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Even before Sun open-sourced StarOffice or even bought StarDivision you could get StarOffice for Linux with v. 3.1. The same time period also saw Corel WordPerf
by salamandersauce 5y ago
Even before Sun open-sourced StarOffice or even bought StarDivision you could get StarOffice for Linux with v. 3.1. The same time period also saw Corel WordPerfect officially supported and running on Linux.
- axiolite 5y agoCorel was much too late in releasing their full Office suite. StarOffice was free by then. Even WordPerfect didn't have too much lead time over open source projects like AbiWord which were getting popular in the late 90s. Looks like StarOffice for Linux didn't exist until version 3.1 was released in 1997. That's more than 2 years for someone to be running Linux (instead of Windows 95) without an office suite available. And more importantly, I didn't buy it at the time because I'd never damn well heard of it. They must have had a terrible lack of notability in the English speaking world. And in a couple more years, Sun made it free. Once open sourced, it was obviously the way to go, instead of being an also-ran.