StarOffice

Oracle Open Office — known before 2010 as StarOffice — is Oracle's proprietary office suite software package. It was originally developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000, creating a free, open source office suite called OpenOffice.org; subsequent versions of StarOffice have been based upon OpenOffice.org, with additional proprietary components.

StarOffice 1.0

The first StarOffice suite included StarWriter compact, StarBase 1.0, StarDraw 1.0.
Supported platforms included DOS.

StarOffice 3.0

StarOffice 3.0 included StarWriter 3.0, StarCalc 3.0, StarDraw 3.0, StarImage, StarChart.
Supported platforms included DOS, Windows 3.1, OS/2, Solaris Sparc. Power Mac beta support was introduced in 1996.

3.1

Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/95, OS/2 (16-bit), Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86, Mac OS 7.5 – 8.0.

StarOffice 4.0

Supported platforms included Windows 3.1/95, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86, Mac OS (beta).

StarOffice 5

Supported platforms included Windows 95/NT 3.51, OS/2, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.

5.1

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

5.2

Sun offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use, and soon went through an exercise similar to Netscape's relicensing of Mozilla, 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 OpenOffice.org, 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.
Supported platforms included Windows 95, Linux i386, Solaris Sparc/x86.

StarOffice 6

Sun based StarOffice 6 on OpenOffice.org 1.0.
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 glibc2 2.1.3, Solaris 7 SPARC (8 for Asian version).

StarOffice 7

Based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.
Supported platforms included Windows 98, Linux i386, Solaris 8 Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supports generic Linux with Glibc 2.2.0, Mac OS X 10.2 for PowerPC 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 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 x86/PPC 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 servers via HTTPS, and PDF export for long-term archiving.

StarOffice 8

In September 2005, Sun released StarOffice 8 (based on the code of OpenOffice.org 2.0), adding support for the OpenDocument standard and a number of improvements.(
Supported platforms include Windows 98/2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher), Linux i386, Solaris 8 Sparc/x86. OpenOffice.org version also supports generic Linux 2.2.13 with glibc2 2.2.0, Mac OS X 10.4 in OOO 2.0.3 with X11.
Product Updates 2-5 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.1. OOO version added support of Mac OS X 10.3 for PowerPC, Mac OS X 10.4 for x86.
Product Updates 6-7 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.2. New features include enhanced Windows Vista integration, PDF export.
Product Updates 8-9 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.3. New features include bookmark support for PDF export, MediaWiki export in Writer.
Product Updates 10-11 are based on OpenOffice.org 2.4. OOO version added support of Linux x86-64, Linux MIPS, Linux S390, Mac OS X x86/PPC above 10.4. New features include improved input and sorting in Calc, block markings in text documents, new import filter, improved security, access to WebDAV servers via HTTPS, PDF export for long-term archiving.

StarOffice 9

StarOffice 9, released in 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 glibc2 version 2.3.2 or higher, gtk version 2.2.0 or higher, Solaris 10 for Sparc/x86. OOO version supports Mac OS X PPC, 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

Pricing and licensing

Traditionally, StarOffice licenses sold for around US$70, but in 2004, Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to Japanese customers for about 1,980 JPY (17 USD) 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. As of January 2009 Sun's website offered StarOffice for US$34.95.
Sun used a per-person license for StarOffice, compared to the per-device licenses used for most other proprietary software. 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 Microsoft Windows, and another running Linux, can install StarOffice on both computers.
As of 2010 StarOffice 9 Software is no longer offered at no-charge to education customers. Education users can use OpenOffice.org 3.0, which has the same functionality as StarOffice 9 Software, or continue using StarOffice 8 Software, which remains no-charge. 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 offered StarOffice 8 as part of its free downloadable Google Pack application.
Users of the Solaris 11 Express Community Edition receive StarOffice 9 for free along with the operating system. OpenSolaris users who register their OS with Sun have the ability to download the Express Community Edition for free.
source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Open_Office