Nine years after Sun Microsystems bought StarOffice, the resulting OpenOffice.org project is ready to roll out its 3.0 release. Enhanced format compatibility and features put it on par with Microsoft Office.
When Sun Microsystems bought the little-known StarOffice productivity suite in 1999, and soon thereafter released the product"s code base as open-source software, it was unclear how far the arguably quixotic initiative might reach—and what damage it could possibly wreak on Microsoft"s ironclad grip on the office productivity market.