Business Services Industry

Sun Extends Popular "Free Solaris Program" to Next Generation Solaris 7 Software; Program Expanded to Offer StarOffice 5.0 Productivity Suite For Free

Business Wire, Oct 27, 1998

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 1998--Because of an overwhelming response to its Free Solaris(tm) Program, Sun Microsystems today extended the offer to include its new 64-bit Solaris 7 operating environment.

For the cost of media, shipping, and handling, developers, members of the academic community and Solaris enthusiasts worldwide can get a free license for teaching, research, software development, software testing and other non-commercial use on SPARC(tm) or Intel workstations.

Sun also announced today that Star Division will offer its Microsoft Office-compatible suite of productivity applications, StarOffice 5.0 Personal Edition, for free to developers and enthusiasts for non-commercial use. StarOffice runs native on the Solaris Operating Environment and allows Solaris users to seamlessly read and write Microsoft Office documents.

"We are extending the Free Solaris Program to include Solaris 7 software because of the program's phenomenal success and its potential to drive technological innovation among 'developers,'" said John McFarlane, president Solaris Software, Sun Microsystems. "Free Solaris 7 software will allow developers to experiment with 64-bit application development on both SPARC and Intel platforms."

Since the inception of the Free Solaris program in August 1998, Sun has received more than 40,000 requests for copies of the operating environment and has also enrolled more than 149,000 new members in the Sun Developer Connection (SDC), boosting its membership to more than 609,000.

StarOffice 5.0

StarOffice is a premium office productivity suite that runs native on the Solaris operating environment. It has a fully integrated set of powerful applications that provides word processing, spreadsheet, graphic design, presentations, HTML editor, mail/news reader, event planner, and formula editor functions.

StarOffice features a very familiar and intuitive user interface that allows experienced Microsoft Office users to be productive almost immediately. Furthermore, powerful document filters provide seamless and easy interoperability with the Microsoft Office products.

"We deliver an office suite that boosts productivity and is as easy to use on Solaris as it is on a PC," said Marco Boerries, CEO & President of Star Division. "With new features in Solaris 7, Solaris has become much easier to use and administer. We want people to know that with StarOffice on the Solaris operating environment, there is a powerful alternative to Microsoft Office available NOW."

Pricing & Availability

For the price of media, shipping and handling, non-commercial developers worldwide can register for free membership in the Sun Developer Connection program and place an order for a copy of the Solaris 7 operating environment for non-commercial use. This offer is available for a limited time only.

Use of the Solaris operating environment secured through this offer is limited to non-commercial use only. Participants are free to develop and test applications, but in order to deploy them for commercial use, they must upgrade their software to a commercial license. Developers can access installation support by calling: 800/786-7638, prompt 4. StarOffice 5.0 Personal Edition can be downloaded for free to individual non-commercial users by following the links on the Solaris Website at http://www.sun.com/solaris/.> Solaris 7 Product Line

For SPARC(tm) and Intel computers, the new Solaris 7 product line provides full binary compatibility with previous releases of Solaris software, enhanced Windows NT interoperability, ease-of-administration and mainframe-class capabilities. It gives customers a new opportunity to deploy a single operating environment, where in the past they typically had to use MVS at the high-end, UNIX(R) in the mid-range and Windows at the low-end.

Sun Developer Connection

The Free Solaris program is being managed through the Sun(sm) Developer Connection(sm) program, a comprehensive resource designed to give the growing number and expanding range of Solaris developers a single point of access to all Solaris operating environment and Java(tm) technology programs.

Individuals, non-commercial developers and members of the academic community who register for the Sun Developer Connection under the Free Solaris program will have access to all Sun Developer Connection resources. Benefits include priority access to Sun development tools and unlimited use of the Sun Developer Connection site's Self-Help and Training and Tutorials sections. They will also receive Sun Info Essentials(sm) service.

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--   Quarterly developer updates through "Sun Developer News"
--   Information about Sun's developer programs and events from the
     Sun Developer Connection Program Web Site
--   Solaris technical information from the Solaris Developer
     Connection Program Web site
--   Pointers to free downloadable tools through DevFlash e-mail
     bulletin

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Public domain software that is precompiled and formatted for easy installation on all Solaris platforms and releases can be downloaded for free from http://www.sunfreeware.com.