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Sun's StarOffice Release: Not Open Source 218

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lets-get-technical dept.
Bruce Perens wrote in to send us a link to an article he has written about Sun's StarOffice Release: Is It Really What You Think? It discusses the implications for Linux, and the fact that it technically isn't going to be released under a true Open Source license. Worth a read.
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Sun's StarOffice Release: Not Open Source More

Sun's StarOffice Release: Not Open Source

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  • Re:Oops (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Heck previewing is for wimps...real men have the guts to hit submit, and see what happens :>>--

  • I totally, absolutely agree with you. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And a quote that sums it up very well: The people that are willing to exchange some of their freedom, for some convenience, deserve neither, and they will get neither. (sorry, can't remember who said it.) nvon

  • Re:Economics 101 - It might. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, you can spend $450MM and just "give it completely away". The trick is getting maximal return on that investment. Business sense is business sense, the rest is emotional blather.

    It is not at all clear Sun chose wisely. Their plan carries great risk. They are taking a fairly traditional shot at the Microsoft Office monopoply. Monopolies aren't usually broken by such methods. Other's have played with the ASP model and generally found it lacking. Hey, maybe Sun knows something that everyone else who has been there doesn't.

    Had they released under GPL, they would have more than just peer review. They would have attracted serious developers. Developers that could make Star better enough to potentially break the monopoly.

    MS is locking Office into their servers as you read this. That is pushing Sun out of their market. In my own "name brand company" MS is winning this game. Sun is trying to escape by using ASP to drive demand for bigger iron. But, expect the MS lock to be pretty strong by Windows 2002. Running to big iron hasn't been the answer at any time in the last 30 years. Hey, maybe Sun knows something that everyone else who has been there doesn't.

    Humm, nobody buying Sun servers could well cost more than any potential licensing benefit held in the SCSL.

    Sun has 2-4 years. You can give these years to GPL programmers so they can maintain a standards based computing platform; or you can spend it hoping everybody else was wrong and Microsoft will just go away.

  • Hmmm... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 06, 1999 @08:44AM (#1699835)
    I think the article makes some very good points but there are a couple of things I wanted to comment on.

    Firstly: the quote...
    "Sun isn't going to make big revenues off of StarOffice while it's also giving it away for free from its own web site" fits the more traditional view of programming I think. Isn't the whole point of the free software push that you can have a very profitable (more so?) business based on "giving your product away". You can after all download RedHat and they seem to be making their money *shrug*

    Secondly, while I am wary of the possible effects mentioned in the article wrt competition with the FS/OS products lets face it. The _biggest_ problem the office software market is facing is the stranglehold M$ has over it making it the defacto standard. As a result most people/businesses I know of don't even consider that there _are_ alternatives. More competition in this genre of products (even if among corporate products) is to the advantage of all surely? Maybe if there was a more diverse offering of office software available (especially corporate products for those businesses who still will not consider anything else) then the OS/FS products would be facing less of a mountain?

    Lets encourage greater competition and welcome every step companies like Sun make in this direction. Maybe future steps will see them willing to consider that extra step - the OS/FS model is probably a pretty scarey choice for the corporates to go for ;)

    Just a thought (or three) :)
  • Economics 101 - You do not spend $450M on a product and give it completely away. Yes, Sun
    own StarOffice, they paid for it. They are free
    to license the software in any way they see fit,
    and they see fit to use their own SCSL. The
    SCSL is Sun's approach to peer review and
    wider research without losing rights to what
    they own. It's a different approach and Sun
    should be applauded for using the model so
    widely within their organisation.

  • Do you care for Open Source / Free Software or Linux? I'll take Linux, since I've never bought the politics, and use Linux only as a way of a) Getting x86 Unix Cheap and b) getting a good PC OS. and c) Development tools

    StarOffice is freeware. All software that requires no costly payments is good software.

    Its also an example of it being better to have cross platform software than Open software.

    (Piracy, otoh, is not always good or bad)
  • I have it now, It runs on this system, which, god willing, touch wood, can run for ~10 years without major failure. If theres something worth swapping for then, we'll see.

    Visicalc is on the internet from its author for free. Running a spreadsheet with a 28k binary is rather nice - especially on my previous antique hardware.

    The upgrade treadmill is a state of mind.
    Free beer is good. Drink deep. In short, the future of SOffice is a minor concern - it already meets my needs - it did so in Version 3 as I recall.

    Theres always something better if I ever want to pay.

  • Re:Hmmm.... (Score:1)

    by J4 ( 449 )
    heheh.. now I don't feel so bad. ;-p

    Well done, all around, Bruce.

  • It's a well written essay, and I can appreciate Bruce's desire to help out, but I really think just about everything he said is pretty self-evident. If people are paying so little attention that they can't figure these things out for themselves, then I doubt they'll even bother to read this, let alone give it any thought. Are there any plans to get this into more mainstream media where it might actually do some good?
  • I'd be happy if Cringley reads it

    I hadn't really considered that some of the more mainstream journalist types are probably lurkers here. It's a good point.

    Don't assume that because it's obvious to you and me, it's obvious to everyone

    I don't, but I do think that most people that read Slashdot regularly have all the info they need to make the same conclusions. My point wasn't that you wrote a bad essay or (necessarily) wasted your time; it was that if they haven't bothered to think these things through already, they're not likely to because someone wrote an essay about it. Again, if this gets significant circulation outside Slashdot, then it's a moot point.

    Gee, maybe you should write about some other obvious things! I could use the help!

    Actually, Bruce, I've made some moves in that direction, but they're pretty much always received with a "who the hell are you?" kind of attitude, so I've given up trying to contribute that way. But hey, thanks for the encouragement!

  • The Sun/AOL thing is still around. It's a joint venture type deal between Sun and Netscape (owned by AOL) originally known as the "Sun-Netscape Alliance," and it's been renamed to "iPlanet" for some reason. They're still around, since I saw an ad for iPlanet in last week's Forbes magazine. The ad touted Sun, AOL, and Netscape's history of innovation and delivery of great products based on great ideas, but didn't really mention what exactly it was that iPlanet would be doing.
  • This has nothing to do with the "Open Source Bugaboo." The problem with the upgrade treadmill is that the "upgrades" don't particularly introduce new useful functionality, but instead mostly just introduce gratuituous incompatibility. Doesn't it strike you as unethical for a vendor to introduce incompatibility for incompatibility's sake?

  • Flip your thinking around a bit. Linux, in effect, restricts Sun to working mainly at the high end, in the big iron arena. At the low end, Solaris is expensive, and it's overkill. Linux is quite sufficient, cheaper, and even arguably more secure because of all the eyeballs that look at the code. Sun offsets this somewhat by allowing Linux on Sparc, which allows them to sell Sparc hardware to those who would find Solaris too expensive and would otherwise go for Linux on Intel. However, I suspect that Sun still loses to Linux on Intel at the low end because PC platforms are still cheaper and more widely available.

    Further, there is no guarantee that Linux will stay at the low end. The Linux developers seem pretty ambitious, and it it quite possible that two or three years from now that Linux might be scalable enough to rival Solaris. Note that Linux need not be *as* scalable as Solaris in order to be a threat. It could simply provide sufficient scalability so that it could be used where Solaris might otherwise be used. While Linux isn't a strong threat to Sun's revenue stream now, Sun has no guarantee that it will not be in the future, and Sun may very well see Linux as a potential *long-term* threat.

  • Although I am not exactly happy with the SUN-s new Star-Office licence, I do think we might have gained more than a "Free Beer". Although I do not believe that people will take the whole suite and start fixing everything, there are several areas where the work may be simple enough and gains big enough for someone to do it (or pay someone else to do it for him.). Some examples are:

    • Getting the SO compile on any Linux-powered computer, independent on the hardware platform. Oder UNIX-like systems will folow.
    • Anyone can make a "localised varsion" of SO, so "small languages" are likely to see the localised version.
    • Import/export filters. How about some LaTeX import/export? Or Lyx?

    If StarOffice (i.e. SUN) team does their job properly, I am quite sure the above mentioned tasks will be relatively easy to do, especially writing the localised versions of the SO => someone will do it. I can even imagine a goverment of a small country actually PAYING someone to get the job done.

    Surely, SUN will win a lot if this happens, but they will not be alone.

  • Netscape
    Sun
    AOL

    NSA

    Really makes you wonder... :-)
  • I'm operating on an assumption here, but one that I think is not terribly daring: that Sun purchased StarOffice not to try to generate direct revenue, but to put the hurt on Microsoft..."cutting off their air supply"...by attacking their largest revenue stream: Office.

    If that's correct, then going truly open source with StarOffice is clearly the right thing to do. It would mean that StarOffice would be distributed with pretty much every Linux CD. It would also mean that their would be numerous distribution points, instead of one.

    Truly open-sourcing StarOffice would be a punch to Bill Gates' gut. As it is, the SCSL release will be little more than a slap to his face.

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

  • But by releasing it as GPL or BSD, they could potentially lose all control of it (at least in their minds if not in reality)

    Agreed. Although I think that it (a GPL or BSD release) would still achieve their prime objective here, which is to do damage to Microsoft's primary revenue stream.

    But I would like to see them give up control on the distribution side of things, while perhaps retaining some control on the modification side.

    That's really the only beef I have with the current plan; it doesn't accomplish Sun's (apparent) goals, because it will not achieve sufficient distribution if people have to download StarOffice seperately.

    A QPL-type license would get the job done.


    -- Posting this with Sun StarOffice, BTW! Not a half bad browser, if you have the RAM. I don't even think it leaks memory nearly as bad as Netscape.

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

  • lyx [lyx.org]

    i never wanted look at a "normal" word processor again!

    dont know about the other stuff. never really had need for "office stuff". anyone who insists on a resume in word97 format, i already know i dont want to work for. (mostly because of what that says about them)

  • Well, charging for a limited right to use a free resource is viewed as problematic by many people, but I can see some justification for it.

    What I consider inacceptable is the trick e.g. Unisys is playing: Give away a product (or fail to enforce a patent) until the market has widely accepted your product, and then use the market position achieved by misrepresenting your intentions to milk the customers.

    This is exactly how many large companies try to build monopolies.

  • You could always use the "wv" Microsoft Word file import library from AbiWord [abisource.com], which is GPLed... and you'll be able to sleep at night knowing you won't be sued by Sun.

    --
  • I think it's time we start saying "Is it OSI certified?" when companies come up with "open source" licenses.

    I like the following definition to open source licenses:
    "It is opensouce when they chmod a+rw the source code, not when they chmod a+r it".. Well, actually, it is a license which encourages the w bit.

  • >I saw a rather sorry comment on Linux Today yesterday by a Java >developer who had quit Windows cold a year ago. Unfortunately, due to >JDK 1.3 not being available under Linux, they are again using Windows

    God. Why do you Java fanatics remind me of the Amiga Arexx fanatics? Sheesh.......
  • I bought the $50 single user edition from them because I liked it and it did stuff I needed to get done. Sure there was the free/non-free thing but I was buying a piece of Linux software and I happen to think it's a pretty good one, not perfect but pretty good.


    What has always rubbed me wrong was that I paid $50 and got just a little bit more than you get for free, a cute little book, a bunch of fonts and clipart, and a CD. If I paid $200 more, I'd get a few extra components, is Sun giving those away? If I download another copy from sun do I get more stuff? That would be an improvement.


    Honestly though, SO will never be opensource and it will eventually suffer because of that. GNOME workbench and KOffice will mature and they will integrate so nicely that they will be the choice products. SO never will so long as the source is kept private and Sun runs the show, but it's a nice stop-gap solution.

  • Sometimes I wonder if the "open source community" is so full of themselves that they think *all* people who have an interest in seeing free source code are a part of their movement.

    Hogwash.

    I recall Bruce Perens waving his torch around the JINI mailing list over a year ago, raising hairs over how Sun "didn't even try" to make their community source licence OSI Open Source (tm) compliant.

    Here's a free clue: They don't care.
    Here's another free clue: The people Sun are targetting don't care.

    Sun is releasing its source because it benefits its customers. Its customers want the source because it helps them get their job done. These customers, I think it is safe to say, know little of the linux community or the FSF. They just want to see source code. I think it's also safe to say that Sun releasing this source code is VERY helpful to many developers, especially the growing community of Java & Solaris developers.

    These licence squabbles are secondary to the basic economic reason for releasing source code: for certain kinds of software, the cost of protecting your "intellectual property", i.e. source code, is greater than the benefits gained from releasing it.

    This bickering over non OSI-compliant licences is important, but there is a price. It angers people in other communities who BENEFIT from any form of source code release, OSI-compliant or not. Continued bitching carries the risk of isolating this community from the rest of the world. "Let the mountain come to you" isn't the most effective strategy.

    With Sun, It's not worth it. Save your breath, and your energy. Try coding an app or something..
  • They know that the time their developers spend on improving this product in-house is time and money lost.

    Not necessarily. Sun's business model is that they sell hardware; they are perfectly happy to fund a loss leader if it means that they can move more boxes. If giving StarOffice away for free (and you can bet that they will invest significant resources in making it fly on the U5S workstation) and this encourages people to deploy Sun hardware where they wouldn't have considered it before, then it's money well spent. This is what they've always done, for example Java, NFS, NeWS - and so do many Unix vendors.

    I spend much of my time either writing documents (Office 2000) or running Oracle Developer/2000 (over X windows, from a Sun in the server room). A working, fully comprehensive office suite available for Sun would at least make me consider getting a Sun for my desktop. And remember that getting onto the desktop and using that as a staging point to attack the server market has proven an effective strategy for Microsoft.

    The question is, will they see the light soon enough, change, and survive?

    I don't think the survival of the product is in question. I think that it is in Sun's best interest, as a corporate entity, not to give away the source - because that would run counter to their model of wanting to sell more SPARC workstations.

  • But - given that foundation, do you think Linux would be anywhere near where it is today? Would anyone be developing any software for this thing, closely held by some companies, under licenses which may someday change radically?

    I don't believe anyone should be obligated to release their intellectual property for free. If they choose to do so, that's fair enough, but what really matter here is the right of the individual to the use and disposal of the rational product of their mind.

    Star Division developed the product, they sold it to Sun, and Sun now have control over it. They spent a lot of money - and they're not a charity. Sun's interests happen to be aligned with ours at the moment. It's up to the community whether or not they choose to exist in conflict or synergy with Sun, certainly StarOffice is measurably superior to K-Office, which may be a part of the cause of any hostility. It all depends what is more important to you, ideology or business. Personally, Sun fulfill both of these criteria for me.

  • People are allowed to disagree with a company's actions even if it spent $450 million dollars on them.

    Daniel
  • Do you care for Open Source / Free Software or Linux? I'll take Linux...

    Loyalty is an interesting thing, and the cause of much flammage, but no-one really seems to understand it. Here are some general categories and my opinions expressed briefly...

    • Brand/company loyalty. This I really don't get; being loyal to a company unless they're actually giving me money and a job is something that I just don't understand. Companies are out to make money, being loyal to a company or a brand is like a herd of sheep being loyal to a wolf. It doesn't work.
    • Product loyalty. This has more merit, although it sometimes dovetails with loyalty to a brand or company. After all, a good program is..well..a good program. However, this has a tendency to lead people to unnecessary narrow-mindedness and hosility. (look at the flamewars against ABL (Anything But Linux) that pop up here) Ok but dangerous.
    • Concept loyalty. That is, loyalty to a design idea or to a way of doing things. For example, someone who likes UNIX systems (raises hand) because of their particular design features, or someone who believes stridently in the GUI Jihad.
    • Philosophical loyalty. Loyalty to an idea above and beyond a specific implementation or method, or to a goal which is believed to be likely to Make The World a Better Place.

    My feeling is that in general:
    -> Microsoft users are in the first category
    -> 'Linux advocates' tend to be in the second category
    -> 'Open-source' advocates tend to be in the third (I say this because despite the widespread use of the word 'philosophy', Open Source seems to really reject philosophical or ethical arguments in favor of strict utilitariansim, and even openly ridicules people who dare to contradict this approach.)
    -> 'Free software' advocates tend to be spread between the third and fourth.

    You may have guessed my general opinions on the subject, 1<2<3<4 (although there are people strongly commited to philosophies that are absolutely ridiculous but dangerous..)

    Anyway, I'm not sure what my original point was going to be, except that being committed to a single program (Linux) seems to me to be a bit parochial and you should try to broaden your sights a little. I was probably going to say something like that :)

    Daniel
  • Um...Oracle does run on Linux.

    Also, why is it that when ever the topic of Linux being used in the enterprise comes up, silly arguments like "until Linux can run on 1024 processors with a terabyte of RAM and enough mass storage to store detailed tomatographic scans of every individual creature on the planet it wont displace a single (insert favorite high-end Unix vendor here...Sun, SGI, whatever...)"

    There are many needs within an organization. Some call for the Big Iron. Many do not. And Linux will continue to grow and improve...currently it is doing so at a faster rate than any platform I know of. On top of that, it does a wonderfull job of playing well with others...vital in any enterprise.

    Finally, why is it that ext2 is seen as the only Linux fs? Granted it is the general purpose standard. And it does a DAMN fine job at that. But it is far from the only one. Linus has very flexible fs support, allowing for many different ones to be used as appropriate to the task...even several at once if that is needed.
    --
    If your map and the terrain differ,
    trust the terrain.

  • Until I see Veritas First watch for Linux... Until I see 64 processor Linux boxes with 16 gigs of ram... Until I see Oracle running on Linux it wont be even a remote threat to Linux.

    Overlooking the fact that your statement makes absolutely no sense, perhaps you missed Oracle's press release?

    The fact that ext2fs still has a 2 gigabyte file size limitation means it is still not a real choice for a database server.

    The maximum file size on a 64-bit machine is 9223372036854775808 bytes, not 2147483648 bytes. If you invested in large enough disks to requisite such large files, you would probably also invest in modern 64-bit processors as well.

    Linux is an excellent OS but it still needs improvements in stability, performance, commercial software support (a la Oracle, Veritas First Watch, Veritas File System and Veritas Volume Manager) and the hardware it runs on needs to be more robust before Sun has anything to worry about.

    With the work being done to enable write support on NTFS, and the recent availability of XFS for Linux, you now have your choice between two journaling filesystems. XFS combined with advanced partitioning software and filesystem resizing software recently made available as well as the loopback block device and MD make the Veritas Volume Manager look like a toy.

  • IBM makes a ton of money doing service, support, consulting, etc. By making some of their products Open Souce, they get more people interested in using them and that helps them get their foot in the door so to speak. IBM becomes a friend to the Open Source movement. Some PHB reads about linux in the trade rags and thinks that someone should be up on it so they will look buzzword-compliant to the bosses in the boardroom. What do you know...IBM just sent out a new training schedule and it's got a Linux class on it. So the PHB sends a guy to the class for $2k and he gets documentation & CDs with IBM software to play with. If you think about it this way, IBM isn't getting the money from selling the software, but from the training.

  • Couldn't you have someone who is working on the project with you go over their source code and then generate a specification document of the file layouts, how the code is supposed to work, etc. and then pass it off to someone else who hasn't looked at it and have them implement it? What would be any other legal procedures would one have to do to make sure that Sun (or anyone else with a similar license) doesn't come along and try to sue you for lifting their code?

  • StarOffice practically own the German private market,

    Are you joking?

    This completely against my perceiption. I know companies using old Wordperfect, but never saw anyone using StarOffice. The only folks using StarOffice I know are some people from university. I doubt if any Microsoft competitor holds more than a 10% market share in Germany for word processors and spread sheets.

    and this is very attractive, as German companies are very unsatisfied with MS and more likely to switch than their US couterparts.

    The only differenece between Germany and US is probably that Germans are more likely to know the StarOffice product. The sad reality is people using MS Office at work, getting it bundled with new PCs or simply pirating it.

    At least I, as a (unvoluntary) user/developer of the old StarView library source code, am very curious to see what StarDivision uses in its latest release. Alas that old stuff (from 1992-94) is so wicked that I am quite sure (otherwise Sun is in trouble) they changed their library design considerably.

  • The reason StarOffice is not being released as Free Software is that Sun still wants some semblance of control over it (they did spend millions on it after all).

    Don't forget the possibility that their code might suck incredibly and is not suitable for publication.

    If their present cross plattform base libraries/graphical user interface libraries -this is known as StarView library- has not evolved quite a lot from the stuff they had in 1994, than I am not surprised they don't release it. I know that stuff, something for IOCCC connaisseurs.

    Initial Mozilla code was clean compared to the StarView mess. Sorry to be that harsh, I was involved in porting attempts of that cr.. legacy software to MS VC++ 5 and 6 and got some very er.. professional work days due to it.

    I'd rather convert million LOC FORTRAN libs to C++.

  • I propose that pointing out once again the subtle difference between free speech and free beer to the readers of Slashdot is lame filler not unlike hollering ME TOO on AOL.
  • Or the Halloween episode of the Simpsons where everyone melted down their weapons, and the aliens were able to take over the earth with a stick and a slingshot.


    I think any animal born without claws, fangs, or protective hide should be allowed to carry a weapon of some sort.

  • We are in the process of a radical experiment - trying to get our company to be 100% based on free software. Yes, there is a moral component to this - I strongly support Richard Stallman's perspective about the importance of free software and not just the open source model. But, we are a commercial operation with investors breathing down our neck. So we have to get the job done too. Which is why we've chosen the free software route.

    Why you ask? Propietary software means people have to work the way programmers and marketeers in software companies decide they should. Free software means that we can get the software to work the way people do. For example: we are developing a content management system for our web site development. We want our writers to be able to use the word processor then hit a save button on the menu, that instead of merely sending the file to the disk, also uploads it into the CMS database and notifies the copy editor that the work was done. No way in the world can I do this with either Staroffice under the SCL (and forget about Word). Abiword however, will give me the tool that can make this happen.

    Of course, this is just one very small example. But to have technology serve our people, instead of vice versa, we need free software (in the liberty sense not the free beer sense). This is besides issues of stability and reliability (the free software model is proven to create more stable and secure software) open formats (what happens when Sun cans Staroffice or when Microsoft changes the Word format - all my legacy documents need to be upgraded!) bloatware (staroffice takes up 149 MB on my disk!!!) and licensing fees (do you trust Sun to keep this free beer)

    Staroffice does solve a temporary problem for us. Abiword and Gnumeric are not yet good enough for the management staff in my company (although they are fine for writers). Plus there is no good tool to replace PowerPoint. So, until there are free software replacements, we can use Staroffice instead of MSOffice and still exchange files with customers in the outside world. In fact, StarOffice is the missing component that will allow us to be 100% Linux based, except perhaps in our accounting software.

    Nonetheless, for all the reasons listed above, we still eventually want to be 100% free software-based. So the Gnome project is still a critical part of our strategy. In fact we will be funding some Gnome development just for that reason. So Bruce, you needn't worry. There is a good business case that will support the development of free software despite these half-baked alternatives.
  • Now, how does it compare to the "toreador" licensing on Caldera's DR-DOS (whatever its name is this week)?
    From an informed viewpoint, does it look like Sun can wait for the herds to migrate and then **YANK** "sorry, no longer available, now you owe us $XXX to put it on any more desktops"? If so, the PR damage done to Sun for acting like Unisys (the GIF horse) will be reflected into our Linux user community.
  • OK, I've made your day!
  • I'd be happy if Cringley reads it, for example, he's one of the folks who appears to have missed the distinction.

    Don't assume that because it's obvious to you and me, it's obvious to everyone. And even when it's obvious to some people, they write me and say things like "I knew that, but I wasn't able to articulate it. Thanks for writing this, I'll show it to someone."

    Gee, maybe you should write about some other obvious things! I could use the help!

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Firstly: the quote...
    "Sun isn't going to make big revenues off of StarOffice while it's also giving it away for free from its own web site" fits the more traditional view of programming I think. Isn't the whole point of the free software push that you can have a very profitable (more so?) business based on "giving your product away". You can after all download RedHat and they seem to be making their money *shrug*

    Good point. I just changed "revenues" to "royalties" in the article to address this. The point is that they might make big money from service and manuals but not from royalties paid by Linux CD manufacturers. Does that make more sense?

    Your point regarding diversity is well taken and that's one reason that this article is more balanced - not slamming Sun nearly as hard as some other companies have been criticized by yours truly. Also, the office software is a leaf node in the software tree, not really infrastructure. I'd be a lot more bothered if this was the Qt library (under the old, unlamented license) that every application would have to license, for example.

    I just don't want to see KOffice or whatever GNOME calls their office tools slow down because of this.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Of course, the italicization should be turned off after the first paragraph. That'll teach me to preview.
  • Remember that, with a slight nudge, IBM and Apple went to Open Source licenses. IBM was especially nice about it. They were around before Sun, you know :-)

    Either I missed some news or you are mistaken about WordPerfect's licensing status.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • but they're pretty much always received with a "who the hell are you?" kind of attitude, so I've given up trying to contribute that way.

    This is a symptom of the bootstrapping process. If people like what you write, it eventually stops. But you'll never be loved by everyone. The brickbats are still painful.

    Bruce

  • I don't buy that figure either.
  • Did you reply to the article? You obviously understand this stuff better than I. Speak now, or forever hold your... :-)

    Bruce

  • Regarding premature, I am attempting to influence future events, obviously. I'd also like the press to have registered my comments before the next article they write on this topic. I did wait a whole week after their announcement, and I didn't call them rabid dogs or burn any bridges.

    I just don't buy the half-billion dollar figure. I'd like to see proof of that one.

    People who say don't look a gift-horse in the mouth haven't ever met a trojan horse.

    Again, I said it was good for Linux. I'd just like to see Sun play the game, and make their money off of support and books, etc.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • In the article he seems to draw the conclusion that the SCSL restricts freedom, compared to the GPL

    Go back and look. I never mentioned the GPL. I mentioned Open Source licensing.

    The SCSL means that if a company wishes to profit from distributing StarOffice, they must pay royalties to Sun.

    Actually, it doesn't mean that. The SCSL doesn't permit commercial distribution at all. It's some other license that you'd have to get regarding royalties and commercial distribution. And Sun has no obligation to give you that license.

    However, if Sun chose to cease to support a particular platform, or took the product in a direction that the user base did not like, then the source is available. The community could continue to develop and support the product itself.

    However, Sun is not obligated to allow those people to distribute their modifications and it's not obligated to offer them a commercial license. Thus, the software could die anyway.

    They cannot take StarOffice away from you, or hamper it by failing to support new technologies, requiring you to move on to a new product.

    They definitely can't take it away. Their license can prohibit the distribution of modifications, though, unless you're a research user. So, you're stuck with fixing it yourself, without the community's help.

    So instead they [redhat] turn to tightening their trademarks.

    Note that they did that without damaging the Open Source status of their distribtuion. I'd discussed using trademarks for product differentiation while keeping your product Open Source before, in fact I wrote the policy that Debian uses to restrict its trademark to protect their "Official CD". In my opinion RH was not out of line and should be commended for using that strategy rather than incorporating non-Open-Source components.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Surely Sun thinks it is going to make money off of it in some way, or they would not have paid that much for it. It may be indirect, but Sun is not a charity foundation.

    Yes, they're going to make indirect revenues, but they're not going to make royalties. So a license strategy that protects their royalties doesn't make sense.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • No, you can't extract SCSL code into your GPL application. You shouldn't look at it while writing your GPL application, either.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • That was never an Open Source license. "Toreador" strategies are pretty common for non-Open-Source.

    Sun can stop the free distribution from its own site. They can't stop researchers from distributing to other researchers, for all that matters. So yes, there's a good potential for "yank" strategies in the futrue.

    Miguel says the Gnumeric spreadsheet is going really well and has pretty good Excel importing. I think we're a bit behind regarding word processing, but there are at least three efforts in progress. If we want to rely on something, we just have to make sure there's a version compliant with the OSD.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • You have a choice of their NPL clone or the GPL.
  • As founder of No-Code International [nocode.org] I've found that a lot of people do listen to reason, eventually. It can take a while.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • BTW is there chance that a rogue programmer injects some code say ... from StarOffice into a GPL Office suite? Is there any protection from this kind of stuff?

    Once it was found out, the code would be removed, and perhaps the rogue would be charged with one or more crimes. The best defense is being able to trace where your contributions are coming from. Save mail archives and CVS logs forever.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Well, in Sun's case they can continue to sell hardware. I'm sure they could make competetive hardware for Linux, especially at the high end.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • No problem. I've certainly given in to the urge to rant on occassion.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • I'm tempted to think that their intentions are more Machievelian, rather than less. I'd be tempted to think this of Microsoft as well. We in the Linux world may just be Cargo Cultists, siphon ing a few canned goods from the war material of two combatants we are far from understanding.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • I didn't have much to do with the RM-9673 issue, as I was out of town while it was being discussed. If you think NCI's position was strange, look at Bill Tynan's reply comment. He spews abuse at everyone who commented rather than making logical argument. This is not what I expected from the former president of AMSAT North America. I think the Phase 3D debacle must have stressed him heavily - I can find no other explanation.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • The article immediately following yours on technocrat.net was decidedly ill-informed though.

    The guy was proposing a protectionist stance against SS use in narrowband segments, completely misunderstanding that power density drops as the SS bandwidth gets wider, and that therefore the best way of protecting narrowband operation would be to insist that all SS transmissions should fill the entire band or else be limited to a given power density (ie. per Hz).

    I couldn't help thinking that this is not unlike traditional software companies totally misunderstanding how the free software/open source model is a *benefit*, not a problem. :-)
  • Actually, I think you're 100% wrong (:-), in that I believe that opening software up is dramatically better for the product in all cases except very specific niche ones, which StarOffice is not.

    Only time will tell though. It'll be fun to watch how it develops.
  • Nope, I'm not replying to that article because the radio amateur world does not operate to the same rules as ours here. It's pointless making an informed argument (except for self-satisfaction perhaps) because positions there are so heavily entrenched that reason does not prevail, *ever*.

    Fortunately, there is a way out. Progressive radio amateurs don't talk, they *do* --- in other words, they build that better mousetrap (radio) and if it's good then others adopt it and the good idea prevails. So much so that experimentation always precedes the official law-making in the hobby by a decade, typically. It's kind of funny, knowing that the leading-edge experimenters that are quietly pushing *beyond* the legal boundaries set by today's FCC's rulings are precisely the same people that are creating the underpinnings for the legal framework of tomorrow.

    I suppose Robin Hood would have said that it's a fine line between outlaw and criminal. :-)
  • The words that I meant to put in Robin Hood's mouth were of course that it's a fine line between hero and criminal. :-)
  • Sun gains nothing useful from this partial closure of the source, despite what they say. They know that the time their developers spend on improving this product in-house is time and money lost. They must know that they would just gain, gain, gain, if they opened StarOffice up completely.

    Why then are they doing as they are? As anyone that works for a *big* company will tell you, the answer is simple: internal politics and inertia, development divisions holding grimly on to old methods of working, marketing divisions holding on to old methods of licensing, and so on, that's all.

    There is an analogy that can be made here, referring to big brass in Sun management: big dinosaurs move and think slowly. The question is, will they see the light soon enough, change, and survive?
  • Weird, for some reason when I read his comment the first time it was parented to mine. I feel really silly now... oops.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Thanks! In that case, was I just being prophetic? :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • <silly>

    Wow, I've been replied to by the almighty Bruce. I may now die fulfilled. ;)

    </silly>

    Seriously though, that is a good point; most people in this world aren't programmers, and likely think that software is just churned out of a factory somewhere. They wouldn't understand what source code is about, or what freedom is about; the car-computer analogy that works very well most of the time breaks apart when it comes to source code. You don't need the plans to a car to build a new one (it just helps a lot), you just need to go to a Checker and buy every part except the chassis, which you can get at any junkyard. Source is tangible to programmers (well, to me anyway), but not to the common person.

    I'm reminded of a question submitted to Marilyn Vos Savant many years ago. The reader asked why computers were called computers, since people usually don't use them to perform computations. Marilyn's answer was something to the effect of the fact that computers use computations in order to do everything. It's somewhat difficult to convey to someone that Microsoft Word is based mostly on addition, subtraction, and moving intangible little bits around, and that you're not typing to the screen but are sending messages, via the keyboard, to the application which then gives the appearance of having typed by using a font rasterizer to move some little bits from one place to another in the computer's memory, that latter place being where your video card's RAMDAC converts those little bits from a representation of dots on the screen into dots on the screen.

    Wow, I got knocked way off course there. :)

    But basically, yeah, I'll preach to the choir some more by saying "yeah, it's important to let pundits know what they're talking about, rather than just making a soup of words that sounds somewhat like they heard from someone else."
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Few idle wonderings (Score:4)

    by Pascal Q. Porcupine ( 4467 ) on Monday September 06, 1999 @08:27AM (#1699898) Homepage
    First of all, whatever happened to the Sun/AOL thing? Did that go through, or what? Given the lukewarm response Mozilla has led to, I don't think AOL would really want to deal with having "their" source code in the public eye.

    Secondly, I can understand where Sun's license is coming from, and really in practicality it's not really any different than most opensource projects, except for the notable difference that only Sun can distribute the source. I mean, most opensource projects just have a single code maintainer and a single codebase when it comes down to it (though most projects using CVS these days does kind of distribute that load). However, this is disregarding the fact that in most opensource projects, the person(s) running that project usually care enough to make sure that it keeps with the freedom that opensource brings, and for the ones which aren't, someone can always fork development and do their own thang, preferrably better.

    My main concern with the Sun license is that they may just sit on their asses and never incorporate any changes. At least with the GPL, should Linus suddenly get the stupids, someone else could fork it and release their own source tree. Also, hasn't this technically already happened with the various embedded projects, etc.? Though StarOffice doesn't immediately seem to be the kind of thing that'd need specialization-based forking, it probably could be. StarOffice on a wearable computer, for example, would need to have a completely different interface, which means either hoping the Sun folks would want to maintain multiple source trees (unlikely) or forking the source (not possible right now).

    Whatever the case, at least this gives people many more choices. If anything, at least people can feel free to use Linux on any architecture and compile it for it, rather than having to use a supported architecture. What good does StarOffice binary releases for IA32, PPC, RS6k, MIPS, and StrongARM do if you need to run it on a simulated Merced?
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Not everyday I get reply from Mr. Perens. I am simply awed. :)

    But anyway, you are right, Corel's Wordperfect is _NOT_ an opensource project.

    My sincere apologies to all for my misleading statement.

    Regarding IBM and OpenSource, you have to understand that not only IBM is much larger, and can absorb the initial "loss" due to opensourcing, the IBM corporate structure is also different from that of Sun.

    Whatever decisions IBM made, it does not have to got through the Chief Honcho's office, that is, as long as the decision does not effect the entire operation of the IBM corp.

    Sun, on the other hand is different. It has been, and still is, run under sort of authoritarian model, that is, almost every decision Sun has made, from which new OEM partner Sun gonna sign up to make their Sparc line of chip, to what license a particular Sun software should be released under, often than not, the decision has to come from that Chief Honcho's office.

    I hope you understand the difference between the two, Mr. Perens.

    Thank you again for the correction.
  • > But this is not quite true, and that is
    > the great irony.

    > When Sun Microsystems was founded, one of their
    > first employees (and their first CTO, I believe)
    > was Bill Joy, hired away from Berkeley where he
    > had been hacking on 4BSD for many years.

    > One of Sun's important early strategic decisions
    > was to adopt BSD Unix for their operating system
    > rather than writing a new one from the ground
    > up.

    > Obviously they did not apply open-source
    > principles to SunOS after making this decision,
    > but they owed part of their early start to the
    > relatively open-source nature of BSD.

    > (I understand that this is not entirely
    > accurate, since pre-4.4 releases of BSD still
    > required an AT&T source license, so Sun still
    > had to license it from AT&T. But even in these
    > ancient days, BSD was moving strongly toward a
    > free software model.)


    That is why I have said the Sun was and is NEVER a company that subscribes to the open-source philosophy.

    If Bill Joy have been a open-source supporter, the history of Sun may have been re-written. I do not know if it is to the better or worse, but at the very least Sun wouldn't have been push into a niche market as it is right now.

    One advantage for the open-source environment is one does not have to be confined into a tiny niche. For example, one can start an open-sourced project, and the result of the project can be ported to all the OS in the market, from tiny PC-DOS to mainframe/supercomputer.

    One just doesn't need to confine one in a tiny hole anymore if one can look out in the wideopen open-sourced environment.

    In fact, the word "OPEN" in the open-source is in many ways referred to the aspect of "WIDE-OPEN HORIZON".










  • It may be that we are accustomed with the spirit of GPL that many of us are awaken with _shock_ that Sun is not releasing the StarOffice under GPL.

    But we have to understand that Sun was and is never a part of the opensource community. Unlike RedHat, Suse, or Slackware that growed up along with (after the appearance of) Linux, Sun had been a commercialized enterprises _before_ anyone ever heard of Linux at all !

    Unless something really drastic happened, I do not forsee Sun changes its stance in regarding the opensource matter.

    Sun, like many of the older establishment, (such as MicroSoft), have great trouble believing in the benefits of opensource. True, Sun _does_ benefit from opensource projects such as Linux (and in a way, FreeBSD), - they simply sell more workstations because the demand created by the availability of opensource OS (and proggys) - but as long as Sun remains in the hand of the person who doesn't subscribe to the philosophy of opensource, there will be no chance for us to see StarOffice become a truly opensource program.

    It's a shame, but then, c'est la vie !

    On the other hand, there _are_ other programs that are opensourced, such as Abiword, Corel's Wordperfect, and the Saig-Officesuite project (I may have type the name wrong, but you get my point).

    The StarOffice is not opensource, that is what we already know. If we insist on having a _truly_ opensourced officesuite, then my advice to the opensource community is to put our support behind the 3 projects above.

    I understand that the 3 projects above do not have the scope as wide and as extensive as the StarOffice, but then at least they are a start.

    If anyone is looking for a similar officesuite thingy that is not exactly opensource, then go look up the applixware thing.

    There may be other opensource projects that have similar goal that I have missed. If so, please add on to this message and take this chance to annouce to the world and surf the wave on the Slashdot Effect (tm).









  • Not to mention it takes some training to use a firearm effectively without being at least as much as a hazard to yourself as your target.
  • My bad. That should have read "Would anyone be developing *free* software..." - which is what the "free beer who cares about free speech" people seem to want.

  • What concerns me (if you care) (Score:4)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Monday September 06, 1999 @09:56AM (#1699904) Homepage
    I'm concerned by all the comments on this story saying "Well, it's free, and that's good enough for me. Who cares if it's open source."

    On a case-by-case basis, this works just fine. Take yer free stuff and be happy. But when you look at the big picture, it falls apart. I don't think I need to go into specifics on this - just think about this scenario:

    Torvalds Software, Ltd. releases the Linux Kernel (c)(tm)(r)($) for free, but with restrictions on it's commercial use and redistribution. Xfree86 Partners, Inc. releases their version of the X-Windows system, but you can't make any modifications to it. Gnu Gurus, LLC has a whole nifty suite of Unix-compatible tools, and their down-rev versions are always available in binary form, for free download. These three things together are a good foundation for a "free" Unix system.

    But - given that foundation, do you think Linux would be anywhere near where it is today? Would anyone be developing any software for this thing, closely held by some companies, under licenses which may someday change radically?

    To me, accepting "Free Beer" software is akin to saying "That's enough - we can stop moving forward now" because if enough of the "foundations" of Linux become less-than free, I really believe that the whole thing will slowly fall apart in the future. I think that "free beer" software, much more so than traditional commercial software, contributes to this complacency.

    Sometimes, if there's no alternative and I have a task I must accomplish, I'll use non-free software, but I try to avoid it for the reasons above.
  • There is no doubt that Microsoft dominates the business productivity software market. MS Word is so utterly ubiquitous that it's a suprise to find a company using anything else. This control and ownership of the application space, together with their obvious monopoly in desktop operating systems, gives them a convincing edge when it comes to the back end.

    People assume that since they are using Microsoft apps, on a Microsoft operating system, it is natural and proper that the back end server should run Microsoft too - whether it be simple NT file and print, or things like SQL Server and Proxy Server. Surely it must be better to have a single supplier for all these things, rather than an rag-bag of products from different suppliers?

    (Of course, in reality, a system which uses hetrogenous components with well-defined protocols operating between them is likely to be much more robust, easier to support, and more future proof. And of course if more people built such systems there would be more competition in the software industry, with all the advantages in terms of pricing and features which that would bring. But oh well. "We're a Microsoft shop.")

    With the StarOffice deal, Sun is making a clever strategic move. They are betting that they can upset the applications apple-cart sufficiently to cause some re-alignment in the market. They don't have to make money from StarOffice directly; they just have to make enough of a splash with it that people reconsider their IT strategies. It will be hard for even the most died-in-the-wool Microsoft-loving manager to ignore the cost advantages of rolling out StarOffice instead of MS Office (imaging being able to tell his employees "you can copy this to use at home if you want"). And if he's going to do that, he might as well also consider looking at, say, Linux on the desktop instead of Windows. Either way, it might also make him a little more open minded about the back end.

    Not that he'll necessarily choose Sun at the back end. That isn't really the point. Sun don't particularly mind if HP and IBM benefit from their strategy too. This isn't a Solaris-vs-every-other-UNIX strategy - it's a pure anti-Microsoft one. And it makes economic sense.

    The bottom line is this. If the people who make the decisions can be pursuaded to see beyond Microsoft, Sun will gain.

    In any shake-up of the market which reduces Microsoft's dominance, Sun are in a good position to reap the rewards. They'd rather have 40% of a UNIX-dominated market than 5% of a Microsoft-dominated one.

    It's a good strategy. Giving away Star Office is a good move. In particular, giving it away to Windows users (who are not accustomed to such practices in the same way we UNIX people are) will win them a *lot* of "hearts and minds".

    And the GPL? Nice though it would be, we must realise that GPLing the software wouldn't suit Sun's strategic plan for StarOffice. They need a little more control than the GPL offers. That said, I personally do trust them to engage the community and accept patches etc. Despite what has been said by some people in this discussion, Sun actually have a pretty good open source record. Consider things like OpenLook, an excellent (though now rather dated) X toolkit which they gave away in source form. They've also given away reference RPC implementations (remember, RPC is a standard Sun gave us) and NFS software (NFS too is a Sun standard). They are of course a money-grabbing corporate, but they are still "the good guys" in my opinion.
  • StarView is dead. It's now VCL ( virtual class library ) and it has evolved quite a lot from the stuff of 1994. Although if you happen to know a little bit about StarView you will recognize some Classes you've seen there some basic concepts have changed totally.
  • IBM is also a lot bigger than Sun, and thus would be able to absorb any drop in sales (this is how the market hats think) due to the software being OpenSource....
    --
  • well, in this case, I think that StarOffice will contribute to complacency no matter what licence it's released under. (well, if it stops crashing so .... much) if Sun maintains a straglehold on the source, then some people will work on AbiWord, etc. because they believe in free speech. however, a main motivation to work will be gone. there will be something compatible with MS Office.

    now, before I get flamed to a crisp: yes, I know that there are other office packages out there. personally, I haven't been satisfied with them (WP managed to have a little argument with Gnome. not that most things cooperate with it.)

    of course, if Sun neglects StarOffice and won't let the open source community take it over, people might get frustrated enough to take on office software with a vengence :) (the "scrath an itch" motivation)

    now, I have to admit that, in this area, I am one of the slackers. (no pun intended) office software is so peripheral to my life (except for the occasional english paper) that I never worked up enough enthusiasm to work on AbiWord, even though it looked interesting. I guess robots are more to my taste :)

    Lea
  • No, it's not Open Source(TM), but it is an office suite with source code available. So no, the source code can't be swallowed into other projects, and no, StarOffice can't become part of the GNU Hurd kernel.

    But companies and institutions looking for an office suite they can audit for security, lock down features on, and that lets them take fixing bugs into their own hands, will have something they could well be happy with.

    Whine, whine, whine. StarOffice would be pretty hard to GPL even if Mr, McNealy smoked something funny and decided to do it. The file conversion filters, for example, are the same commercial ones everyone licenses from Inso. And the VBA scripting engine under it is probably 3rd-party, too.

    And once you rip out the 3rd-party commercial stuff, I'm sure we'd hear no end to the whining about the proprietary GUI toolkit it's built with.

    You want a free office suite? Go work on KOffice. It seems to have potential. Don't like the Qt license? Then go work on AbiWord and Gnumeric or something. Stop begging for table scraps.
  • Didn't it come out in the DOJ/Microsoft trial that one of the government experts estimated that MS spent about a billion creating and marketing Internet Explorer, then giving it away for free?

    The $450 million spent now has higher future dividends (hurting MS, market for high powered servers, publicity and branding) that still justify not making direct revenue on the product.
  • In fact, Oracle claims it already has 50,000 downloads or Oracle on Linux and 800 paying customers for it. And they've got other products on Linux, too.

    They've got a press release about it. [oracle.com]
  • If sun were to start charging and everyone stayed with the old version, then sun changing the file format for the chargeable version would not cause compatibility problems as everyone would still be using the free version.
  • With the source available, this sort of thing should (hopefully!) no longer be problem. If an upgrade, such as to glibc, breaks the executable, it will hopefully be fixed by a simple rebuild of the application. Otherwise, it should be possible to fix the incompatibility in the source and rebuild.
    This is one of the advantages of source distribution over binary.

  • You're right. The upgrade treadmill is a state of mind. However, all it takes is a handful of people running on it to cause other people to want to catch up.

    Case in point: At work, I'm working on upgrading a whole department with the latest version of a project management software package. This involves negotiating a licensing deal with a big software company (it's been in progress for three months) and upgrading the software on every machine, by hand.

    Why? Because one of the manufacturing plants recently upgraded their project management software, and the documents aren't backwards compatible. *sigh*

    That's what I'm worried about with non-completely-open office software. It's too ubiquitous to leave in the hands of any one company.

    --
    QDMerge [rmci.net] 0.21!
  • Even in $, it would be reasonable. Look at the insane prices for other IT comoanies, not to mention events like the RedHat IPO, where a brand name (there isn't much more considering the turnover) brought $5bil.
    the reasons:
    • StarOffice practically own the German private market, and this is very attractive, as German companies are very unsatisfied with MS and more likely to switch than their US couterparts. And then, it's the largest market after the US.
    • StarOffice rides the Linux wave, and pretty big. They had a head start to Corel, and they've greatly benefited from that.
      It's fair to day StarOffice is the office suite for Linux currently
    • They're the only ones who have managed to build a sensible network-based productivity application using Java. Sure, IBM has a lot of specialized stuff, but Lotus' Java suite is pathetic and Corel has given up. So if Sun wants Java to succeed in that market, they just had to look at StarDivision.
    • SO is available for Solaris. Maybe the only usable office tool?
    • StarDivision is probably a very healthy company. SUN would have liked to buy it much earlier, but out of a contract with IBM just before the Notes aquisition they got a lot of money from IBM breaking the contract (~15m is assumed). That's why they could market their product so aggressively.

    All in all maybe not a bargain, but not that much either, considering that SUN had little choice but to buy them. They would have relied on StarOffice anyway.

  • Netscape's browser was not completely free when first released. It was free for educational/non-commercial use only. If you were a commercial user, you were allowed to download it for evaluation purposes, but you couldn't legally keep using it without paying.

    And it did work for them. There were many companies, including a former employer of mine that actually bought licenses for the browser. Of course, we got a volume discount, so it was only USD $10 or so per seat.

  • still don't think a 'free' office versions will be enbraced by a lot of M$ Office users in terms of licensing, largely because so many get theirs 'free from a friend', or their workplace buys copys and they 'borrow' the cd for home use, etc.
    M$ users are like M$, "gimme, gimme, gimme!"

    Chuck
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Ideological arguments aside, the big deal is that their pricing is
    only dictated by market conditions. Thus, if they beat their
    competition (Microsoft and Corel), they could start charging
    Microsoft scale money for it. If you are looking for products that
    are "cheap/free" then nothing but OS/FS will do in the long run.
    However I tend to agree that ideological arguments mostly fail for
    office suites: the people who use them would usually not obtain
    any empowerment or freedom by having access to code. For a
    secretary, the spell-checker either works or it doesn't - s/he will
    not even imagine fixing it.
    In general I feel that software aimed at people who are not aware of
    why or how it runs, who have not heard of source code and who
    emphatically do not want to get into this stuff (examples would be
    office suites, games, organizers, banking software) - such software
    need not be open-source ideologically, but it does need to be
    open source for pricing reasons. If most users are unlikely to scratch
    their own itch, then open source is equivalent to or even worse than
    closed source, in the sense that such open source software will be
    underdeveloped (due to lack of programmers' interest) compared to
    its closed brethern.
  • Sun is good hardware. It's very good hardware. It's also very different than a PC. PC's are designed specifically to do the average tasks well, they are personal computers after all. Sun hardware (Workstations in general) are designed to high end things well. My experience has shown that Suns are not necessarily huge number crunchers as much as high end servers, they do well at things like gargantuan databases or web servers or applications that require large amounts of I/O and memory. Of course you'll get better bang for the buck out of a PC, You probably get better bang for the buck out of Toyota Camry than a Ferrari too depending on how you want to make the argument, but given the choice anyone will choose the Ferrari.

    I've used Linux/x86 for a long long time. I've used Sun for a long long time. Linux/x86, as cool as it is, has a long way to go to match up to Sun when it comes to beating the disks, handling the network i/o and maintaining some shred of respectable interactive performance. I dont know what's wrong with your 28 processor machine, but it's in your company's best interest to figure out what, becasue you should be getting way more performance out of that million dollar iron.

    -Rich
  • It's not free in the way the Open-Source crowd would like it to be. It's not "free-speech" free, only "free-beer" free.

    It is a big deal, as this is not acceptable to the true Open Source warrior.

    My personal views differ somewhat, however, as I'm primarily "Anything But Microsoft".

  • BSD, GPL, QPl, et al = 98% to 100% Free
    SD's StarOffice = 50% Free
    Sun's StarOffice = 75% Free
    MSOffice = 0% Free

    Overall, I think that the world has gained a little bit. No it's not perfect, but do you really expect the world to be perfect?

    Former dictatorship Badinovia announced that they will now have free elections. However, they still have not released 59 political prisoners. We then congratulate them on their improving human rights records will continuing to urge further reforms.

    Likewise, Sun should be congratulated for issuing Free Beer and the releasing the source code. We should continue urging them to take further steps towards a true Open Source release.
  • So what would the world be like if everything was freeware instead of Free Software?

    First of all, the users wouldn't care too much, since they've never cared much about the source code anyway. There are some exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between. The majority of Linux users who are not developers are using it because it's free beer and robust, not because it's GPL'd or Open Source or hackable or anything like that.

    Developers on the other hand, still want the source code and they still want the freedom to fix bugs and add features, and distribute those modification. Exactly the same impetus exists that started Richard on his path to GNU and Linux on his path to Linux. When you know how to code, you won't put up with an official fixpack that won't be released for six months.

    Developers will still start Free Software projects to replace freeware, they just won't have the widespread support of the masses behind them.
  • The reason StarOffice is not being released as Free Software is that Sun still wants some semblance of control over it (they did spend millions on it after all).

    But by releasing it as GPL or BSD, they could potentially lose all control of it (at least in their minds if not in reality). But if they release it under the MPL, QPL or Artistic licenses, StarOffice would be Free and Open Source, and they would still have some measure of control over the project.
  • If the license isn't OS, then the whole thing is still run by Sun and this is just an exercise in dumping.
    This means that after Sun runs MS into the ground, Sun can close everything back up, change the formats and reap the upgrade-treadmill rewards.

    Any that would be wrong how? Sorry I don't subscribe to the 100% Open Source Bugaboo, as long as we have companies turning out good products for cheap/free (That excludes MS in most cases). I find it hard to Demonize a company for keeping the hard work of the programmers closed to the Open Source rabble.

  • Why does everyone on /. believe Linux is a threat to Sun Microsystems computers?

    Ok this is probably going to set off the sprinklers, but it's the harsh truth....
    Wishful thinking... Really Linux is a threat to Sun like it is to Microsoft. Despite the Zeal and Fever let's face it, in a business environment, it's always "the right tool for the right job". Often this means picking things based on market share, as opposed to "better" solutions.

    They used to say "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", the saying may have died but the reality is still there. If it comes to desktops for the users, I'll (Eris help me) pick Microsoft everytime. Just so I can send users to someone else for training, help desk, and to make my life infinately less complicated when they decide to buy company X's whiz bang proprietary software that only run's on Windoze. Just the same as with any DB app, it's off to a Sun Server, running Solaris 2.6 (2.7 still needs some work).

    Do I think Linux has a place, sure I do, but it's not in the corporation, not now at least. It's still needs some serious growing up. It also sit's (typically) on HW that I just don't fundamentaly trust. That's why I pick Sun HW, People don't seem to get that Sun is first, and foremost a HW company, any software they do is mearly teasers to get you to buy their HW.

    Sorry, but them's the facts...

  • "All software that requires no costly payments is good software."

    And how do you know that StarOffice will continue to not require costly payments?
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
    "An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
  • I think everyone is missing the point here. What Sun is primarily good at is Hardware. They are a hardware company and are extremely good at it.



    Microsoft, despite being primarily a software company, is a direct threat to them, as MS s/w doesn't run on Sun hardware. NcNally et al would probably be better off from a business sense sweet-talking MS into porting NT to Sun hardware. I don't mean that as flame-bait, I wouldn't like to see it happen either, but it would probably allow Sun to make more money. Inspite of this, MS software is probably far too inflexible to run on some of the more interesting Sun hardware (failover servers with everything duplicated in one box, running the same commands simultaneously!). Some of the stuff they do is incredibly difficult even in Unix, never mind NT.


    So, to answer the question, what does Sun gain from this, is that Sun moves people away from, for at least applies the breaks to the juggernaught of people moving to MS products and hence away from any services Sun can offer. By promoting anything non-MS they can only be doing themselves a favour.


    What we really need to look at is how much Sun makes per-annum on their hardware and support services, I would bet it vastly outweighs whatever they make on software. In this situation you don't really loose anything by giving away your software to promote your hardware and services. Its the traditional loss-leader approach. The typical example of which is, it costs you one pound sterling to make and serve a cup of coffee/tea, yet you sell it for fifty pence. Why? Because it brings people into your establishment and these people invariably buy other items which you are making a profit on. If I were Sun this is precisely what I would be doing. Promote the Linux angle in any way you can, even if the early adopters don't give you any money, once it takes off and really moves into the large corporates they will be clamouring for larger, better, faster, more reliable hardware to run it on, which Sun will be quite happy to provide. When you add to this the fact that Sun is also benefiting from the work of the Linux/GNU community, ie it doesn't have to spend a fortune paying its own developers to debug the software, add new features, etc then its costs come down further. What you do is put a few developers, maybe a few hundred out of your throusands, into developing the software and working with the community to nudge it to go the way you want (remember here that you are a good guy 'cos you are "unselfishly" donating to the common good, so everybody is only too happy to oblige). What you do with the rest of your developers is have them supporting obscure bugs for your paying customers, writing support for your hardware, porting old apps to the new system, etc. If they went fully towards Linux they could drop large numbers of software developers, quietly of course to prevent comment and bad feelings. Sun knows that what it has to do is build up the Linux user base, even if everyone is using x86 or PPC. This built up base will inevitably generate the need for high end systems that the x86 and PPC are unable to provide. Sun can't really loose here, if they do nothing they will loose sales, this can't hurt them significantly but it could potentially do them a lot of good.

  • As a mere user, the central issue as I see it is whether the license will encourage programmers to gift their skills and thus make StarOffice as fast as M$Office and more functional.

    It looks like SCSL won't do this. So StarOffice will follow Netscape into obscurity.

    Bill Gates must be grateful to Scott McN for not taking away half of the M$ profit stream.
  • In the article he seems to draw the conclusion that the SCSL restricts freedom, compared to the GPL, but in my opinion this is not necessarily the case. Contrary to most people's opinions here I think that StarOffice is now free as in "free-speech", but not as in "free-beer".


    The SCSL means that if a company wishes to profit from distributing StarOffice, they must pay royalties to Sun. This is fair enough, as Sun have invested money in buying the product. For example, were RedHat to include SO in their distribution, Sun would have a right to demand a cut of the money RedHat made.


    However, if Sun chose to cease to support a particular platform, or took the product in a direction that the user base did not like, then the source is available. The community could continue to develop and support the product itself. They cannot take StarOffice away from you, or hamper it by failing to support new technologies, requiring you to move on to a new product (eg. try using MS Office95 in an environment where collegues are handing you Office97 documents - it soon becomes necessary to upgrade).


    The main point I want to make is this: look at RedHat's recent activity with trademarks. RedHat are in a position where anyone can visit RH's web site, download RH's distribution, cut CDs and sell it as their own product. If Redhat could release their Linux distro under SCSL they could demand royalties off anyone doing this, however as Linux is GPLed they can't, so they cannot make any money out of people ripping off their hard work. So instead they turn to tightening their trademarks. What next? incorporate propriety non-GPLed software into RedHat Linux, to prevent other people re-distribuing it? Introduce closed standards and file formats? The GPL introduces many problems for a company like RedHat, preventing them from making fair profit and pushing them into these sorts of tricks.


    At the an operating system is only useful if it has software to run on it. Developers will only produce software for Linux if it has a large enough user base. Users will only come to Linux in large numbers if it is relatively easy to use. Companies like RedHat will only work on Linux, and support projects such as Gnome, KDE, and Enlightenment, if they can make a profit in return. Draw your own concusions about where Linux goes from here under thr GPL.


    Just my opinion - I'm just saying the GPL isn't perfect. Okay, so I've insulted the GPL. Let the flaming begin :P

  • Nothing lost, something gained. (Score:3)

    by adnan ( 87173 ) on Monday September 06, 1999 @09:07AM (#1700000)

    Considering what kind of freedom we had with the source code when StarDivision was in control... effectively Zero. Complaining about what we haven't gained seems a little imature & premature as this story is far from over (infact the license has not come into effect as yet) and other developments might heareld a more open view on StarOffice's availability.

    Also the sheer impossible hope that Sun was going to pay a half a billion dollars for a company to effectively "open source" it would have been delusional. It just does not work that way with entities whose prime function is to make a profit period. In this age of wall street highs, exploding growth in technological industries and cannabalising mergers and takeovers, it hardly seems realistic to think that Sun would only rely on indirect methods of revenue from the product. I would not be amazed to hear after StartOffice has gained sufficent market share that Sun started charging a nominal fee for the currently free version.

    Seriously, how much are they going to make from workstation and server sales because some individuals have StarOffice at home ? Though I do not want to give the false impretion that I feel negatively about this whole affair. It was a brave move on their part to invest in this product and realease the code, though under their restricted license. My dad always said don't look a gift horse in the mouth. While we haven't got the ideal situation in terms of source code. Showing Sun what the excellent Open Source communitu can do with their code might convince them to give us a chance.

    Though the colour of money is green and everybody lacks some green in their lives.

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