OpenOffice and StarOffice

Factual Questions
1

I bought Sun StarOffice a while ago, but recently found out that OpenOffice is free and virtually identical. The OpenOffice homepage lists the differences in features but doesn’t address the important questions: Who first developed the software? Is development going to continue on both and if so, will they converge or diverge? Is there a strong reason to choose one over the other besides the minor differences in feature?

2

The OpenOffice FAQs do in fact address your questions. Sun are still heavily involved in OpenOffice - they appear to think that if it becomes more popular, it will help rather than hurt sales of StarOffice, because many businesses would prefer to pay for a product with a full support contract. If you are happy to do without Sun’s tech support, there is little reason to buy StarOffice - ISTR it comes with a few minor extras such as a better spellchecker and an Adabas interface of some sort. It’s basicvally the same code though.

3

Basically, if you know how to use a word processor (and OO.org is by no means hard to use), you should get OO.org. StarOffice is worth getting if for some reason you need support.

Please note that the free suite is not called “OpenOffice”. Here you can read from the OO.org team itself while it is wrong to refer to it as “OpenOffice”.

UnuMondo

4

OO has always been “object-oriented” to me and to most computer techies. What the heck is wrong with OpenOffice?

5

Thanks for the answers. I guess I should have looked through their web site more carefully… It also looks like I wasted my money buying StarOffice. :smack: Oh well, it wasn’t that expensive.

UrbanRanger, I think UnuMond meant that the correct name is “OpenOffice.org” with the “.org” being an essential part of the name.

6
      • OpenOffice does not come with any database. StarOffice comes with a crippled (though user-friendly) proprietary database utility included.
        ~