StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000. Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice free software source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation. Sun continued to sponsor development on OpenOffice.org for the next 10 years. Following this period brought an overwhelming increase of the user base and a tremendous growth of the project. Since the acquisition of Sun in 2010 Oracle is the principal contributor of code to OpenOffice download CollabNet hosts the website infrastructure for development of the product.
The source is written in C++ and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality, including Java(TM) APIs. This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing use of the suite as separate applications or as embedded components in other applications. Numerous other features are also present including XML-based file formats based on the vendor-neutral OpenOffice Document standard from OASIS and other resources.
A FAQ addresses the changing differences between OpenOffice free software and StarOffice.