Oracle, Oracle ... now charge the ODF plug-in for MS Office

Oracle has imposed a $ 90 fee per user to download the plug-in for Microsoft Office which was available at no cost while owned by Sun Microsystems. The tool allows Word, Excel and PowerPoint users to read, edit and save documents in ODF (Open Document Format), which is the format used by the OpenOffice productivity suite.

Sun, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, founded the open source project that created OpenOffice.

Oracle continues to sponsor the project and sells two editions of OpenOffice. A standard edition, for individual users or very small businesses, costs $ 49.95 for a perpetual license. The enterprise edition, which requires a minimum of 100 users, adds features such as a Microsoft SharePoint connector and SDK (software development kit), and costs $ 90 for a perpetual license.

A minimum of 100 users is also required to order the ODF plug-in, according to the Oracle website. In addition, customers who want to receive updates in the future must also purchase a support contract, which costs about 22 percent license fees per year.

The ODF plug-in enables interoperability between the Microsoft platform and ODF, supported by a lobby that counts IBM, EMC and Oracle among its members.

While Microsoft added support for ODF with the release of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 last year, this "move" by Oracle could be aimed at "catching" those companies that are reluctant to upgrade their Office 2003, but want to get everyone ODF compatibility forms.