| StarOffice | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Running onWindows 7 | |
| Developers |
|
| Initial release | 1985; 40 years ago (1985) |
| Final release | |
| Operating system | CP/M,Linux,MS-DOS,OS X,Solaris,Windows[4] |
| Platform | x86,SPARC |
| Successor | OpenOffice.org |
| Standard | OpenDocument |
| Type | Office suite |
| License | Trialware |
| Website | www |
StarOffice is a discontinuedproprietary officeproductivity software suite. Its source code continues today in derivedfree and open-source office suitesApache OpenOffice andLibreOffice. StarOffice supported theOpenOffice.org XML file format, as well as theOpenDocument standard, and could generatePDF andFlash formats. It includedtemplates, amacro recorder, and asoftware development kit (SDK).
The software originated in 1985 as StarWriter byStar Division, which marketed the suite with some success, primarily in Europe. StarOffice was acquired bySun Microsystems in 1999, which released thesource code the following year as afree and open source office suite calledOpenOffice.org, which subsequent versions of StarOffice were based on, with additional proprietary components.[5] Sun Microsystems wasacquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010, and the product was known briefly as Oracle Open Office before being discontinued in 2011, with Oracle turning OpenOffice.org into a "purely community-based project".[6][7]
StarWriter 1.0 was written byMarco Börries in 1985 for theZilog Z80. Börries formedStar Division inLüneburg the following year.[8] It was later ported to theAmstrad CPC (marketed bySchneider in Germany) underCP/M and later ported to the8086-based AmstradPC-1512, running underMS-DOS 3.2. Later, the integration of the other individual programs followed as the development progressed to an office suite for MS-DOS,OS/2 Warp, andWindows. Star Division marketed its suite under the name "StarOffice".
Until version 4.2, Star Division based StarOffice on thecross-platformC++class library StarView. In 1998 Star Division began offering StarOffice for free.
Sun Microsystems acquired the company, copyright and trademark of StarOffice in 1999 forUS$73.5 million,[9] as it was supposedly cheaper than 42,000 licenses ofMicrosoft Office.[10]
In March 2009, a study showed that StarOffice only had a 3%market share in the corporate market.[11]
StarSuite was the version of StarOffice with Asian language localization. It includedJapanese,Korean,Simplified Chinese andTraditional Chinese interfaces. It also included additional fonts for the East Asian market, resulting in slightly larger installation footprint. Otherwise the features were identical to StarOffice.
The two brands existed because a StarOffice brand was owned by another company in certain Asian countries.[12] CurrentlyNEC produces StarOffice collaborative software (unrelated to the one discussed here) in Japan.[13] AfterOracle acquired Sun Microsystems (in January 2010) it renamed both StarOffice and StarSuite as "Oracle Open Office".[14]
In 2001, Sun Microsystems announcedSun ONE Webtop – formerly known as project StarPortal – a limited release. It was based on StarOffice components.[15]
For StarOffice Enterprise Edition only:
There are also differences in the documentation, training and support options, and some minor differences in the look and icons between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org.
Other differences are that StarOffice only supports 12 languages,[19] compared to over 110 for OpenOffice.org.[20]
| Version | Release date | OOo version | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | 1985 | Star-Writer forCP/M | |
| I 3.0[21][22] | 1986 | Star-Writer for CP/M | |
| I 3.1 | 1986 | Star-Writer for CP/M | |
| 1.0 | 1986 | StarWriter forMS-DOS 3.2.[8] | |
| 1.0 | 1988 | StarWriter forAtari ST | |
| 2.0 | 1994 | StarWriter, StarCalc and StarBase forWindows 3.1. | |
| 3.0 | 1995[23] | StarWriter, StarCalc, StarDraw, StarImage, StarChart.M-DOS,Windows 3.1,OS/2, Solaris SPARC,Power Macintosh. | |
| 3.1 | 1996-07[23] | First to support Linux. | |
| 4.0 | 1997[24] | ||
| 5.0 | 1998-11 | ||
| 5.1 | 1999-05-20 | ||
| 5.2 | 2000-06-20 | First Sun release. | |
| 6.0 | 2002-05 | 1.0 | |
| 7.0 | 2003-11-14 | 1.1-2.4 | |
| 8.0 | 2005-09-27 | 2.0-2.4 | |
| 9.0 | 2008-11-17 | 3.0-3.2 | |
| Oracle Open Office 3.3 | 2010-12-15 | 3.3 beta | Last release. |
StarWriter was the first StarOffice, with the successor being StarOffice 2.0 which included StarWriter compact, StarBase 1.0, StarDraw 1.0.
Supported platforms includedMS-DOS.
StarOffice 3.0 included StarWriter 3.0, StarCalc 3.0, StarDraw 3.0, StarImage, StarChart.
Supported platforms includedMS-DOS,Windows 3.1,OS/2,Solaris onSPARC.Power Mac beta support was introduced in 1996.
Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/95, OS/2 (16-bit),Linuxi386, Solaris Sparc/x86, Mac OS 7.5 – 8.0.
Caldera, Inc. supported the Linux-port of StarOffice 3.1 with approximately 800,000 DM in order to offer the product with their forthcomingOpenLinux distribution in 1997.[25][26][27][28]
Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/95, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86,classic Mac OS (beta).
5.0 was released late November 1998.[29] Supported platforms included Windows 95/NT 3.51, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.
5.1 was released 20 May 1999.[30] Supported platforms included Windows 95, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.
5.2 was released 20 June 2000.[31] Sun offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use, and soon went through an exercise similar toNetscape's relicensing ofMozilla, by releasing most of the StarOffice source code under afree/open source license. The resultant free/open source software codebase fork continued development asolder discontinued components, with contributions from both Sun and the wider OpenOffice.org community. Sun then took "snapshots" of the OpenOffice.org code base, integrated proprietary and third-party code modules, and marketed the package commercially.
StarOffice 5.2 was the last version to contain the programs listed underolder discontinued components. It was also the last version to support multiple virtual desktops, previously available from within the Suite.
Supported platforms included: MS Windows 95/98/NT/2000, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.
Abeta version of 6.0 (based on OpenOffice.org 638c) was released in October 2001;[32] the final 6.0 (based on OpenOffice.org 1.0) was released in May 2002.[33]
Support for OpenOffice.org XML file format.
Supported platforms included Windows 95, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supportedWindows ME/2000 for Asian/CJK versions, generic Linux 2.2.13 with glibc2 2.1.3, Solaris 7 SPARC (8 for Asian version).
Based on OpenOffice.org 1.1. Released 14 November 2003.[34]
Supported platforms includedWindows 98, Linux i386,Solaris 8 Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supports generic Linux withGlibc 2.2.0,Mac OS X 10.2 forPowerPC withX11 in OOO 1.1.2.
Product Update 5 addedWindows NT 4.0 as a supported platform and incorporated support for the OpenDocument file-format.
Product Updates 6-8 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.1. The OOO version added support forMac OS X 10.3 for PowerPC, and forMac OS X 10.4 for x86.
Product Updates 9-11 built on OpenOffice.org 2.2. New features included enhancedWindows Vista integration, PDF export.
Product Update 12 was based on OpenOffice.org 2.4. The OOO version added support for Linuxx86-64, LinuxMIPS, Linux S390,Mac OS X x86/PowerPC above 10.4. New features included improved input and sorting in Calc, block markings in text documents, new import filtering, improved security, access toWebDAV servers viaHTTPS, and PDF export for long-term archiving.
Sun released StarOffice 8 (based on the code of OpenOffice.org 2.0) on 27 September 2005,[35] adding support for the OpenDocument standard and a number of improvements.[36]
Supported platforms include Windows 98/2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher), Linux i386, Solaris 8 Sparc/x86.
Product Updates 2–5 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.1.
Product Updates 6–7 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.2. New features include enhancedWindows Vista integration, PDF export.
Product Updates 8–9 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.3. New features include bookmark support for PDF export,MediaWiki export in Writer.
Product Updates 10–11 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.4. New features include improved input and sorting in Calc, block markings in text documents, new import filter, improved security, access toWebDAV servers viaHTTPS, PDF export for long-term archiving.
StarOffice 9, released 17 November 2008,[37] added support for version 1.2 of the OpenDocument standard and Microsoft Office 2007 files and a number of other improvements.[38]
It is based on OpenOffice.org 3.0.
Supported platforms include Windows 2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher),Mac OS X 10.4 (Intel version), Linux 2.4 i386 with glibc2 version 2.3.2 or higher,GTK version 2.2.0 or higher, Solaris 10 for Sparc/x86. OOO version supports Mac OS X PowerPC, generic Linux platforms.
Product Update 1 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, which adds improved extension manager, but requires extensions in the new format
Product Update 2 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.
Product Update 3 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.1.1.
Product Update 4 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.2.
Oracle bought Sun in January 2010 and quickly renamed StarOffice as Oracle Open Office.[39]
On 15 December 2010, Oracle released Oracle Open Office 3.3, based on OpenOffice.org 3.3 beta, and a web-based version calledOracle Cloud Office.[40][41] The suite was released in two versions, sold at€39 and€49.95.[41]
Traditionally, StarOfficelicenses sold for aroundUS$70, but in 2004, Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to Japanese customers for about¥1,980 (US$17) 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. In January 2009, Sun's website offered StarOffice forUS$34.95.[42]
Sun used a per-person license for StarOffice, compared to the per-device licenses used for most otherproprietary software. An individual purchaser gains the right to install the software on up to five computers. For example, a small-business owner can have the software on laptop, office and home computers, or a user with a computer runningMicrosoft Windows, and another runningLinux, can install StarOffice on both computers.[citation needed]
In 2010, StarOffice 9 Software was no longer offered free of charge to education customers, but StarOffice 8 could still be used without charge. The free OpenOffice.org 3.0, with the same functionality as StarOffice 9, could also be used. Sun also offered 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.[citation needed]
From August 2007[43][44] to November 2008,Google offered StarOffice 8 as part of its free downloadableGoogle Pack application.[45][46][47]
OpenOffice.org was open source, and gave rise tomany derivative versions and successor projects to StarOffice. As of 2024[update],Collabora Online andLibreOffice are still actively developed.Apache OpenOffice is mostly dormant and has not seen a new major release for over 10 years.NeoOffice was also a derivative, but announced that it was no longer active in early 2024.
Simon Phipps, now an ex-Sun employee, later claimed that "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."
StarOffice X V5.2 released
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