[ Thanks to renai43
for this link. ]
“The recent announcement by Sun Microsystems that they would be
releasing the source code to Sun’s popular office suite, Star
Office, under the GNU General Public License is a hugely important
event for the Linux community and the business world. Why is it
important? Because for the first time since Linux was born kicking
and screaming from Linux Torvald’s magical keyboard, Open Source
developers have the opportunity to take one of the most powerful
word processor packages available, and tweak it to the demands of
the business world and the Linux community.”
“What has been StarOffice’s major problem so far? It’s
bloatware. When you install StarOffice, it does a great job of word
processing, but it also attempts to take over your email, news, web
browsing and file management services! Quite frankly, Sun, I
am never going to use StarOffice to surf the web, nor do I find it
very attractive to check my email in an application that takes up
more than 29 Megabytes of my installed RAM! And in an environment
where I can choose the way my desktop looks and acts, I have no
need to bring back an archaic Start button, complete with program
files, settings, and documents menus, a’la Microsoft Windows
95!”
“StarOffice’s interface reveals it’s background as a complete
desktop package for Solaris – it loads into what could be described
as virtually it’s own window manager – complete with the capability
to make it’s graphics look like base Mac, Windows or X
environments, and a set of options and configuration tools that
would put shame to any desktop app I have ever seen!”