computing in general. StarOffice, in it's own weird way, is similar. The Internet is a wonderful thing; the WWW could very well be *the* killer app of all time. Both of these things have proven the case, albeit in their infancy (in the case of the WWW), of the beauty and power of network computing. Think about it. We can all get to /. as long as we have a networked computing device with access to a browser. Most of us can do all of our non-device-dependent software development given appropriate access to remote computing resources. The coming wave of ASPs will be an interesting test of the viability of WWW-hosted applications. I, for one, do not consider being responsible for sysadmin duties (backup included) to be gratifying. As long as I have reasonable access to my resources, I'm happy. X-Windows is a nifty 'portal', after all, right?! So what does this all have to do with StarOffice and Sun? Even if it's not exactly what Sun has in mind, their endorsement of StarOffice -- and the relative ease and low cost of folks acquiring it for evaluation (if not deployment) -- will help open more minds to the fact that they can, in fact, exist without a traditional Microsoft/PC/desktop orientation. How's that? It's all about making them aware of \alternatives\. Of course Sun wants to sell more hardware. Actually, I think their primarily interested in selling *something* that they believe in that helps them make money. I'm hopeful that they've learned that focusing on hurting MS doesn't necessarily help them. If they can enlighten the computing world to the benefits of network computing -- and we all can continue enlightening the world about \open source\ software, then the good guys can win without looking like hypocrites. For now, let's applaud Sun for having a strategy to help users. StarOffice is a means, not an end. My preference is to always use GPL-ed stuff, but I'm even more passionate about having choice. Let the games continue!
  • It's so easy to bash companies with a profit motive.

    But bashing Sun or bashing StarOffice or whatever anti-Microsoft solution (though bashing Microsoft is fine...) misses the point, IMHO.

    At best, the referenced piece on ZDNet is ignorant. At worst, it'll be influential FUD-fodder.

    To me, Linux is an important product (and way of building and distributing a product) that serves an important goal: widening the horizons of corporate IT types and regular computer users the world over to an \alternative\ way of thinking about software and computing in general.

    StarOffice, in it's own weird way, is similar.

    The Internet is a wonderful thing; the WWW could very well be *the* killer app of all time. Both of these things have proven the case, albeit in their infancy (in the case of the WWW), of the beauty and power of network computing. Think about it. We can all get to /. as long as we have a networked computing device with access to a browser. Most of us can do all of our non-device-dependent software development given appropriate access to remote computing resources. The coming wave of ASPs will be an interesting test of the viability of WWW-hosted applications.

    I, for one, do not consider being responsible for sysadmin duties (backup included) to be gratifying. As long as I have reasonable access to my resources, I'm happy. X-Windows is a nifty 'portal', after all, right?!

    So what does this all have to do with StarOffice and Sun? Even if it's not exactly what Sun has in mind, their endorsement of StarOffice -- and the relative ease and low cost of folks acquiring it for evaluation (if not deployment) -- will help open more minds to the fact that they can, in fact, exist without a traditional Microsoft/PC/desktop orientation. How's that? It's all about making them aware of \alternatives\.

    Of course Sun wants to sell more hardware. Actually, I think their primarily interested in selling *something* that they believe in that helps them make money. I'm hopeful that they've learned that focusing on hurting MS doesn't necessarily help them. If they can enlighten the computing world to the benefits of network computing -- and we all can continue enlightening the world about \open source\ software, then the good guys can win without looking like hypocrites.

    For now, let's applaud Sun for having a strategy to help users. StarOffice is a means, not an end. My preference is to always use GPL-ed stuff, but I'm even more passionate about having choice.

    Let the games continue!


  • I have hated Sun for a very long time now.

    This may be the state with a lot of us but it is off topic.

    Is the source still available?

    The proper way to put it is: is it now available? While stardivision was doing it it was closed source.

    Maybe we could re-write SO under GPL and give it better features.

    This will be rather stupid. Staroffice has a huge penalty in the form of an overhead for windoze compatibilty combined with the provisions for the best beloved Solaris/Windoze threads. This will kill you performancewise. It makes more sence to see how things should not be done, pick up some information on some file formats and write from scratch.

    Sun has been the MS of Unix for a long time now.

    Questionable, but maybe you have a point. I will remind you that all big guys, together, nicely and jointly removed the compilers from their systems, introduced the cursed CDE and so on simultaneously (around '94). In terms of M$ like behaviour Sun has never been the solo singer.

    They make very slow machines but they make you think you need it.

    Well, becnhmarks are usually selfexplanatory. And there are few benches where Sun is doing good even now days. So the question is what do you need the machine for (and of course what kind of extensions have installed on it).


  • Yeah, I am tired of hearing it. I have NO objection for paying someone for a solid product. If Sun wants to go to backbreaking strides to introduce a solid office suite to the masses, more power to them. If they can succesfully create a niche for Staroffice, even dominate.. that is fine. Just as we can choose to use StarOffice over MS Office, I can choose to use something else over StarOffice.


    Lord, they don't open source it.. BIG DEAL!!

    Get a life people, as much as everyone might bitch about Suns lame license, it's still better than any other competing product..

  • MOre stripped, Portal compatible ports - yes. Development on standalone app - least likely... You do not kill your tentative piece of bread...
  • What prevents Sun from revoking Java's "freeness"?

    Nothing.

    Sun will eventually demand dollar$ from companies who distribute all the (very difficult to re-engineer) Java APIs with their Java applications (Servlet API, EJBs, 3D API, Swing come to mind).

    If Microsoft stumbles don't be surprised by what Sun might try.
  • I will remind you that all big guys, together, nicely and jointly removed the compilers from their systems

    Not the fault of the vendors. A compiler company (Greenhills?) sued for restraint of trade because most vendors were giving away a Pascal compiler with their UNIX release. They won their case, and vendors were only allowed to ship compilers necessary to build the operating system. Because Sun and IBM (but not HP!) have dynamic kernels that don't need compiling, they no longer are allowed to ship a C compiler.

  • Yup, McNealy has always been pretty abrasive. But has anyone considered that McNealy's abrasiveness towards MS is deliberate?

    5 years ago, Sun would always compare itself to other Unix workstation companies: DEC, HP, SGI. The rhetoric was probably the thickest where DEC was concerned.
    Sun then had about $1 billion in sales per year.

    McNealy started taking aim at M$ when the hype for NT began. Always with a twisted barb at the ready, he tended to get quoted in the trade press. And what has been the effect? In ZD publications it isn't just "Sun" it is "Microsoft's arch-nemesis, Sun".
    Sun now has over $15 billion in sales per year.

    Being portrayed as the only staunchly anti-Microsoft computer company has distinct advantages. It means you get invited to bid on lots of large server contracts, because you are seen as the only reasonable alternative platform. These are contracts that "Sun, workstation company" would never be invited to bid on, but "Sun, Microsoft arch-nemesis" does.
  • That quote comes to mind when I see people bitching about corporations not doing enough for or giving enough to the Linux "community". Honestly, some people sound like spoiled little brats who want the world handed to them on a platter, and when they get it, they complain about the shape of the platter.

    While god knows our community has its fair share of "spoiled brats", I don't believe this subject is an example of it.

    To begin with, what we see here is mostly folks preaching caution. They show a historical reason for that caution. And they state what it would take to ease their cautious nature. Granted - that's not likely to happen. And that's fine.

    This caution is important to our environment. Development happens because someone FEELS that it needs to happen. Scratch an itch. Seek the approval of one's peers. A company who seeks to play a bait-and-switch game delays the process by decreasing the need.

    If Sun has a hidden agenda, we should be aware of it. If StarOffice is something we can count on - then great. All solutions don't neccessarily have to be Open Source. But then, Open Source does provide one with the assurance that a product CAN be relied on.

    A final note - table scraps on a silver platter are still table scraps. The starving may be appreciative of them, and credit may be due. But he who served table scraps should not be credited for a banquet. Some companies seem to be trying to do just that.

  • KOffice for windows (Score:3)

    by Gleef ( 86 ) on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:52AM (#1657703) Homepage
    The trouble is that KOffice requires Qt, and Qt for Windows is not only non-Free, it is very expensive (Over $1,000/developer). In order for a KOffice port to happen, someone would have to take the QPL'ed Unix/Linux version and develop a patch to port it to Windows.

    ----
  • Instead of thinking about your own circumstances, think about the organisation with 10,000+ PCs. Now try and imagine the costs of distributing new software, service packs, installing new discs to replace crashed ones, resetting configurations because users have screwed their old ones, cleaning up after viruses, etc. etc.

    All of this is estimated to cost in the order of thousands of dollars per year per user. For "non-power" users (for example help desk operators, or counter staff) the use of NCs look attractive, none of the problems above means a much lower maintenance cost. This doesn't mean that PCs will go away, they will still be about for those who need them.

  • StarOffice is sloooow and buggy (Score:3)

    by TummyX ( 84871 ) on Monday September 27, 1999 @02:55AM (#1657707)
    This isn't troll talk - it is slow compared to MS Office. On Linux it takes about a minute to load, on windows, around about the same. ewww. MS Office takes like 2 seconds (per app).
    The article did bring up an interesting point - who would you rather have as a dictator? Gates or McNealy?
    I'd rather have Gates ...all the way. He's not 'evil', hi's company is aggressive when it comes to business (but what company wouldn't be).....Gates comes off to me as a nice guy - a geeky guy. McNealy comes off as a businessman with a disturbing anti-microsoft and a 'i want to be gates' complex (kindda like Ellison).
    My prediction? Sun will capture many businesses etc with their workstations eventually - then everyone will be complaining about the monster that is AOL/SUN/ORACLE.
    Would I rather have Sun or Microsoft lead the software industry? Microsoft all the way.
    Everything Sun does today is to undermine Microsoft - it's so obvious. Their campaign for '100% pure' java, their network computing push, their aquisition of StarOffice, their alliance with Netscape.
    Just check out scott mcnealy's website at sun.com, it's a page full of anti-microsoft garbage. you don't see anything like that on bill gates' site. he's professional about these things.

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