Re: Star Office 5.1

[Stephen J. Turnbull <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> Al == Al Hudson <eah106 [at] york.ac.uk> writes:

>> Is this true, can Star Office be used as a secure browser on
>> Linux as it can on Win 98?

Al> Quite possible. I don't know whether or not so makes use of
Al> platform-specific features, such as wincrypto, but it wouldn't
Al> surprise me.

Crypto is a problem on Linux because of my (US) government's asinine
restrictions on crypto export. You can hardly blame Sun for not
wanting the headache of supporting several different 3rd party crypto
schemes just because some people live in the US and others don't.
(Yes, it _is_ a headache; crypto is not going to stand still over the
next couple of years---my cypherpunk buddies are already saying
nothing available on Windows is strong crypto. :-) So you can
expect a new generation of crypto within a couple of years. It's that
kind of thing that makes managing versions a headache.)

>> If not is this the first of many drop offs in favour of
>> Windows?

Al> If by that you're implying sun are going to start making SO
Al> win-centric, forget it. It won't happen.

And, once again, crypto is a special case.

OLE-type features may be better on Windows for another 12--18 months.
Havoc Pennington gave a demonstration of a well-tuned GNOME platform
in Tokyo today; one of my buddies who was there said it _rocks_. It's
going to be a while before the wizardry that a core GNOME developer
can accomplish is going to be standard fare for any old app's
programmer. But then...!

--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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