For a fee described as "minimal" by Sun Canada's director for education and research Lynne Zucker, Ontario's 72 public and Catholic school boards have received Sun's StarOffice desktop productivity suite, StarOffice 7, and are free to copy it as many times for school use as they like.

Why the minimal fee? "Sun's perspective is not about knocking out other office suites," said Sun Canada's director for education and research Lynne Zucker, in an implicit reference to Microsoft Office, "but [about] getting some exposure and recognition for contributions in education into the K-12 arena."

Ontario Ministry of Education spokesperson Linda Nicolson said that the province is always in the market for low-cost desktop software and that the StarOffice suite was selected by the Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee (OSAPAC), made up of 10 representatives from the province's 72 school boards.

"It's too early to tell how extensively the software will be used by schools," said Nicolson, but she added that OSAPAC members were optimistic about its future.

"There are some [schools] who will use it right away and there are some who will take some time to explore . . . how it might meet their needs," she said.

Zucker noted that StarOffice is that it is available on Windows, Solaris and Linux - adding that Linux is liable to be of particular interest to schools given the growth of open source software in public sector markets.

"I think the target is organizations that are beginning to make strong commitments to open source software," Zucker noted. "Often the academic environments lead that kind of thinking."