Housekeeping - Christmas Give-away

Thanks to those readers who discussed the Sun Microsystems vs Microsoft story from our last edition on our Forum. Sun has provided the following response to a reader’s queries about StarOffice 6:

“Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the query about Sun’s donation of licensing fees for StarOffice. To clear up any confusion, Sun is not charging licensing fees for its StarOffice 6 office productivity suite under the donation initiative.

The donation scheme gives institutions an unlimited number of user licences to eligible applicants. It is estimated that the cost of this donation initiative potentially exceeds AUD$100 million in Australia.

StarOffice 6 is a different product to the freely available software available from OpenOffice.org. StarOffice 6 contains additional functionality, including database technologies, as well as a complete set of tools, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, image editing and drawing
programs.

OpenOffice.org is maintained by a league of volunteer developers whose open source community product is available for free download at www.openoffice.org.

As part of our ongoing commitment to open standards and open source, Sun donates its StarOffice code — including value added development work — to the OpenOffice organisation to assist in its development efforts.

Sun’s ongoing development work on StarOffice includes the integration ofthird party products such as spellcheckers and filters for reading and writing document types from other vendors like Word Perfect and AmiPro. Meanwhile, Sun’s software engineers focus on filters so that tarOffice works with Microsoft products, as well as the ongoing re-testing and quality assurance associated with the integration of additional functionality.

As your story correctly reported, under the StarOffice licensing donation initiative, there is a small one off fee to eligible institutions which include primary and econdary schools; universities, graduate schools and community colleges; libraries; teaching hospitals; museums; and non-profit research organisations.

The fee ranging between $138.50 and $183 is to cover the cost of shipping, media and manuals and is only paid once by an institution irrespective of the number of eligible users. The product is shipped from the United States, comes with a CD and a 462-page hard copy user’s guide. Sun does not profit from charging this fee.

Under the donation initiative, users can also access a free online StarOffice tutorial and educators will also gain access to a set of online resources such as lesson plans, training guides and professional development classroom tools.

Sun Microsystems Australia has a long history of corporate philanthropy, and has made many donations — of technology and dollars — to not for profit organisations worldwide. For example, in 2001 Sun donated AUD$1.6 million of technology to four schools in Australia, enabling them to deploy leading edge systems for their students. This latest offer is another demonstration of Sun’s ongoing support for the education sector.

We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond and look forward to bringing you more news of our corporate philanthropy initiatives in the future.

In the meantime, if any readers have further queries about the StarOffice program, they can visit:
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/products_solutions/software/desktop_applications.html.

Andrew Boulus
Sun Microsystems Australia National Manager Education”

In the spirit of Christmas, Pro Bono Australia would like to give away to one reader/organisation a copy of the Star Office 6.0 desktop productivity suite courtesy of Sun Microsystems.

We are taking a light hearted approach so please send us any amusing fundraising anecdotes from your busy Not for Profit year and make us laugh!!!!

Just send your stories via e-mail with ‘Christmas Cheer’ in the subject line to probono@probonoaustralia.com.au.

The winner will be announced in our next Christmas edition…..the last for 2002 and we will sample the funny side of the Third Sector as well.