Read a couple days ago that Sun had been bought out by Oracle and that they will soon be charging 79 bucks for Open Office so if you want the latest you might want to download it.
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OpenOffice.org is free and will remain free. Oracle Open Office is the new name for Sun StarOffice and will still be charged for (and come with extra clipart, fonts, features and technical support). Two different products.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I just woke up and read this as "(and come with extra diaper [...]"
Interesting concept, I thought...
that scared the heck outa me
And why are they calling it Oracle Open Office if its not even "open"? Or is it?
My guess is the community will have to soon fork OpenOffice.org as Oracle are demonstrating they intend not to continue Sun's Openness. Look at Open Solaris as an example.
Hopefully whoever does fork it will be solid.
PortableApps.com Advocate
If I understand it correctly, Oracle aren't doing anything Sun didn't do. StarOffice was basically the paid version of OpenOffice, and it's now going to be called Oracle Open Office, coz you can never have too many O's in your product name.
It's a pretty common business model these days; have an open source product that encourages community development, then create a paid version (while still actively developing the open source version) and charge big premiums for dedicated support and service on the paid version. Makes a lot of sense in my book.
Your business model does make sense and it is a widely used one.
However I think that Oracle's decision to rename Star Office, Oracle Open Office is a move towards making the previously two separate entities appear as one.
Our long wait on permission to repackage Open Office is an indicator.
The fact that Open Solaris is dead is another indicator.
IMO, Oracle does not intend to invest in FLOSS as Sun did. They will extract that which is profitable from the various projects and drop that which is not.
A gloomy outlook I know and obviously I hope I am wrong.
PortableApps.com Advocate
I dunno, I don't really see this with Oracle. If your organization is heavily entrenched in Oracle as ours is, then it can be very difficult (read: pervasive) to switch to something else. Oracle knows this; they know they have you by the "short and curlies" so I don't think they feel a need to squeeze you for every nickel and dime they possibly can unlike other corporations I could name. They give us a lot of free products, granted not necessarily open source, and I'm sure we pay them a lot of money but still I don't see the fat-cat-money-grab mentality with Oracle.
From my casual observations it really seems like Oracle is trying to pull an IBM and really refocus their business model so that they're not just known for "the database" (as IBM was synonymous with "The PC"). IBM's business decisions were brilliant and decisive albeit a little risky but it certainly hasn't done them any harm in the long term.
What I don't understand: How can Oracle buy OpenOffice.org if the code is open source? Did they buy the name? Or the code? And if the code ist still free, would the worst case just mean that the software had to be renamed?
originally openoffice was being developed by sun but since Sun was bought up by Oracle so in a sense Oracle now owns rights to Open Office.
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
OpenOffice.org is open source but Oracle bought Sun who had the rights of the name "Open Office". SO its like Firefox: The code if open source, but the name is trademarked.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Has anyone read John's posting???
TWO _DIFFERENT_ PRODUCTS
Ed
if it would be free, why would John wait for people over at Oracle?
So there must be something to it.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
copyright/trademark stuff, just like firefox.....but yes, Oracle Open Office and OpenOffice.org are two different products. OOO Replaces StarOffice while OO.o is the same as it's always been
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
Dear All... I think we're getting confused by semantics here...
I'm not saying anybody is wrong, I'm just trying to clarify the situation. Oracle Open Office (formerly "Star Office") is a product in its own right which Oracle charges money for (mostly to capture support fees), but it is based on the open source "Open Office" for which Oracle owns the trademarks.
To my mind, everybody wins here. Oracle gets to generate some revenue from big corporations by offering support services, and the community at large gets to benefit from Oracle developing and enhancing Triple O for its paying customers, with those changes/enhancements potentially making their way back into the core Double O app.