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Curtis Sasaki Vice President of Engineering, Desktop Solutions Sun Microsystems, Inc. 4150 Network Circle Santa Clara, CA 95054
Dear Mr. Sasaki,
I am writing today to request that Sun continue to support Star Office for the Solaris x86 platform. While Sun currently ships a Star Office 6.0 for Solaris x86 binary, Solaris x86 is not part of the Star Office 6.1 beta 2. The beta program's website, <URL:http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/beta/>, only includes binaries for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris SPARC. It does not appear that Sun intends to continue support of Solaris x86 in the upcoming Star Office release.
While I appreciate that Sun sees Solaris x86 as a server and not a developer desktop solution, I am not the only Sun customer who uses it for that purpose. I fear that disconnect has led Sun to ignore the market for the commercially supported, enterprise quality, Star Office and other desktop tools on the Solaris x86 platform.
A failure to deliver the Solaris x86 build of the upcoming Star Office version 6.1 along side Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris SPARC would be an enormous step backwards in Sun's ongoing efforts to repair its relationship with the customer community. I believe that failure would cause a large uproar in the community which expects Sun to honor its commitment to parity across Solaris architectures. At a time when so much progress is being made by Sun to broaden its catalog of Solaris x86 solutions and expand its ISV partners, I deeply hope that Sun will not falter in its efforts to satisfy its customers.
Thank you.
John Groenveld
cc Judith Estrin |