Sun's OpenOffice open for business. A competitor to Microsoft's ubiquitous Office desktop software, Sun's OpenOffice is the open-source version of the company's StarOffice software suite. [CNET News.com]
I used StarOffice 5.2 and hated the MDI interface. I started usingOpenOffice 641c (the "beta" version of OpenOffice 1.0), and it's buggy in some ways. I was glad that 641c did away with the MDI interface.
I have a legitimate version of Microsoft Office 97 that I could install have not. OpenOffice 641 works okay for opening most Word documents.
I think it's good that Sun plans to charge for StarOffice. I hope the cost is very low. Nevertheless, they have to pay the salaries of those developers who are working on StarOffice. Charging for StarOffice may also be important for it to be accepted by real world corporations, many of which have a bias against free software.
Posted by Doug Sauder at May 3, 2002 12:01 AM