OpenOffice.org is a two-year-old project, the result of more than a dozen volunteers' efforts to create a software suite that contains a word processor , spreadsheet, presentation program, graphics app and database.
The project has its roots in StarDivision, a German company that originally authored the StarOffice software suite. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) rival Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) purchased StarDivision in 1999 and released StarOffice 5.2 in June 2000, while also turning over its code to the OpenOffice.org group of developers. Now, in a turning of the tables, OpenOffice.org's efforts are at the core of Sun's most recent StarOffice 6.0 release.
|