Sun have announced that they will be removing links to download their popular office suite this Wednesday, following their decision to charge for StarOffice 6. Star Office 5.2 has proven one of the best office suites and has been seen as a free alternative to Microsoft Office thanks to its well-developed import and export filters.
The StarOffice 5.2 package will now be $39.95 for the deluxe version and $9.99 for a "Slim Kit" version. This is a move that has seen a complete U-turn in the way it is distributed as when Sun bought out Star Division (the original developers of Star Office) it was distributed as a payed product. It has been available on a variety of platforms, including Windows and Linux but has never been available for the Mac OS.
The open source community rely quite heavily on using the facilities of Star Office for importing and exporting Microsoft files and have reacted strongly to this and the charging for StarOffice 6. Many open source companies have trouble keeping to the community"s ethos of making money from the product, but not selling it and making it proprietary.
The use of proprietary software by some open-source companies such as Mandrake is now a reality, as they use the offer of Star Office 6 as a sweetener to join their "club" (i.e. pay a regular subscription). Ximian are now also charging for software which allows users to use Microsoft Exchange servers and to add the Star Office 6 package to their desktop by buying Ximian"s packaged product. On the other hand SuSE have chosen to not use Star Office and to move onto Open Office now, but they already charge for their distribution.
The financial feasibility of open-source is shown in companies like Red Hat who charge for services and support but for many companies giving away software is proving impractical, as the latest developments prove.