Sun Microsystems Releases StarOffice Suite under GNU General Public License

Sun Microsystems announced that it will release the source code for its StarOffice Suite under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and host it at www.OpenOffice.org. The company also announced the formation of the OpenOffice.org Foundation, which will manage the project.

StarOffice is a leading office productivity suite for multiple platforms, and the next version, StarOffice 6, will serve as the source code base for OpenOffice.org. The new generation architecture of separate applications and componentized services will be introduced. This announcement marks the single largest open-source software contribution in GPL history and adds a key application suite to the open source portfolio. It also leverages StarOffice Suite's role as the leading productivity suite for multiple platforms and increases momentum as the only competitive alternative to other office suites. The release of StarOffice under an open source license is a tremendously cool thing that fills a gap in the paucity of high-quality, easy-to-use applications on the desktop. Major Linux companies have signed agreements to redistribute StarOffice(TM) 5.2 software and pledged support for OpenOffice.org.