“You’ve probably never heard of Star Division. But this small,
privately held German company could be the latest thorn in the side
of software giant Microsoft…”
“Star makes StarOffice, an application suite along the lines of
Microsoft Office. And though it can’t compete feature-for-feature,
it’s doing a pretty good job of competing on price. In fact, Star
lets consumers download its suite for free over the Internet. By
doing that, the company hopes to fuel sales to corporations and
educational institutions.”
“Whether or not Microsoft views StarOffice as a threat is
unclear, but in testimony at the software giant’s antitrust trial,
company executive Paul Martiz called it a competitive program,
describing it as “a suite of business productivity applications
that closely emulates the features, functionality and appearance of
Microsoft Office.”