StarOffice is a discontinued proprietary

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintin ...

. Its source code continues today in derived open-source office suites

Collabora Online Collabora Online is an open source online office suite based on LibreOffice, enabling web-based collaborative real-time editing of word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and vector graphics. Optional apps are available for deskto ...

and

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

. StarOffice supported the OpenOffice.org XML file format, as well as the

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processor, word processing documents, spreadsheets, Presentation program, presentations and ...

standard, and could generate

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

and Flash formats. It included templates, a macro recorder, and a

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

(SDK). The software originated in 1985 as StarWriter by Star Division, which marketed the suite with some success, primarily in Europe. StarOffice was acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in 1999, which released the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

the following year as a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

office suite called OpenOffice.org, which subsequent versions of StarOffice were based on, with additional proprietary components. Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010, and the product was known briefly as Oracle Open Office before being discontinued in 2011, with Oracle turning OpenOffice.org into a "purely community-based project".

History

StarWriter 1.0 was written by Marco Börries in 1985 for the

Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be Backward compatibility, software-compatible with the ...

. Börries formed Star Division in

Lüneburg Lüneburg, officially the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg and also known in English as Lunenburg, is a town in the German Bundesland (Germany), state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of another Hanseatic League, Hanseatic city, Hambur ...

the following year. It was later ported to the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for "Colour Personal Computer") is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spec ...

(marketed by Schneider in Germany) under

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/Intel 8085, 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Dig ...

and later ported to the 8086-based Amstrad PC-1512, running under

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

3.2. Later, the integration of the other individual programs followed as the development progressed to an office suite for DOS, IBM's OS/2 Warp, and for the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

operating system. From this time onwards Star Division marketed its suite under the name "StarOffice." Until version 4.2, Star Division based StarOffice on the

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

C++ class library StarView. In 1998 Star Division began offering StarOffice for free. Sun Microsystems acquired the company, copyright and trademark of StarOffice in 1999 for , as it was supposedly cheaper than 42,000 licenses of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

. In March 2009, a study showed that StarOffice only had a 3%

market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a Market (economics), market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those ...

in the corporate market.

Naming

StarSuite was the version of StarOffice with Asian language localization. It included Japanese, Korean,

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one that is simpler (usually shorter), according to a well-founded ordering. Examples include: ...

and

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

interfaces. It also included additional fonts for the East Asian market, resulting in slightly larger installation footprint. Otherwise the features were identical to StarOffice. The two brands existed because a StarOffice brand was owned by another company in certain Asian countries. Currently

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Inte ...

produces StarOffice collaborative software (unrelated to the one discussed here) in Japan. After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems (in January 2010) it renamed both StarOffice and StarSuite as "Oracle Open Office".

Sun ONE Webtop

In 2001, Sun Microsystems announced ''Sun ONE Webtop''formerly known as project StarPortala limited release. It was based on StarOffice components.

Components

* Oracle Open Office Writer –

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

(StarWriter 5.x) (StarOffice 6.x) -files * Oracle Open Office Calc –

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

(StarCalc 5.x) (6.x) -files * Oracle Open Office Impress – presentation program (StarImpress 5.x) (6.x) -files * Oracle Open Office Draw – drawing program (StarDraw 5.x) (6.x) -files * Oracle Open Office Base –

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

(StarBase 5.x) -files * Oracle Open Office Math –

formula In science, a formula is a concise way of expressing information symbolically, as in a mathematical formula or a ''chemical formula''. The informal use of the term ''formula'' in science refers to the general construct of a relationship betwe ...

generator (StarMath 5.x) (6.x) -files

Older discontinued components

* StarSchedule –

personal information manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information mana ...

-files * StarMail –

e-mail client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web app, web application which provides message management, composition, and receptio ...

* StarDiscussion –

news client A newsreader is a software application that reads articles on Usenet distributed throughout newsgroups. Newsreaders act as clients which connect to a news server, via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), to download articles and post new ...

* StarImage –

image editor Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are Digital photography, digital photographs, traditional Photographic processing, photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known ...

* Web browser –

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

* HTML editor –

html editor An HTML editor is a program used for editing HTML, the markup of a web page. Although the HTML markup in a web page can be controlled with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience, added functionality, and organisation. Fo ...

Proprietary components

* Several font metric compatible

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

TrueType TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...

fonts containing bitmap representations for better appearance at smaller font sizes * Twelve Western fonts (including Andalé Sans, Arial Narrow, Arial Black, Broadway,

Garamond Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular to this day and often used for book printing and bod ...

, Imprint MT Shadow, Kidprint, Palace Script, Sheffield) and seven Asian language fonts (including support for the Hong Kong Supplementary character set) * Adabas D database * StarOffice-only templates and sample documents * A large clip-art gallery * Sorting functionality for Asian versions * File-import filters for additional older word-processing formats (including

EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight- bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding si ...

, DisplayWrite, MultiMate, PFS Write, WordStar, WordStar 2000, and XyWrite (conversion filters licensed from MasterSoft)) * A different

spell checker In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic ...

than that used by OpenOffice.org, and

thesaurus A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

* StarOffice Configuration Manager * Macro Converter for converting Microsoft Office VBA macros to StarOffice Basic For StarOffice Enterprise Edition only: * Professional Analysis Wizard * Wizard to create Microsoft Windows Installer Transformation files ( .mst files)

Other differences

There are also differences in the documentation, training and support options, and some minor differences in the look and icons between Oracle Open Office and OpenOffice.org. Other differences are that StarOffice only supports 12 languages, compared to over 110 for OpenOffice.org.

Version history

StarOffice 2.0

StarWriter was the first StarOffice, with the successor being StarOffice 2.0 which included StarWriter compact, StarBase 1.0, StarDraw 1.0. Supported platforms included DOS.

StarOffice 3

StarOffice 3.0 included StarWriter 3.0, StarCalc 3.0, StarDraw 3.0, StarImage, StarChart. Supported platforms included DOS, Windows 3.1,

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

, Solaris on SPARC. Power Mac beta support was introduced in 1996.

3.1

Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/ 95, OS/2 (16-bit),

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

i386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 archite ...

, Solaris Sparc/

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

, Mac OS 7.5 – 8.0. Caldera, Inc. supported the Linux-port of StarOffice 3.1 with approximately 800,000 DM in order to offer the product with their forthcoming OpenLinux distribution in 1997.

StarOffice 4.0

Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/95, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86,

Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

(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 Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

's relicensing of

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

, by releasing most of the StarOffice source code under a free/ open source license. 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 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

, 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 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

, Linux i386, Solaris 8 Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supports generic Linux with

Glibc The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project implementation of the C standard library. It provides a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel and other kernels for application use. Despite its name, it now also dir ...

2.2.0, Mac OS X 10.2 for

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

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 Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

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 macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

x86/PowerPC 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 conc ...

servers via

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

, 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/

(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

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 free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

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

servers via

, 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 GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both Free software, free and ...

version 2.2.0 or higher, Solaris 10 for Sparc/x86. OOO version supports Mac OS X PowerPC, 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 (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) 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 part ...

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 Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

. 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

, and another running

, 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 and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

offered StarOffice 8 as part of its free downloadable Google Pack application.

Derivatives

OpenOffice.org was open source, and gave rise to many derivative versions and successor projects to StarOffice. ,

and

are still actively developed.

Apache OpenOffice Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source software, open-source office suite, office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It was a close cousin of ...

is mostly dormant and has not seen a new major release for over 10 years.

NeoOffice NeoOffice is a discontinued office suite for the macOS operating system developed by Planamesa Inc. It was a commercial fork of the free and open source LibreOffice office suite, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and ...

was also a derivative, but announced that it was no longer active in early 2024.

References

External links

* {{Office suites 1985 software Office suites Office suites for Linux Office suites for Windows OpenOffice Oracle software Proprietary software Solaris software Sun Microsystems software