StarPortal

When Sun bought StarOffice a couple of weeks back it wasn’t for the current office
suite but for StarPortal, the thin client version of Star Office. According to this report Sun are planning to demonstrate StarPortal accessed via a Java enabled palm pilot. They’re squarely aiming the softare at portals such as Yahoo that already offer online applications. They’ve also announced a new sales model for the software. Basically if you sell it you have to give Sun a cut but anyone is free to redistribute it for free. It’s an interesting angle but it’s going to hit the smaller resellers who are struggling to make a living from distributing free software hardest.