"Sun Microsystems will cut off downloads of the
StarOffice 6 beta software on Dec. 31 as the company prepares for a
final release in the first half of 2002, the company said
Wednesday.
"We've got all the feedback we can handle here," spokesman Russ
Castronovo said. "We are at saturation point. I think we've
satisfied the requirements of the program."
StarOffice, a competitor to Microsoft Office, runs on Solaris
and Linux operating systems as well as Windows, but it has been
criticized for being unwieldy.
The new version 6 drops an e-mail program, moves to open XML
file formats and separates the remaining components--word
processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and other
packages--into standalone programs."