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.

Comments

Re:Corel Tries Hard

[Jose]

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).

Re:Corel's plans

[HerrNewton]

It's not the program, it's the OS. Someone has already said it more elequoently in a different post, but you will not see Mac using designers jumping to Linux simply because Corel bought Bryce and a few other programs off MetaCreations. No one here seems to be mentioning that the code needs to be ported to, Linux and be compilable on PPC distros. That's a decent sized hurdle, one that you're not going to see crossed for at least six months.

Also, don't neglect the investment designers have in software and hardware. I'm sorry, but there is nothing available on Linux that marries power and ease like Quark. The GIMP, when it comes to color pre-press work, isn't on par with Photoshop as one cannot (iirc, I haven't kept up with GIMP for a few months) tweak inking settings, set-up duotones, etc. --- these are very important features and, agreeably, it needs to be addressed in the Gimp. And the fonts... oh gawd the fonts. I easily posses over US$2000 of fonts, many designers have far more. (Adobe sells its entire font folio for US$8200.) Bitch and scream all you like, but I don't really see an OpenSource font movement (I'd be hesitant of the quality--there are already enough versions of Garamond running around, I don't think we need to see a Garamond or a Sabon fork) and translating fonts between platforms is notoriously difficult, just ask any Mac shop that's gotten a PC disk from a client.

And then there's the question of the hardware itself. Where is the driver for my $1600 neg scanner? My $2500 flatbed? Not there. How about a $50k wide format printer with a fiery RIP? No support. And, of course, color support and font scaling is spotty, making for prints that don't match what you've got on screen.

So, can you really expect Mac users to jump to Linux, especially if it would require dumping thousands of dollars of equipment, software, and fonts? I'm going to say no,but I know I'll be questioned ;-)

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Corel's Stock (CORL)

[peterdaly]

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

Re:Corel's Stock (CORL)

[jms]

I think that it shows the extent that Microsoft has distorted the entire PC computer industry.

For all practical purposes, Microsoft has completely owned the PC software market for years. You'd have to go all the way back to the early 80s to find a genuine free market in personal computer operating systems. Since then, there's been Windows, and things that don't directly compete with Windows.

What happens to companies that attempt to compete head-to-head with Microsoft? Simple. Microsoft copies their work and gives it away with Windows. Then their company goes under. This has been going on for so many years that it's become a given in the software industry.

With Microsoft pouring money from Windows sales into attempting to dominate the internet, we have actually reached a situation where the only viable internet business plan is to give your product away for free, tack on advertising, and hope to hell you can hold onto market share when Microsoft inevitably clones your product and distributes it free with Windows, or as a free download.

You either work with Microsoft, stay well out of their way, or your company will be crippled or destroyed. Compete with Microsoft, and you'll be cut out of the loop. You won't get beta versions of Windows to make sure your software continues to work. You might actually find that the next version of Windows searches for your software, and deliberately malfunctions when end users try and run it. This stuff is all in the trial documents. You couldn't make this stuff up.

That's some seriously messed up economics, and it's led to a seriously distorted PC software market, where the big players are only big because it suits Microsoft's business plan to allow them to continue to exist. A cozy deal with Microsoft is worth far more then a good product, and a good product that Microsoft perceives as a threat is as good as dead. Whether your mousetrap is better is irrelevant ... or has been up until now.

Raw power and complete market domination is easy to understand when planning an investment strategy.

What we are seeing here is a weakening of Microsoft's power, which could change all the rules. The one constant in the PC industry has been the monopolistic power of Microsoft, and their ability to control other software companies through the threat of duplicating their products and giving them away for free with Windows.

Judge Jackson's ruling is creating the perception of a power vacuum. The stock market is chaotic because no one knows what is going to happen next and no one knows how to plan. It's been so long since there's been a free market in personal computer operating systems that for all practical purposes it has never existed.

It's been said that when Josef Stalin died, his corpse lay in his bed for days, because he was so feared that no one dared enter the room. I think there's a little of that sort of fear among investors, most of whom don't understand the dynamic of the alternative-operating-system market, and only half-believe that it even exists.

I worked for them...

[Shaheen]

I've worked for MetaCreations in the past (twice as an intern), and I've followed up on them since I've left them to come to college. From what I've seen and heard, here's what MetaCreations is doing at the moment and in the future:

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:

• Offer tools to create and view Metastream model data free over the web
  
• Open up the file format (to an extent - a good number of white papers, including some file format specs, are available on their web site now).
  
• For commercial vendors (ie E-commerce sites), they plan on charging a negotiable amount per "model-view" (much like banner-ads, only the money goes the opposite way).
  

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.

Re:Graphics on Linux

[Jeffrey Baker]

I see some legitimate complaints mixed in with some FUD/ignorance. I'll address the latter.

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).

...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.

You're right on the color correction bit, though.

-jwb

A moment of silence, please, for MetaCreations

[Croaker]

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.

Re:Graphics on Linux

[Lysander Luddite]

Sorry, I'm not moving to Linux for graphics apps for some time.

Until Linux has a consistent system wide OS appearence for all software apps, better postscript support, 72dpi screen resolution, consistent color support across a wide variety of hardware (scanner/monitor/printer), and support at the service bureau I doubt you'll see Linux in the hands of graphic designers/artists anytime soon.

Don't forget that in the content creation area suite integration (Indesign/Photoshop/Illustrator/Acrobat/GoLive or Flash/Freehand/Dreamweaver/Fireworks) has been the trend for the last 2 years or so. I don't see Corel able to compete against that. Likely, these will continue to stay niche market apps or transformed to consumer level apps.

I'll admit I may be wrong on some of these things like postscript/ghostscript but until Linux is as easy to use as a Mac and the service bureaus can accept files for output in native Linux format, I don't think Linux will be a viable DTP/web publishing system for *designers*. Heck, Be is probably better suited for designers and that has gone nowhere.

If Corel ports these apps to Linux it'll likely be akin to how they did CorelDraw on the Mac which means poorer performance than the Windows versions. Does there Linux run on PPC or x86 only?

Make no mistake, I'm happy Corel picked these apps over somebody like MS, or a Windows only software company, but we'll have to see what happens.

-- A former CorelDraw/Windows user

Internet bubble insanity

[rogerbo]

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.

Corel Tries Hard

[Maul]

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.

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.

Re:Be honest... I'm not worried at all.

[tjwhaynes]

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