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Red Herring Looks at Corel's Linux Strategy
Wellspring writes "Red Herring's done an article on Corel's Linux strategies. Interesting overview of what they're doing, but they seem to have half a hundred complaints about everything Corel is doing."
Corel as a company seems sort of Wishy-Washy.
What ever happened to that office suite all in java that was supposed to revolutionize the office suite biz?
It seems they are the first ones to jump on a hot market and then when they get burned the first ones to jump off. Just watch, they will be the first ones to abandon Linux if the market starts to go south.
Awww damn, and here I was getting all worked up at the thought of an inflatable Linux Mascot. Oh well, back to work.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
- Backing the StrongArm chip via the Netwinder series. The article briefly mentions the Netwinder, but doesn't do justice to how important Corel was in getting the Linux port onto SA hardware for the rest of us who would like to move away from the 'x86 family.
- The free download of Corel's GUI based Word Perfect 8 software.
- Adding further US corporate branding and marketing experience to the Linux OS (with Caldera and Red Hat)
- IIRC, they also participated against MS in the US DOJ trial, didn'they?
- My final point...Corel Draw. I tell ya, if I could buy it for Linux right now, money would be changing hands.
There's probably more things which I would count as postive moves, but in the interest of brevity I'll skip it and say that for me the only redeeming part of the Red Herring article is that it mentioned that folks who report on investment are finally giving Corel a decent break in the news.Well, that's my 2 cents worth.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Hey there. I wonder if Michael Cowplan will address this article in his upcoming interview? About the article: I agree, for the most part, with the author's position. Corel does seem to be jumping on the Linux bandwagon. However, I have always had the feeling that Corel was on the verge of breaking. It's just a feeling I get. Also, I feel the Linux may be Corel's Last Change(tm), because MS Office seems to have completely covered Windows-based desktops. There was a time when you attached documents using WordPerfect format in emails. Now it's all Office 97 and 2000. I hope they GPL(or at least LGPL) the Corel Suite. I realize it's unlikely, but with a value-added retail package including clipart, fonts, and other proprietary tools, I would probably buy the retail package. Corporations definetly would, I think, as well as the general populace(who probably couldn't download, compile, and install a suite sucessfully). Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
The most important Corel feature in the Linux world (and likely to be the most profitable) is their Corel Linux distribution. No mention is made of it, only Corel's acquisitions. In fact, Corel's stock price is mentioned, but no mention is made of the primary reason that Corel stock recenty jumped: the annoncement that they plan on providing a way to run Windows apps (ala Citrix) under Corel Linux.
So, what was this article supposed to be about, exactly, and why did the author not perform research? This really did not deserve the Slashdot Effect.
I doubt that it's just a conincidence that the more general questions raised about Corel's plans in the article seem to be pretty much the same as those raised in the current thread about interview topics for Corel CEO Michael Cowpland. The questions about Corel's long term Linux strategy are apparently quite obvious to anyone who thinks about it. Of course the same thing could be said about a lot of companies that are jumping on the Linux bandwagon.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Corel is RedHerring's enemy #1 right now. This is not the first anti-Corel story they have written. Their "Investment Editor" R. Scott Raynovich wrote a scathing review of Corel about a month ago. He stated that Corel was "jumping on the Linux bandwagon", which seems kind of weird considering they've been porting their office suite for over a year now.
RedHerring's major problem is with Corel's management. And they have some valid points there, but I think RedHerring is underestimating Corel's technology and Linux effort. The question is whether the management issues are real and will outweigh their Linux development effort.
Rarely have I seen a company the target of so many negative articles by one source.
Has anyone noticed, on the bottom of the foam rubber toy, it says in two languages "Not a Toy"? Any idea why people would put this warning on it?
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Besides which, the gnome and kde file managers look and operate an awful lot like Explorer under Win98...hmm... Evil Plot or useful "feature", you decide...
In fact, there was far more detail on the acquisitions -- presumably because the author still had the press releases to hand -- than on Corel and why they might be making these acquisitions.
The author also fails to comprehend what Linux is -- okay, Newlix "write software for x86" and Rebel.com are moving to StrongARM. So what?
mutter, mutter, grumble, grr... Now I've thought about it, I'm cross...
-- Peter
Corel is still behind the game. They probably will be for a while, also. They are half-way embracing Open SOurce, and that is not winning friends on either side. Their main reason for making a Linux distro seems to be so they can try to dominate a platform software wise. They need to revamp themselves into a service-based company. Most of the newest and most profitable comanies in this endustry are simply service companies. I sincerely believe the days of selling software will be over in a few years.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
That was my first thought. But then I realized, if a kid eats a toy, is it the fault of the toymaker or is it the fault of the parents for raising stupid children?
:-)
WHo eats toys?
The mascot itself is probably too large to fit in a mouth, but being foam rubber i think it can be compressed.
For me it's just a nice dashboard decoration
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
About three weeks ago Corel's stock jumped from 15 to around 20, almost overnight. Was there any good speculation about this?
Investing in a company with 8 people and a good idea is probaly as close to wrapping themselves in the spirit of the community which they are tring to court as Corel could possibly come.
I doubt that Redhat would have the guts to take a risk on a company like newlix, however their name could be a clue that it's not exactly the best risk in the world. Still, it's eight coders, a nice number, who probaly know each other fairly well, I think this will faciliate better coding and fostering of ideas on their part.
There is also the fact that they Don't have a finished product. This is a good thing, considering that puts them in a greater position to innovate. They are not tied to pre-existing software or the alienation ending support of a product would cause.
Assuming there aren't any more earthquakes in Taiwan, the IPC Direct deal is probaly also a good idea, despite the fact that it's probaly just a puppet for PC Chips over there. If IPC Direct can make some cheap chips, this will help out Newlix greatly.
Application hosting is bad, I hate it. I don't like the potential for other people alienating customers with Newlix's stamp on the alienation, if i'm Newlix. Bad decision.
In the end, this article says more about redherring than it does about corel or newlix. Unnamed sources, 'message board posters', Unqualified people, and generally missing the point on pourpose in an attempt to attack Corel. Sad. Real sad.
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
What I'm not sure of is the economic merits of Corel Linux.
Note: I installed it last night on my laptop to replace a SuSE install. That went quite well; it took not much more than a cfengine run combined with dropping a previously-tuned XFree86Config file into place to get it acceptably configured, which was a whole lot more satisfactory than an attempt over Christmas holidays to install Debian on it.
(Aside: This laptop has had TurboLinux, SuSE, Debian 2.1, Red Hat, and now Corel Linux installed on it. With the happy merit that I have more-or-less generalized the set of stuff I need to fiddle with after install. Reinstalling means installing a base system + cfengine and then running a cfengine script to get networking fixed up. I probably ought to see if this all copes well with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD too, as I have CDs handy...)
Based on the "Day 1" results, I'm reasonably pleased with Corel Linux, as this was the least painlful install. (Well, grumble, grumble, Corel's package selection tool required a whole lot of mousing around, and having sprained a wrist the night before, the word "painless" may only be treated as true in a conceptual sense...)
You might expect that to bode well for the economics, but that is a questionable assumption.
- I didn't pay Corel anything for the install, as this was a $2 CD from LinuxCentral.
- I then proceeded to NFS mount a cache with chunks of Debian/Unstable to upgrade it. Mostly complete, and almost a seamless upgrade.
It's all well and good for there to be a bunch of startups getting tossed in to produce "useful stuff." Unfortunately, "useful stuff" does not necessarily translate into profitable revenue streams, which is what Corel truly needs.I'd be game to send Corel a little something; I expect that sending them $10 would be a better deal for them than spending $40 on a boxed set...
(More likely is the option of buying some shares in Corel... One of the few entertaining things I could do with the cash sitting in my SD-RRSP account when I was forced to sell off some telecom stocks, gripe, gripe, fascist CRTC...)
Which implies that if the Debian Project does a good job of upgrading the "public" stuff, there will be little reason for there to be continuing revenue streams for Corel. Unlike the situation where people really do need to get upgraded CDs for RHAT or Caldera or SuSE.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Several complaints of Corel jumping on the bandwagon. First of all, they've been on the wagon for quite some time now with Wordperfect and the Netwinder. But secondly, who cares?
Why should anyone get upset that someone is jumping on the bandwagon? This is Free Software. Jumping on the bandwagon is the whole point of Open Source. I don't see anything at all in the GPL, Artistic, BSD, MIT, QPL or MPL that requires someone to get the approval of some self-appointed community before they can use, distribute or modify the software.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
What a world we live in. A world where, thanks to litigation, TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN NOT TO EAT THINGS THAT ARE NOT FOOD IS OPTIONAL.
Sometimes I wonder...
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
You were running COJ a year ago? Why? Corel abandoned the project in 1997 -- almost three years ago. You make a habit of running three-year-old unsupport pre-release software? You can't even find COJ on their website; where did you get it? Hmmm?
COJ was sluggish running on Java 1.0.2 on my Pentium Pro 200 three years ago, but it works pretty well on IBM's JDK 1.1.8 on my dual Pentium II 450. (I kept a copy of COJ).
#2 Sun kept messing with Java, they couldn't figure out what GUI to use
Says who? In 1997 there was one Java GUI and there still is: the AWT. The Swing Set didn't exist when COJ was dropped. Java 1.1 itself was new. Anyway, Swing is not a new GUI any more than Motif is a replacement for X-Windows. Learn a little about GUI's.
What Corel did discover was that the AWT was missing some critical functions needed to support an office app. Most of these gaps are filled with the Java 2D API. Still, Java is not the best language to write an office app in...
All tolled COJ was a pretty impressive effort considering that Corel had to write all of its own high-level GUI classes themselves.
Your post is just more run-of-the-mill Java bashing. Yawn.
Corel's big risk right now is not getting into the Linux distribution market, but rather, banking on the idea that people who have overdosed on the open source & free software craze will actually come back down to earth and pay some money for good software.
Linux is STILL the underdog OS, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. One of the major reasons for this is the lack of "serious software". Yes, it's great for servers, and companies are now adopting it for just that purpose. But for most companies, and almost all households, servers are a very small portion of the hardware out there. Companies need to be sure that the OS they stick on their employees' laptops and desktops has the software they need to get the job done. And we're not talking about engineers here, we're talking secretaries, HR people, marketing, etc.
A good port of WordPerfect, especially if bundled with a very easy-to-use distribution of Linux, could go a LONG way to "common adoption" in the officeplace. CorelDRAW can only boost it further. This is the thing that puts Corel's possible future a notch above even Red Hat -- this company now has both the OS -and- some needed applications.
Yes, yes, I know. StarOffice. I use StarOffice, and it's a whole lot of not bad. But the big target market for Linux right now are *newbies*. People who don't know better. People who install Windows 98 and don't even know Netscape is an alternative browser. These people are not going to install Red Hat, go out and find StarOffice on Sun's website, download it, and install it. It's just not going to happen. SlashDotters seem to often forget that the average joe on the street has the IQ of celery compared the Linux weenies that visit this site. But unfortunately, that's where the *majority* of the cash flow is coming from. Why do you think the iMac has proven such a hit among the first-time computer buyers?
I bought some Corel stock, and I'm expecting good things from them. The GraphOn Windows compatibility deal they've landed looks very good to me. I've read nothing but good reviews of their Linux package (at least for those points where mass market cares -- such as easy of setup and ease of use). And they're going to be at the Linux Expo in Paris in February.
Go Corel!
--
If it's not important, you can probably find it in...
If it's not important, you can probably find it in...
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I actually read the article and thought that it was well written and presented the information in a fair a balanced(somewhat) manner. A complete contrast to the Raynovich article on Corel just before Christmas. His was a scathing personnal attack on Cowpland full of retoric, half truths and junk. And he is listed as an investment editor. That aside, the article points out that maybe Cowpland is not the foolish stock promoter and his investments in these Linux companies may be part of a strategy to provide an alternative OS, applications and support. Exactly what Microsoft needs to show that they have competition and save themselves from breakup. Ironic since Corel was almost destroyed by M$.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.