''We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they are selling, we're going to give away for free.''
That's what Microsoft Corp. vice president Paul Maritz was allegedly telling computer industry executives in 1996 - comments that were allegedly made with reference to Microsoft's then-rival Netscape Communications Corp.
But these back-room comments could have been made very easily last month by Sun Microsystems chairman and chief executive Scott McNealy with reference to Microsoft itself.
Last week, Sun announced that it was purchasing Star Division, a California software publisher, and that it was going to take Star's flagship product, Star Office, and give it away for free over the Internet.
At the time Sun said it was making this move to further stimulate the growth of the Internet. Sun's stated theory was that if more high-quality software is available on line, more people will use the Internet, which in turn will force more service providers to upgrade their systems.
Since an overwhelming number of Internet servers is made by Sun, more servers translates into increased profits for the Silicon Valley hardware manufacturer. ''It's all part of our vision of open network computing,'' said McNealy.
But this reasoning is disingenuous at best. What we're really seeing is yet another salvo in the very personal, decade-long battle between McNealy and Gates. And unlike the Java war, this salvo could really strike home.
Where Microsoft gets 40 percent of its revenue from sales of Microsoft Office, Sun makes nothing from the sale of desktop application programs, and very little from the sale of software. Giving away Star Office won't hurt Sun's current sales very much. But it could ultimately slaughter Microsoft's cash cow.
Program-for-program, Star Office is similar to the Professional Edition of Microsoft's Office 2000, which has a street price of $480. Star Office comes with a word processor similar to Word, a spreadsheet similar to Excel, a presentation program similar to PowerPoint, a database program, a calendar, an e-mail program, and a Web browser. None of these programs is as good as their Microsoft counterparts, but most are good enough for the typical Office user.
Consider Star Writer, which is largely a clone of Microsoft's Word 95 word processor. Star Writer can open standard Microsoft Word files, edit them, and save them. It will handle Word's paragraph styles, numbered paragraphs, bulleted lists, and many other formats. You can create tables, set bookmarks, and create footnotes. Beginner users will be hard-pressed to find significant differences.
But intermediate and advanced word processor users will soon find big differences between Word and Writer. That's because there are literally thousands of little variations that aren't immediately obvious.
Consider Undo. There is an Undo button that you can click in the Microsoft Word spell-checker, allowing you to recover from inadvertently changing one word to another or accidentally adding an incorrectly spelled word to your spelling dictionary. Word's normal Undo facility also can take you more than an hour back in time. Writer doesn't have an Undo in its spell-checker, and its normal Undo facility goes back just 25 steps.
There are also a whole lot of annoying little bugs in Star Writer. For example, if you create a new document and type two hyphens in a row, Writer replaces them with a backslash.
Other points of criticism include Star's documentation, which is minimal, and the program's speed, which is sluggish at times.
Star's drawing programs are serviceable, but they can't hold a candle to Adobe's PhotoShop and Illustrator.
As for the Internet programs, I would recommend avoiding both the e-mail system and the browser. The e-mail program is awkward, and the browser won't display many sites properly, especially those that use frames.
Star Office is an attack against Microsoft in another way as well. The program alters many Windows default settings, patching out Microsoft's programs and substituting Sun's. Among these sneak attacks:
Download StarOffice 5.1, and you'll also download a copy of Sun's Java runtime environment as well. StarOffice claims that it requires Java to enable all of its features, although I can find no proof to support this claim.
When you install Star, it becomes your default Web browser and e-mail client, even if you tell the program that you are using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. To get to your old browser, you'll have to call it up manually.
Finally, when you run StarOffice, the program takes over your computer's screen, going so far as substituting Microsoft's Start button with its own. You can turn off this feature by unchecking the menu item ''Integrated Desktop''.
Sun is also making Star Office freely available for the free Linux operating system, as well as for Sun's Solaris. This will undoubtedly be another huge boost for Linux, where the lack of Microsoft-compatible productivity apps has been a major stumbling block. Sun's reasoning seems to be that whatever helps Linux hurts Windows.
But realistically, Sun should be watching out for its air supply as well.
(You can download Star Office for free from www.sun.com/
products/staroffice/.)
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at plugged-in@simson.net.
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