The German software company Star Division (also written Star-Division) was founded in 1985 by the 16-year-old

Marco Börries Marco Börries (born 1 August 1968) is a German IT entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of Star Division, who developed StarOffice, which later became OpenOffice.org. Career Inspired by a student exchange program to Silicon Valley ...

Lüneburg Lüneburg (officially the ''Hanseatic City of Lüneburg'', German: ''Hansestadt Lüneburg'', , Low German ''Lümborg'', Latin ''Luneburgum'' or ''Lunaburgum'', Old High German ''Luneburc'', Old Saxon ''Hliuni'', Polabian ''Glain''), also called ...

as a garage company. After a neighbour denounced the operation of a business in a residential area to the Ordnungsamt, the company moved to

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

. As its first product the company distributed StarWriter, a

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current ...

application developed by friends. Positioned as a cheaper alternative to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital painting ...

, StarWriter later became

StarOffice StarOffice is a discontinued proprietary office suite, intended to compete with the marketing-leading Microsoft Office. It served as the basis for open-source suites OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. StarOffice supported the OpenOffice.org XML f ...

, for which the company became famous. The software had sales of over 25 million worldwide, and at its peak it had a market share among other office suites of about 25% in Germany.

Caldera, Inc. Caldera was a US-based software company founded in 1994 to develop Linux- and DOS-based operating system products. Caldera Caldera, Inc. was a Canopy-funded software company founded in October 1994 and incorporated on 25 January 1995 by f ...

supported the Linux port of

StarOffice 3.1 StarOffice is a discontinued proprietary software, proprietary office suite, intended to compete with the marketing-leading Microsoft Office. It served as the basis for open-source suites OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. StarOffice supported the ...

with ca. 800.000 DM in order to offer the product with their forthcoming

OpenLinux Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems (now SCO Group) since 1998. A suc ...

distribution in 1997. In 1998 Börries released StarOffice free of charge for private use. Star Division was acquired by the software and hardware vendor Sun Microsystems on 5 August 1999 for a higher double-digit million amount in US dollars. Sun reintroduced the software as StarOffice 5.1a, and for the first time also free of charge for commercial use. The StarOffice suite has since been further by Sun Microsystems and the

OpenOffice OpenOffice or open office may refer to: Computing Software * OpenOffice.org (OOo), a discontinued open-source office software suite, originally based on StarOffice * Apache OpenOffice (AOO), a derivative of OOo by the Apache Software Foundation, w ...

and

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite co ...

communities. Sun Microsystems became a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corporation on 27 January 2010.

Notes

References

External links

* Star Division, Inc. (archived web site fro
1996-12-19
t
1998-04-22
* Star Division GmbH (archived web site fro
1996-12-19
t
1998-02-13
{{DEFAULTSORT:Star Division Companies established in 1985 Defunct software companies of Germany Software companies disestablished in 1999 Software companies of Germany 1985 establishments in Germany