Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Scott Moore
Date : Tue Aug 23 2005 04:01 pm

Randy Howard wrote:
> Scott Moore wrote
> (in article <defvcf$j17$2@news1nwk.SFbay.Sun.COM>):
> 
> 
>>
>>Joe Butler wrote:
>>
>>>This from that page:
>>>
>>>"Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use software
>>>in all the ways that are socially useful"
>>>
>>>The problem is that a commercial app is not given the freedom to use 'free
>>>software', even thought it may be of great social value.  Unfortunatly, the
>>>person/team that want to produce this software don't have the time to
>>>develop an app that is given away for free, and they can't give up their day
>>>jobs just yet.
>>>
>>>How much money have Sun spent doing Open Office - your average
>>>company/person cannot afford to spend money like that just so they can give
>>>away the final product.
>>>
>>
>>Openoffice was not given away for free. It was done to help the sales of
>>our hardware products and to advance recognition of the Sun name in general.
> 
> 
> I thought that was the point of StarOffice, which, IIRC was 
> commercial, rather than OpenOffice?

Openoffice was a version of Staroffice, that was given over as open source.

> 
> 
>>Sun said so, and continues to say that with products such as open Solaris.
> 
> 
> I had the impression that they really did it to ease the 
> pressure calling for Sun to make everything open source.  Now of 
> course, it seems to be happening anyway.
> 

I can only quote what Sun says in their press releases.

.