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04 May 2007
Sun Microsystems has committed to helping produce a Mac OS X version of the popular OpenOffice.org software suite.
The company will assign two paid developers to the effort, which is currently staffed entirely by volunteers.
"If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days," Phillipp Lohmann, one of the Sun developers, wrote on a company blog.
"We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port."
OpenOffice.org offers a free alternative to Microsoft Office. Sun kick-started the project in 2000 when it released its StarOffice suite under an open source licence, and is still the largest single contributor to the project.
Sun also uses some OpenOffice.org source code as the base for its commercial StarOffice suite.
A spokesperson for the company told vnunet.com that it is "quite possible" that the project could eventually lead to a Mac version of Star Office.
Among the projects Lohmann and co-developer Herbert Duerr will help with is a version of OpenOffice.org that is native to Apple's Aqua interface.
The current Mac version of the software requires the use of a plug-in for X11, a user-interface designed for Unix systems. The group is working to create a version that runs within Apple's native interface.
"I am really happy about this new task from a technology standpoint, of course, and for an important social reason: a lot of people I really appreciate are addicted to the Mac," Duerr said in a posting to the project's mailing list.
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Do you agree?
NeoOffice is already ported to the Mac...
Whomever uses a Mac probably already knows about NeoOffice ... www.neooffice.org I think this is a response to the NeoOffice success story. NeoOffice doesn't use the X11 window system ... it runs like any other Mac application. I think many people are surprised to see the Mac-like NeoOffice compares really well to MS Office.
Posted by: WC 05 May 2007
NeoOffice 2.1
NeoOffice, www.neooffice.com, already works w/o X11. It's OpenOffice tweaked for both Intel/PowerPC (separate apps) Mac versions. Try it. It's free, and you'll like it.
Posted by: John 05 May 2007
And what is NeoOffice.org?
NeoOffice has quite a story but their recent releases trail OpenOffice less and implement more. They are independent developers who have focused more on getting their code to work their way, but their current response to Sun is at http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=120&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0
Posted by: Laird Heal 05 May 2007
already been done
someone has already ported openoffice to the mac. it is called NeoOffice and uses Mac OS X's native interface.
Posted by: Joshua 05 May 2007
Big "f'n" deal
I'll be impressed when they put Watson back in service. It was the BEST product of it's kind an SUN KILLED IT!!!!!!!!! BRING BACK WATSON!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Leemac 04 May 2007