There is a lot more to it than just paying $99. Hopefully all the available offerings in this field will improve as a result.I'm sure that the OpenOffice folks know all about it. More importantly, it shows a renewed interest in third-party development in a field that's been dominated by one product for years. Even with Microsoft readying its next release of Office for the Mac, a little choice never hurt anybody. However, having used OpenOffice briefly in the past, this can only be considered positive news.

Of course, there's also the unspoken desire often expressed by Sun to compete with Microsoft at all levels, which may have something to do with the renewed interest in OpenOffice. We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space. Some may ask: Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Although a native port has been in progress for several years, it's languished due to a general lack of resources. Current OpenOffice builds use the X11 Window System for their interface handling, which is (to say the least) less than Mac-like. To that end, Sun Microsystems has announced that it will join the effort to produce a native 'Aqua' version of OpenOffice, which Sun itself distributes as StarOffice. That doesn't mean there's not room for improvement. While Office has its detractors, it's still by far the most commonly-used productivity suite for the Mac, and a key offering for the platform. Thanks to the nature of Mac OS X, there are now more alternatives than ever to the juggernaut of the genre, Microsoft Office. There's a discussion going on in our own Mac Achaia about the state of integrated productivity suites on the Mac platform.

Open office osx