Google Pack, Google's software download package, has added Sun's office suite, StarOffice 8, to its offerings. StarOffice, which Sun normally sells for $70, is free through Google Pack.

StarOffice is Sun's answer to Microsoft Office. In 2000, Sun released StarOffice's source code, which is the underpinning of OpenOffice.org, a Sun-sponsored open-source project.

See ZDNet Asia news by Lynn Tan: Malaysia formally embraces Open Document Format

Excerpts:

"The Malaysian government today announced plans to adopt open standards and the Open Document Format (ODF) within the country's public sector.

by Andy Updegrove, ConsortiumInfo.org

By Matt Hines, InfoWorld

The debate over use of the open document format among U.S. states appears to have hit a wall as experts representing both sides of the issue offered few new insights into the subject at a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL).

This presentation looks at how Sun's ODF plug-in aids MS Office interoperability, using 19 annotated slides.  According to the SourceForge Project description, the goal for the project "is to provide translators to allow for interoperability between applications based on ODF (OpenDocument) 1.0 standards and Microsoft OpenXML based Office applications.