StarOffice Not Coming To OS X As Reported

by , 7:30 AM EDT, July 31st, 2002

Editors' Note: Yesterday, we reported that Apple and Sun were to team up on a release of StarOffice, but information has since come to light that this is not the case. We apologize for the previous news and have clarified this with the following information.

Sun Microsystems is not working with Apple Computer to bring StarOffice to OS X. According to Sun Public Relations Representative Marie Domingo, the only effort to bring a StarOffice-type application to Mac OS X is via openoffice.org. An alpha version for Apple's newest operating system was released last Thursday. OpenOffice is an open source office productivity suite whose codebase is used for StarOffice, Sun's commercial package.

According to Ed Peterlin, lead programmer for the OS X port of OpenOffice, neither Apple nor Sun has programmers working on the project. In fact, Peterlin and programmer Dan Williams are the only two currently on the development staff.

Confusion over which application was coming to OS X began after an erroneous article was published on the popular internet news source, CNET News. The news came as a shock to Peterlin because he had heard nothing from Sun about a collaboration with Apple.

Tony Siress, Sun's senior director of desktop marketing solutions, contacted Peterlin after the story was published, to inform him that the story was not true. "He reached out to reassure us (he and Williams) that our effort is still important and needed by the OpenOffice community.", Peterlin said in an interview with The Mac Observer. "I felt greatly relieved when I found out it wasn't true. Someone else isn't going to finish it without me, and that's a great relief."

When asked for his reaction to the situation, Peterlin didn't seem to mind, saying "It's raised awareness about what we do. It's gotten people interested in the project. We've already had new developers join us and help fix bugs from the Thursday release."

OpenOffice.org