“Still, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun has some new software to
hawk and it brought its chief executive, Scott McNealy, here to do
it. McNealy came to drum up business for Sun’s recently acquired
StarOffice suite of word processing and spreadsheet applications,
which would be rented over the Internet.”
“And McNealy even offered a bargain. Sun will offer
StarOffice for free to companies that offer it for rent. If those
companies then choose to charge for StarOffice, Sun will take a
cut….“
“Since Sun acquired Star Division of Germany for $73.5 million
three months ago, computer users have downloaded 1 million copies
of StarOffice – which runs on Windows, Linux, IBM’s OS/2 and Sun’s
Solaris operating systems. It hopes to have a beta-testing version
of its StarPortal, where users will be able to rent the software,
running by the end of the year. It plans to launch the site by next
summer.”