How Did We Miss This?
1999-09-06 15:42:50
Sun Microsystems has purchased black horse software maker Star Division and is giving StarOffice away for free with the source.
StarOffice has long been the fave office suite of OS/2 users for the same reason OS/2 users pick all their favorite software: It runs on their system. It's garnered some sporadic support around Linux folks for pretty much the same reason.
Well, it belongs to Sun now, and Sun has turned it loose for free with the source code under Sun's "Sun Community Source Licensing program" license.
You know Stallman will find a way to grouse that it's not really free. In fact, Sun has placed some limitations on what you can do with the software... they want you to pay them if you sell it. Whatever. For shmoes like you and meor at least like mewho have no real principles attached to the whole open-source thing, it means we get stuff to use.
Hey, I mean, I got a spreadsheet, and I didn't have to pay Microsoft. That's pretty cool, huh?

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