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Corel Buys MetaCreations' Graphical Tools
Bauwolf writes "According to MacCentral,
Corel has bought some of MetaCreations' graphics products. Does this mean I'll have Painter running on my Linux box and Kai's Power Tools plugins for the Gimp soon?" Don't forget Bryce.
The problem the market has with Corel is that Cowpland is running the show and he is an idiot.
He is currently under investigation for insider selling. He has been known to open his mouth and say things like "this quarter looks great" and two weeks later Corel comes out with their quarterly statement showing an almost $10M loss. He has been known to make grandiose claims about working with Intel, which his PR staff must hurridly back-pedal from while Intel's PR staff claims to not have a clue what he is talking about.
The guy is a wildcard, jumping on every bandwagon that comes along (remember the netwinders, which got spun off, or how about the all-java office-suite which had to be cancelled after over a year of hype). Merril Lynch has withdrawn all rating of Corel, stating that the company is too unpredictable for them to reliabily evaluate, which means that their analysts do not trust what Cowpland says.
Ironic since ML is a very large shareholder of Borland/Inprise which Corel is essentially stealing from Borland shareholders (he gets over $200M in cash and a strong revenue stream, shareholders get a 3/4ths of a corel share, a company that is teetering on bankruptcy and has no strong sense of direction, much less a reasonable revenue stream).
Replace Cowpland with a reputable CEO and Corel's price will double in just a couple of weeks. Until then, the street will have no faith in the company and all we will see are short-term spikes amidst a consistent long-term downturn.
Yep, this is exactly how I felt. Kai Krause no longer has
much to do with the company, with the exception that his name is
associated with some of its products.
I believe that he has even quit the board of directors -
but don't quote me on that. I'm sure you can
see for yourself on MetaCreations' web site.
As for whether I believe it's another "next big thing"...
I do. The reason is because Metastream has already signed
with 25 partners to provide the technology base. And -
kids have fun with it!! On the contrary to VRML,
which kids said "It takes too long" and "it looks
like crap." Metastream is something that (when I
saw it at the party) could actually captivate a 5
year old girl. Can anyone say toy retailers?
The truth is that VRML was too far ahead of its time...
It tried to push too much data down the pipe, and failed
to deliver on its promise. Metastream is different.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
Corel may be scoffed at by some people who don't like what they're doing with Linux, or their lisences that are questionable in terms of violating the GPL, but they are actually helping a great deal in making Linux usable as a desktop OS for non-programmers.
I don't know of any GPL violations in any of the code and/or products they've released. There has been some consternation between some Wine users (I haven't seen any developers complain) WRT: Corel's internal code fork of Wine for their product releases. Wine is under the BSD license and as such this is strictly allowed. I think some of the Debian people had an issue or two which wound up being resolved to everyone's satisfaction...
Can you substantiate the claim that they've broken the GPL with any of their product releases?
I disagee. I personally want to know what is going on, the "conceptual model" as you put it, but there shouldn't be a mandate that all computer users have to grasp that. Some people simply do not want to understand what is going on. They use the computer as a tool, and often a very limited one, and they are content with that. There is nothing wrong with this type of user. If a computer user wants to browse the web a bit, and maybe do some word processing, and check their email, maybe occasionally play solitaire, and that is the extent of what they want to use their computer for, why shouldn't they be able to do that? Distributions such as Corel's give a user a free (beer and speech) alternative to Windows or MacOS.
The Open Source philosophy is about choice, freedom to do what you want with the resources provided for you by thousands of hackers. I think it fits right in line with this philosophy to have dumbed down distributions.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I completly agree.
.... you get the idea.
All these 3d whizzbang gimmicks are doomed to fail.
It's all about open standards, or very competetive prizes (i.e. realvideo or MS asf) in the plugin arena.
The problem with 3d is that you may have an advantage today, but if you want to charge bucks for every *view*, nobody with a clue will be interested. Wait for 2 years (or shorter) and your technological advantage is meaningless, that's a common problem for 3d-renderers.
I can't believe that in the year of massive outcome of GHz-cpus and T&L graphic cards someone really sees a future in a product like this.
For similar reasons real audio (not video) will get into real trouble from mp3 sooner or later.
And even if you're somewhat successful, I have heard of some guys in Redmont which
As you say, this gimmicks are interesting for a short time, but after that users get tired of waiting to finally see animations like VHS tapes moving in VHS-players. These apps all are bad from an ergonomic point of view.
Shaheen seems to be very excited by this technology - I understand that - but I would never advice someone to use that at his e-commerce site.
It frequently seems to happen that companies make bad business decisions because they are too excited by their by technology.
Really, metacreation should develop more ideas than that metastream thingy or they will be in much trouble soon.
This could be a sign of Corel's plans to establish an OS beachhead - forget about using Linux as an internet appliance OS. Instead, put Linux's power to use as a graphics workstation OS. Macs are still used in one major business area, and that's the graphics/multimedia sector. Management said, "Screw what everyone else is doing, this system works better and we're going to use it." Build a better system, and they might switch over.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
You really don't know what you are talking about. Why don't you pull out your ruler and check what the real dpi of your monitor is? In all of the latest Macs none of the "Recommended" settings yield a dpi close to 72 dpi. And why would a PC be any different? They both have the same resolutions on monitors the same size, so math PROVES that they must have the same dpi. Just because the software says you have 72dpi does not mean you do. You do not have 72 dpi. A PC does not have 96 dpi. DPI is old school designers' tool to try and understand electronic design, when the two have nothing in common.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
""Until Linux has ... 72 dpi screen resolution.""
"Support is already there. In Xfree86, you can either directly configure your screen's DPI, or you can indirectly specify it by using a combination of mode definition and physical screen size (using the DisplaySize declaration). "
I thought that they had 75 and 100 dpi why is 72 so important/critical?
""...output in native Linux format...""
"Ah, but that's the beauty. Linux doesn't have a native format. A Linux machine can be used to generate just about any openly-defined output format you would like, such as PostScript. Almost any image format is also supported. The
genius of open formats is that, by using them, your service bureau can use the platform of its choice and you don't have to care.
"
The gimp has it's own internal format for gimp use if that's what you mean. I don't see the use in having another thing that a browser can't read and needs me to start up a very, very large memory hog (I had to increase my swap size just for gimp use).
Also is it just me or are there very, few methods to access postscript. If it's such a standard why are there not more ways to say print a postscript file in any word processor? I know there's ghostscript but I think that's a little klugy and such. There is good support in the browser for pdf but not postscript on the majority of public machines that I have seen.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
More accessable software on more platforms is a good step, but they are gonna need to port the thing first! That is a hell of an effort, in development and testing. You gotta think you are going across a compiler and across to a different paradigm OS. Its gonna take some serious re-thinking in certain poits to push it over to linux, if that is indeed what they are gonna do.
In time, the ports will come, but the manpower will be pretty large. Nobody dump your macs or windows partitions yet...
--jay
Expensive / proprietary Unix workstations long held the high-end graphics market, and Macs the low-end. Win32 is becoming the dominant platform, but it's not there yet. This could be a great arena for Linux to shine. Remember how long Macs hung around simply because they did graphics well? If Linux could get its GUI problems straightened out, it could emerge as the digital artist's machine of choice. I know that 90% of graphical designers who are now forced to work on Win32 long for the days of Macs...
On a related link: MacOs X for Linux?
Corel's Linux distro is pretty much an attempt to make Linux easier for Windows users to switch over. While it isn't for a "real" Linux user, I suppose, it is a great "My First Linux," so to speak.
In what way? because it has a nice GUI? all it is is a dressed up KDE. Because it doesn't include a bunch of daemons preinstalled for you? yeah "real" linux users wouldn't be able to figure that out I guess.
I find it quite strange that "everyone" calls Corel's distro only for newbies. Corel wants to make Linux easy to use, and I think they have done that. They want to bring (more) major applications to Linux, and they are doing that (Corel Office 2000, Corel Draw is on it's way, etc)
One thing they will never be able to do is to take the power of Linux away from users. Linux is still an Open OS. If you think Corel Linux is missing something, install it, if you don't like their version of KDE, don't install it, install your own WhizzBangWM (tm).
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
I don't know how many of you follow Corel's stock, but it closed down today. (It would have started to react from the news by closing time if it were going to, I bet.)
Corel's stock closed below 10 today, down from a 52 week high around 30. I know I lost a good chuck of change the last couple time they announced good news, and the stock went down.
The market doesn't seem to understand what the company does. It seems to me to be a stock that has a lot of potential. It frustrates me to think I am the only person seeing this. I think Corel stands to gain a lot by having a "one stop" Linux distribution (with WordPerfect, and now maybe painter.) They are positioning themselves in a good place for a market which can only expand (end user everything you need is included Linux.)
So what's up with the stock. I almost want to buy some more since it is under 10, but I have been burned by it too many times when I thought "Well, it can't go much lower than this!"
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Last summer, MetaCreations decided to change its core focus from its bread-and-butter graphics software business to its E-commerce visualization business. Approximately October, MetaCreations decided to sell its graphics software division to cut down on expenses and such.
Above I said "E-commerce visualization." What I mean by this is their Metastream platform for bringing 3D over the web. Basically, just like a JPEG file, the model data (including textures) is streamed to you over a plain old HTTP connection. From this, the viewer gradually displays more and more 3D data to the user, just like a JPEG can be rendered gradually. Sorry, at the moment, there are only Windows and Mac plugins for Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. This is the stuff that I worked on - lemme just say that it rocks.
Here's what they plan on doing as a business:
The technology is amazing. I went to the launch party for Metastream 3.0, and it is a world of difference from Metastream 2.0 (which is what I worked on). With the new format, you can easily do animations. For instance, you have a television and a VCR, with a VHS tape on the side. Click the tape - and it slides into the VCR. You can even see the LCD display on the VCR change.
Want something cooler? Okay. How's this: Once the tape is in the VCR, hit the play button. Guess what you get? Live streaming video displayed on the television. This video isn't stored in the Metastream file - it can be video from anywhere on the web. Also, you can rotate, zoom, slide - whatever you want while the video is playing. And even on a moderate consumer PC - such as a PII or PIII, you don't see ANY slowdown.
And there's more - the compression technology is awesome as hell. The average model file is less than 50 K (and that's a pretty big model - like a person or something. The television/VCR above would be 20 to 30 Kilobytes).
As of right now, MetaCreations is a publicly traded company (MCRE). I do not know what their plans are about spinning off Metastream as a company of its own, however, they do have their own offices in New York.
The opinions expressed above are opinions of my own. They are not necessarily the opinions of MetaCreations or Metastream.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
While I'm sure the Corel angle is why this story is on ./, I'd just like to say it's sad to see MetaC's management take the company in a "new direction" which is risky, at best, and likely the first move into a tailspin that'll end in the company tanking.
I've used bunches of their software, dating to before they were MetaStream. They used to be two separate companies... Fractal Design (who made Painter) and er... well, I forget the name of Kai's old company... I also used (and still use) Ray Dream, which Fractal Design had bought shortly before the Kai/Fractal merger.
I've got poser, Kai power tools, Ray Dream, and Bryce... all really cool tools. I hope Corel is good to them, but from what I've seen in the industry, once a product starts wandering from one company to another, it stops being innovative and fresh, and just ends up cranking out fairly minor releases while it falls beind the times.
Of course, a few of the tools I mentioned are not a part of this deal... who knows where (if anyplace) they will end up.
It just leaves you wondering what flavor of crack the MetaCreations management is smoking. They have apparently laid off a bunch of programmers, dumped these poducts on the floor, all in the hope that everyone is going to want fancy 3D images on their e-commerce site, rather than a good ol' picture.
Why dump viable products to focus on this? Why not develop both together, or maybe develop a spin-off company to develop the MetaStream format they are going on about?
I heard people on a mailing list for their products rumble when Kai left the company a while ago... perhaps that was the first sign of trouble.
Oh well. I picked upo my Bryce 4.0 upgrade last week from MetaC, so I'm set. No telling if I'd get the chance to do it in the future. And hey, maybe I will get a chance to see Bryce on Linux. At the very least, it would be nice if they released the port of Bryce to Be that they had working. That's why I had put off upgrading for so long.
Hang on just a second. Metacreations was a company with a small but successful niche market in prosumer content creation tools. KPT was THE standard for Photoshop plugins and their other tools had a pretty loyal base of happy customers.
And instead they've chucked it in for promoting a technology that has has plenty of internet enabled buzzwords but no real appeal.
Everything you've described could be done by VRML 2.0 in 1996. Remember how that took the world by storm?
Ah, that's right it didn't.
Do you really think it's a compelling application for consumers to be able to spin a 3d model of a widget before they buy it? And if they really want to, then you can already do this with VRML, Shout3d or QuicktimeVR.
Metacreations has chucked away a solid business based on good software for a grab at buzzword enabled IPO e-commerce madness.
At least some other company had the sense to buy their good technology when Metacreations was chucking it out for a song.
What I am impressed with, however, is the amount of desktop software that Corel is bringing to Linux as we speak. Word Perfect Office 2000 looks every bit as powerful as MS Office. Looks to me like Corel is really trying hard to get a platform that is a useable workstation for any user, and doesn't depend on Microsoft.
Corel may be scoffed at by some people who don't like what they're doing with Linux, or their lisences that are questionable in terms of violating the GPL, but they are actually helping a great deal in making Linux usable as a desktop OS for non-programmers.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but Corel has to make some cash somehow: I'm wondering how strong the commitment to OpenSource is. Is anyone else worried that future versions of Corel-owned Linux software are going to be closed? I wouldn't be too terribly surprised.
I don't see Corel as being a strictly Open Source company at all. But this is not a bad thing - personally I don't think that Linux is just about open source. From where I'm sitting, I see Corel's business movements as a realignment of their business model towards providing a version of Linux that is easy to use for beginners, and to additionally provide as wide a range of familiar programs to those new users as possible. The average Linux newbie is likely to be used to paying for software so this gambit is probably feasable as a source of income. Plus the rest of us have the option to buy software which fulfills specific needs which are not currently addressed by the available open source projects, such as CorelDraw 9.
In fact, I see Corel's movements as being a definite boon to Linux. They will pull new users to the world of Linux and will provide yet more software into the Linux world. Just because it is likely that they will be selling software doesn't automatically make them into the Evil Empire. To be able to stay in Linux and use Bryce, or Poser, or whatever would be a great help for many users. If they price it too high they will suffer the usual market drought that afflicts over-priced products. And the GPL/LGPL stops Corel from closing their sources on code that adds onto existing GPL/LGPL code bases so don't panic. If they write their own software and they want to sell it - fine!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.