Sun's StarOffice goes Open Source

 

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Posted on 18 Oct 2000 at 12:23

The impetus for making proprietary code-bases Open Source has not died out. Sun claims that it has made the single largest Open Source code contribution to date.

Sun's StarOffice desktop environment - word processor, database, email, scheduling, web publishing, etc - will be made available on the site www.openoffice.org.

All of the StarOffice source code will be made available under dual licensing: the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Sun Industry Standard Source License (SISSL).

Interestingly, XML will replace a proprietary binary format as StarOffice suite's new native file format. This reflects Sun's positioning over XML to be a standard for exchange of office documents. It says that it will work with the development community to establish such a standard.

"As we promised last July, Sun is delivering StarOffice software to the open source community on time," said Marco Boerries, VP of Webtop and Application Software at Sun Microsystems. "With over 9 million lines of code in StarOffice software, this is the single largest source code contribution to date to the open source community."

OpenOffice.org will be managed by CollabNet as a coordination point for the source code, the definition of XML-based file formats, and the definition of language-independent office APIs (application programming interfaces).

CollabNet is providing its SourceCast platform for geographically dispersed developers to collaborate on the StarOffice source code.

Author: Alun Williams