Caldera, Inc.
Caldera was a US-based software company founded in 1994 to develop Linux- and DOS-based operating system products.
Caldera
Caldera, Inc. was a Canopy-funded software company founded in October 1994 and incorporated on 25 January 1995 by f ...
supported the Linux-port of StarOffice 3.1 with approximately 800,000 DM in order to offer the product with their forthcoming
OpenLinux
Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems (now SCO Group) since 1998. A suc ...
distribution in 1997.
StarOffice 4.0
Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/95, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86, Mac OS (beta).
StarOffice 5
5.0 was released late November 1998. Supported platforms included Windows 95/NT 3.51, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.
5.1
5.1 was released 20 May 1999. Supported platforms included Windows 95, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.
5.2
5.2 was released 20 June 2000. Sun offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use, and soon went through an exercise similar to Netscape's relicensing of
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
, by releasing most of the StarOffice source code under a free/
open source license
An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial comp ...
. The resultant free/open source software codebase fork continued development as older discontinued components, with contributions from both Sun and the wider OpenOffice.org community. Sun then took "snapshots" of the OpenOffice.org code base, integrated proprietary and third-party code modules, and marketed the package commercially.
StarOffice 5.2 was the last version to contain the programs listed under older discontinued components. It was also the last version to support multiple virtual desktops, previously available from within the Suite.
Supported platforms included: MS Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000; Linux i386; Solaris Sparc/x86.
StarOffice 6
A beta version of 6.0 (based on OpenOffice.org 638c) was released in October 2001; the final 6.0 (based on OpenOffice.org 1.0) was released in May 2002.
Support for OpenOffice.org XML file format.
Supported platforms included Windows 95, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supported Windows ME/2000 for Asian/CJK versions, generic Linux 2.2.13 with 2.1.3, Solaris 7 SPARC (8 for Asian version).
StarOffice 7
Based on OpenOffice.org 1.1. Released 14 November 2003.
Supported platforms included Windows 98, Linux i386, Solaris 8 Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supports generic Linux with Glibc 2.2.0, Mac OS X 10.2 for PowerPC with X11 in OOO 1.1.2.
Product Update 5 added Windows NT 4.0 as a supported platform and incorporated support for the OpenDocument file-format.
Product Updates 6-8 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.1. The OOO version added support for Mac OS X 10.3 for PowerPC, and for Mac OS X 10.4 for x86.
Product Updates 9-11 built on OpenOffice.org 2.2. New features included enhanced Windows Vista integration, PDF export.
Product Update 12 was based on OpenOffice.org 2.4. The OOO version added support for Linux x86-64, Linux MIPS, Linux S390, Mac OS X x86/PPC above 10.4. New features included improved input and sorting in Calc, block markings in text documents, new import filtering, improved security, access to
WebDAV
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for con ...
servers via HTTPS, and PDF export for long-term archiving.
StarOffice 8
Sun released StarOffice 8 (based on the code of OpenOffice.org 2.0) on 27 September 2005, adding support for the OpenDocument standard and a number of improvements.
Supported platforms include Windows 98/2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher), Linux i386, Solaris 8 Sparc/x86.
Product Updates 2–5 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.1.
Product Updates 6–7 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.2. New features include enhanced Windows Vista integration, PDF export.
Product Updates 8–9 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.3. New features include bookmark support for PDF export,
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for Media ...
export in Writer.
Product Updates 10–11 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.4. New features include improved input and sorting in Calc, block markings in text documents, new import filter, improved security, access to
WebDAV
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for con ...
servers via HTTPS, PDF export for long-term archiving.
StarOffice 9
StarOffice 9, released 17 November 2008, added support for version 1.2 of the OpenDocument standard and Microsoft Office 2007 files and a number of other improvements.
It is based on OpenOffice.org 3.0.
Supported platforms include Windows 2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher), Mac OS X 10.4 (Intel version), Linux 2.4 i386 with version 2.3.2 or higher, gtk version 2.2.0 or higher, Solaris 10 for Sparc/x86. OOO version supports Mac OS X PPC, generic Linux platforms.
Product Update 1 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, which adds improved extension manager, but requires extensions in the new format
Product Update 2 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.
Product Update 3 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.1.1.
Product Update 4 is based on OpenOffice.org 3.2.
Oracle Open Office
Oracle bought Sun in January 2010 and quickly renamed StarOffice as Oracle Open Office.
On 15 December 2010, Oracle released Oracle Open Office 3.3, based on OpenOffice.org 3.3 beta, and a web-based version called ''Oracle Cloud Office''. The suite was released in two versions, sold at and .
Pricing and licensing
Traditionally, StarOffice
licenses
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
sold for around , but in 2004, Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to Japanese customers for about () per year (Becker, 2004). P. Ulander, a desktop products manager for Sun, acknowledged that Sun planned to expand subscription-based licenses to other countries as well. In January 2009, Sun's website offered StarOffice for .
Sun used a per-person license for StarOffice, compared to the per-device licenses used for most other proprietary software. An individual purchaser gains the right to install the software on up to five computers. For example, a small-business owner can have the software on laptop, office and home computers, or a user with a computer running Microsoft Windows, and another running Linux, can install StarOffice on both computers.
In 2010, StarOffice 9 Software was no longer offered free of charge to education customers, but StarOffice 8 could still be used without charge. The free OpenOffice.org 3.0, with the same functionality as StarOffice 9, could also be used. Sun also offered free web-based training and an online tutorial for students and teachers, free support services for teachers (including educational templates for StarOffice) and significantly discounted technical support for schools.
From August 2007 to November 2008,
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
offered StarOffice 8 as part of its free downloadable
Google Pack
Google Pack was a collection of software tools offered by Google to download in a single archive. It was announced at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, on January 6. Google Pack was only available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
I ...
Apache OpenOffice
Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It is a close cousin of LibreOffice, Collabora Online and ...
LibreOffice
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite co ...