is
Sun Microsystems '
Proprietary Office Suite Software Package . It is the basis of the
Free and
Open Source OpenOffice.org package
1, and contains some additional features.
The version sold in
East Asia is known as and is functionally identical to StarOffice, with full file interchange and compatibility, but includes language and font support for
Simplified Chinese ,
Traditional Chinese ,
Japanese and
Korean .
StarOffice 8 supports the
OpenDocument standard.
The program includes:
- StarWriter — Word Processor .sdw (StarOffice 5.x) .sxw (StarOffice 6.x) .odt .ott -files
- StarCalc — Spreadsheet .sdc (5.x) .sxc (6.x) .ods .ots -files
- StarImpress — Presentation Software .sdd (5.x) .sxi (6.x) .odp .otp -files
- StarDraw — drawing tool .sda (5.x) .sxd (6.x) .odg .otg -files
- StarBase — Database .sdb (5.x) .odb -files
Older programs no longer included:
StarOffice supports the
XML file format, including (as of StarOffice 8) the OpenDocument standard, and can generate
PDF and
Flash formats. The program comes with
Template s, a
Macro recorder, and a
Software Development Kit (SDK).
Proprietary components in StarOffice that are not in OpenOffice.org include:
- Several font metric compatible Unicode TrueType fonts containing bitmap representations for better appearance at smaller font sizes
- 12 Western fonts (including Andale Sans, Arial Narrow , Arial Black , Broadway, Garamond , Imprint MT Shadow, Kidprint, Palace Script, Sheffield) and 7 Asian language fonts (including support for the Hong Kong Supplementary character set)
- Adabas D database
- StarOffice-only Template s and sample documents
- A large Clip Art gallery
- Sorting functionality for Asian versions
- File filters for additional older wordprocessing formats (including EBCDIC )
- A different Spell Check er (note that OpenOffice.org does include a spell checker as well) and Thesaurus
- StarOffice Configuration Manager
- Macro Converter for converting Microsoft Office VBA-macros to StarBasic
There are also differences in the documentation, training and support options, and some minor differences in the look and icons between the two programs.
Other differences include: StarOffice only supports 10 languages (compared to over 25 for OpenOffice.org), and StarOffice is only available for the Windows, Linux, Solaris operating systems (while OpenOffice.org is available for 8 operating systems).
StarOffice was originally developed by the
German company StarDivision in
Lueneburg , founded by
Marco Börries in
1984 . They developed the first version of StarWriter for the
Z80 home computer system, the
Amstrad CPC (marketed by
Schneider in Germany) under
CP/M , and later for the
Commodore 64 under
Microsoft BASIC , which was later ported to the 8086-based
Amstrad PC1512 , running under
MS-DOS 3.2. Later the integration of the other individual programs followed as the development progressed to an Office Suite for DOS and for Microsoft Windows, which was marketed from now on under the name "StarOffice."
The development of the integrated StarOffice started at the end of
1994 . Until version 4.2, StarOffice was based on the
Platform Independent C++ Class Library StarView .
The company, copyright and trademark of StarOffice were acquired by Sun Microsystems in
1999 for US$73.5 million. Sun was seeking to compete with
Microsoft Office , and also wanted to save money on licenses for Microsoft Office and Windows:
:The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approaching forty-two thousand employees. Pretty much every one of them had to have both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaper to go buy a company that could make a Solaris and Linux desktop productivity suite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft. ''(Simon Phipps, Sun, LUGradio podcast)''
Sun soon offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use.
Sun then went through an exercise similar to
Netscape's relicensing of
Mozilla , by releasing most of the StarOffice source code under a
Free /
Open Source license. The resultant free/open source software codebase is developed as
OpenOffice.org , and is contributed to by both Sun and the wider OpenOffice.org community. Sun then takes a "snapshot" of the OpenOffice.org code base, integrates proprietary and third-party code modules, and markets the package commercially.
In September 2005, Sun released StarOffice 8, adding support for the OpenDocument standard and a number of improvements (based on the OpenOffice.org 2 code).
Traditionally, StarOffice
License s have been sold for around 70
USD , but in
2004 , Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to
Japan ese customers for about 1,980
JPY (17 USD) per
Year (Becker, 2004). P. Ulander, a desktop products manager for Sun, acknowledged that Sun planned to expand subscription-based licenses to other countries as well.
Sun uses a per-person license for StarOffice, compared to the per-processor licenses used for most proprietary software. An individual is allowed to install the software on up to five computers. For example, a small business owner can have the software on his laptop, office and home computers, or a user with a computer running Microsoft Windows, and another running Linux, can install StarOffice on both computers.
Sun offers educational licensing to academic institutions and individuals for the cost of the media or of a download. They also offer free web-based Training and an online tutorial for students and teachers, free support services for teachers including educational templates for StarOffice, and significantly discounted technical support for schools.
In
August 2007 ,
Google started offering StarOffice as a free download as part of its
Google Pack application.
