On Sat, 2001-12-15 at 12:11, Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote: > Just picked this link up and knew it would be of interest. > > Sun Considers Charging for StarOffice > > http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D1884%2526a%253D19928,00.asp >
Actually with OpenOffice released under GPL, this might not be a bad idea. Ironicaly it could actually increase the corporate adoption of StarOffice. Why? Because there are still a lot of people who think that anything that is free can't be any good and if it's more expensive it must be better. Consider Caldera OpenLinux. Despite what you might have read on Slashdot regarding 'per seat' licensing of Caldear Linux, you can still download a free .ISO image of Caldera Linux, install it on as many computers you want and still be legal. So why are they charging a whopping $800 bucks per server for their flavor of linux? Part of it has to do with proprietary software that it's bundled with (and not included on the downloadable .iso image) but mostly its to sell to the 'If it's more expensive it must be better' crowd. Believe it or not in some companies it is easer to get approval for a $100,000+ Windows or UNIX server than to get aproval for a sub-$10,000 Linux or FreeBSD system that works just as good or better, even if there isn't a 'Corporate Standard OS' issue to deal with.
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