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Corel releases Photo-Paint for Linux for Free
Corel has released Photo-Paint for Linux for free. You can go to their web site and download it (there are packages for RPM and DEB although its compressed with .tar.gz). Good work, Corel. Their FTP seems to be full, so could someone make a mirror please?
I'd say there IS a market for commertial apps on linux. And why not? Linux is a better OS than most, and the OS is free. But when I show the GIMP to photoshop users, they don't get it. You could sell them $600 worth of photoshop regardless of the os it runs on.
$.02, -=nft1999=-
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -Gandhi
Well, I didn't say that only programmers use Unix. I said it is designed for programmers, by programmers. That other people use it is not denied, but they use it because its a good OS.
:) Its much more flexible.
You have a point about unix dying out, but it is tangential to my point. My point was about the core users of Linux/Unix being programmers and hence the killer apps being programming tools.
If you need apps for different purposes, either write them yourself/pay someone to write them/wait for someone else to do that.
With the tools available, you have the first choice too.
Well, when you want to present project ideas to more programmers over a network, HTML works better.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Right. So the software that allows you to actually *accomplish something* is all shite, and the software that is merely designed to *enable* the useful stuff is great?
What Linux needs is not more legacy comercial software. ... What Linux need is to continue its high standards and the world will change around it.
Whatever. If you want to change the world, you have to affect the majority of people. To affect the majority of people, you need to actually touch their lives somehow. Linux is a great tool for a few particular jobs - servers, development, geek-toy. I'm a designer. Linux is absolutely out of the question, much as I'd like it not to be.
I need Illustrator (or an equivalent vector gfx app). I need an excellent and flexible raster imaging app. I need full featured, reliable, plugin-friendly audio editing apps, and a working sequencer. And something that's in perpetual development with out-of-date "stable" releases, that may not eventually be maintained (and this happens on a much shorter timescale than in the commercial world), is not suitable for professional work.
Quit deceiving yourself. Linux is great, sure. No argument there. And I appreciate all the work that goes into open source apps - and some of them are excellent, unparalleled even. But Linux is not everything, and open source isn't either.
Linux does not need to become what it's fighting against.
Why not let it be everything that it already is, and more? If the OS/FS movements are as strong as you think they are, take a cue from Microsoft - embrace, extend, and extinguish commercial software.
Typing, by the way, I can do on my TRS-80, or even a typewriter. Wow.
xpaint has a great functionality for "pixel-image drafting", as opposed to traditional vector drafting (xfig, xcircuit), pixel-image drawing (gimp, at some extent xpaint) and image processing with effects (gimp, at some extent xv). I won't use gimp to draw a image map for navigational diagram for a web page that consists of few boxes and lines, to combine few images, etc., just like I won't use xpaint for a circuit diagram (xcircuit), some block diagram (xfig), "fancy" buttons for the same web page (gimp) or photo retouching (gimp).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Another question: Are there many truly new programs coming out these days? By that I mean programs that serve a function no program has served before. It seems to me that a lot of non-game commercial software is office stuff or communication stuff, and there's already a vast array of those. And if anything really new does come out, it's rarely (ever?) available on Linux right away, and by the time someone does get around to porting it twelve OS projects are already underway to clone it.
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
This is the greatest testament to the success of Gimp I have seen yet. Basically Corel is saying "look you have Gimp so it's tough to sell you Photopaint. Instead we are going to give it away and hope you come back to purchase those things with cash value on the Linux market.
This is not new for Corel. This is the same company that for years gave away older versions of Corel draw with Diamond Video cards. Some motherboards come with Perfect Office 8 and there is a deal that should see Corel Linux and Office for Linux distributed in the same way. I haven't seen any signs of that yet though.
It's sad but one consequence of Linux' rapid growth is that Corel will likely go under before Microsoft is able to clearly measure our impact on the desktop. KOffice will be the next Office Suite to dominate the market and even that will not have the percentages that MSOffice holds now. My advise to Corel is to help out. Do your damnedest to work with everyone else who needs to Import MSOffice files and work with some kind of standard XML.
If file formats are removed as a serious market factor then Corel will be able to squeeze 4 or 5 years of solid sales out of it's clear user interface and strong feature set lead. Otherwise it will get crushed between MSOffice and KOffice.
PS : I do know about Gnome Office but it has quite a ways to go before it is near the Office of today. The main problem is that GOffice was designed and built in different camps with varied loyalty to the Gnome core. Eventually the various parts will be fully integrated but since they were not designed that way from the ground up it will take time.
I only hope they and KDE work towards a standard XML interpretation. That way I can continue to share even the most complex of documents with others regardless of what they choose.
As for the others. Applix and StarOffice both want to become the next MSOffice and dominate in the same proprietary way. This is why they are doomed to the same fate as OS/2. Corel at least is desperate enough to and well designed enough to look at such radical options.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Honest, I'm not trying to troll. It's just that this story is the latest to make me wonder about the financial viabillity of Linux as a targetted OS for commercial software.
I don't think this is a troll. It's a perfectly valid question and basically the same question I asked myself when I read this.
If these companies keep giving everything away free, there is no way they can maintain financial viability. Giving Photo-Paint away free is hardly going to get Corel out of the financial hole they are in now. Giving Photo-Paint for Linux away free is going to backfire on Corel and the linux software market in general.
I look on Corel's website and notice that the same software for Windows costs $495 or $149 for upgrade. A quick glance and one might think 'hey, why pay $500 for the windows version when I can get the linux version for free?'. This is all well and good in the short term, but what is going to happen is that software developers will look at this and think 'why should I develop a Linux version of Foo Program if no one will pay money for it when people are willing to fork over $500 for the Windows version?'
Now this isn't to say I want to pay $500 for a paint program. But I *AM* willing to pay something. If they made this software [for both platforms] available on their eStore for a reasonable price [say, $20-$50] then I think in the long run it would be better for the Linux software industry. At the very least, selling a product for $20 as opposed to giving it away would at least slow Corel's downward spiral if not stop it.
Are there ANY Linux software companies that are making a profit? I don't mind paying for software but jeez that crap is so expensive! $99 for an upgrade to Windoze?!? $500 for a drawing program? People are lucky to be able to afford a computer let alone $500 for a drawing program [yeah it's cheaper than others...they're overpriced too :) ]
Ender
Nothing to see here
If you don't want to use IE you don't have to. Sure it's on your harddrive, but in that state, it is simply a COM HTML rendering engine. Kind of like the KParts based HTML renderer that Konqueror is. Actually, exactly like the KParts based HTML renderer that Conqueror is. The point is, that this is an unfair business practice from an ethical point of view. If MS decided to make Office free for Windows, but not for Mac, then /. and Janet Reno would be up in arms. In this case, however, its the "good guy" being unfair, thus everything is hunky dory.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You know that paper stuff 99% of us don't have enough of?
Microsoft has no choice but to keep raising the price of it's software. Sales volumes are not growing fast enough to justify the stock valuation ( even after 1/2 of it dropped off ). When the total hardware of your PC costs under $300 paying another $300 for OS and Basic Office productivity becomes a pain. Dropping a grand for the retail boxes is just insane.
MS doesn't have features to justify the high sales volumes it has. That is rather the result of nobody else being able to read the files consistently.
All but two of the people I know who bought MSOffice retail did so because they had trouble reading new files. Those two bought it because the older version they had was too unstable to use on the systems they had. One couldn't get Access to start at all.
If and only if the file compatibility issue can be dealt with in a complete and consistent way Microsoft Office will go down and MS won't be able to do much about it.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
MicroSoft on the otherhand did overprice Unix versions of their software in order to kill the Unix market. For instance SoftImage (purchased by MicroSoft, later sold to Avid) was less than half as expensive for the NT version, despite the fact that the Unix (actually Irix) version already existed and did not need any work from them (and certainly did not get any!). MicroSoft could have done many other less evil or illogical things (including discontinuing the Unix version) but did this rather convoluted action to try to make NT look better in comparison.
If Corel's programs required some library or proprietary module that was only on Corel Linux I would say they should be screamed at, but their current actions do not seem evil in any way.
Posted by 11223:
On a related note, Pixel32 has promised a Linux port of their excellent (far better than PhotoPaint, IMHO) photo manipulation program. You can register until the end of July for $32, get the WinDOS version, and then get the BeOS and Linux versions for free later when they come out. (After that it's $50).
I'm not even one of these "all things must be under GPL or I will storm the head offices with a flaming pitchfork" types. I have just made the obviously crazy, frivolous decision to use a processor other than the x86. I'd be glad to run it if they would simply compile it for LinuxPPC and let me download the binaries.
I might use WordPerfect too, but wasn't there some sort of security problem if you wanted to do something crazy like let multiple users have access to it?
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Actually they are not giving away all of their apps. They are charging $100 for their office suite, and when Corel Draw comes out they plan on charging roughly the same as they are charging for the Windows version.
.net. I have a feeling that we won't have to worry too much about it, and I'm not implying anything about the trial. MS is pissing too many people off, and this will continue to agrivate them. I have meet too many people who are tired of MS jerking them around, and telling them what to do, and are getting ready to either stop using some of their products or not upgrade. Major companies are starting to look to other solutions, even different Office Suites, because it is becoming too expensive to upgrade, especially now that MS is pulling roving licensing and requiring that every machine that might use Office must have a seperate license. Also with MS not having the same leverage on the OEMs as they used to, they won't be able to force it down everyones throat. It won't fly.
The three things that they have given away, Corel Linux, Photo-Paint, and WordPerfect 8 have been for good reasons. The first two are because the market value of Linux and a product like Photo-Paint is zero, Linux for obvious reasons, and Photo-Paint has to compete with the GIMP.
As for WordPerfect 8, my guess is they wanted to gain their marketshare back. By catering to the Linux community they hoped that people would use it, and then pay for the full WordPerfect Suite 2000, with WP 9. Also, if they want to be able to sell their products they need Linux to grow, and with one of the biggest complaints about Linux being that it has no real commercial and home use products (although FUD, it is what a lot of people believe) they needed to show that there is in fact everything that you can get on Windows for Linux.
As for your question about MS
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Then simply GO to their website and look..
Hetz (Heunique)
If Autodesk would port AutoCAD to Linux I'd buy it so fast it would make your head spin. And AutoCAD costs $2500 on the street.
But I suspect, though of course I haven't any hard evidence at all, that Autodesk has a private arrangement with Microsoft. At that time AutoCAD was supported on MS-DOS, Macintosh, and several flavors of Unix. But five or six years later that list of platforms had been whittled down to one: Win32. Just recently Microsoft assimilated Visio, but in the process, for some mysterious reason or another, as part of the deal Visio spun off its Intellicad division, which had been selling a clone of AutoCAD for about the tenth of AutoCAD's price. Now why did they do that? I'm just guessing, but I think that Microsoft long ago agreed not to gobble up Autodesk as an appetizer, as they pretty obviously have been able to do for the last decade, in return for Autodesk dropping all other platforms.
And I also suspect that it's lots of under-the-table business like this, rather than some impalpable attitude problem amongst Linux users with regard to commercial software, that explains why so few vendors of commercial software for Win32 are willing to port their products to Linux. If this is only a paranoid fantasy, then it's one I share with Judge Jackson and the DOJ antitrust division.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
but that's where you're wrong. If you're the average "I need to write a book report" student, you never even notice that KWord has the frames. You just notice that it's cool word processor. And that it integrates very nicely into EVERY other part of the desktop.
However, the frames idea leaves so many possibilities open that it's just too good to pass up. You could (theoretically) embed ShockWave Flash files into your KWord documents. Or put the contents of a word document on the internet as part of a document template HTML page in real time, with updates ocurring as you change the file... it's some crazy awesome stuff. I'm excited.
There is an interview with Cowpland about this very subject in either Linux Journal or Linux Magazine - can't remember which at this moment.
Anyway, he rightly points out that Corel was giving away WordPerfect too - yet people were still buying copies of it.
Hell, The Offspring's Americana album was one of the top mp3's being swapped, yet the album sold many millions of copies.
I too go out and buy packages even though I can download them in a few minutes over the net. I have purchased lots of Linux distros, programs, etc. I could have just as easily spent 14 hours downloading all 6 of the SuSE 6.4 ISO images, yet I went out and paid $35 for the box. Why? Because I wanted to! (Plus, I got some userfriendly.org stickers!)
Red Hat sells lots of boxes, so does Debian, Mandrake, Caldera, and Cheapbytes.
Somebody is buying, because I don't quite have THAT much money!
well, I could give the links the same way that you did, but people need to accept the end user License Agreement. I know it sounds to some people a bit foolish, but thats their software and thats what their wish.
Hetz (Heunique)
With all respect to those who think this is a positive thing, we must seriously consider whether this isn't so much FreeWare as it is AbandonWare.
A few facts gleaned from The Motley Fool:
In short, I think that Corel is a company that is in serious financial trouble. I think it is far more likely that Corel is doing this not for PR--but because they're going to eliminate PhotoPaint development, support, etc. as part of their announced C$40 million cost-cutting campaign.
Don't get me wrong--I have a lot of regard for Corel. Ten years ago I was writing PostScript code generators for calibrating imagesetting equipment--and developing books and periodicals with Corel Draw and Ventura Publisher (now owned by Corel). I subsequently was a sysop on the VENTURA forum on CompuServe, and did a lot of technical illustration with Corel Draw. I've retouched hundreds of photographs with PhotoPaint.
But I think this is a sign of Corel going into the tank--not a sign of positive developments for Linux at all.
sic transit gloria....
Here's a screenshot of Photopaint 9 in action, in case you need it that bad.
Man, Corel had to spend all that money on MetaCreations' products, and now they're going to lay off 320 people and possibly not continue operations past the year-end??
What the hell? I really thought Corel would have more sense than that. I'm more worried about MetaCreations' software - I used to work for MetaCreations. It really saddens me to see such innovative products (not 'Microsoft innovative' - really innovative, both in functionality and user interface) just go down the drain. Corel had better get their act together, or sell those products to a more competent company.
Blast it all to hell.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
The Gimp 1.0 series had an awful mess of a menu structure and insane dialog boxes. The current developer versions leading to 1.2, which are stable enough to use full time, have a vastly improved UI. Some folks who know UI design and commercial raster imaging packages have clearly been pitching in.
It's a shame GPL'ed mainstream-compliant color calibration probably can't be done without intellectual property lawsuits from Pantone. That's the big weakness I see remaining with GIMP.
Well, it runs with wine I guess, so they didn't really do much in the way with porting, just tinkered it to work well with wine, I'm getting it now, well see how well it runs..... the installer of wp8 from the cd didn't even run, which makes me wonder how well this will work, since it apparently has *.exe's in its dir.
Nuintari has no sig
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I don't mind paying for software but jeez that crap is so expensive! $99 for an upgrade to Windoze?!? $500 for a drawing program? People are lucky to be able to afford a computer let alone $500 for a drawing program [yeah it's cheaper than others...they're overpriced too :) ].
As an individual, there are precious few pieces of software I'll pay for on a free OS platform, given the free software that is already available. First off, I won't pay for any development tools whatsoever. I love the free stuff much more than I ever did any IDE I've ever used (and paid through the nose for, most times). I also won't pay for office productivity programs - the Lyx is great for the few things I need to prettyprint, while the text tools give me more power than I've had in a long time over every other file. Spreadsheets are different, of course, but then there's Abs and sc, and they're fine for me. The free Email, USENet, and IRC clients are better on the free *nix's than their counterparts on Windows.
So what would I pay for? Well, I'd buy a good vector drawing program for my wife, if there was one. I've tried to get her to use Sketch, but she really wants CorelDRAW! It's the one package she misses from her Windows days.
And yes, I do buy the occasional game from Loki, although they're only installed on my wife's machine. I really don't care very much for today's games.
In short, as a developer, I find nothing lacking in the free *nix world. But, that stands to reason, doesn't it? My wife, as an artist and computer enthusiast, finds the free *nix's to be great OS's with great programs, but she does long for a really good vector drawing tool and the occasional commercial game. And she's willing to pay to get 'em.
Now, to answer the question as to who would buy commercial software for a free OS, I'd say that most of it will be purchased by businesses eventually. I'd love to move us to a rock-solid OS at work, and I'd even keep MS-Office if it was available in a free *nix version. We'd still be better off, and the PHB's would be satisfied.
In the long term, though? I agree with Neal Stephenson's assessement. Any useful piece of software is eventually reimplemented as free software. If the commercial software providers keep sitting on their kiesters, churning out 10 year old software with annual feature upgrades, then eventually they'll be overtaken by freely implemented versions and they'll have no business left.
So in the long term, I see very few mainstream apps being purchased. Shrinkwrap software will just about disappear. Custom and semi-custom software will still be sold to businesses, and shrinkwrapped free software will still be available (as will commercial games), but the rest of the stuff you see in the software department of your local Best Buy will eventually fall by the wayside.
Talk about unfair business practices to promote an OS. MS gave away a program to promote Windows (IE) that would cost maybe $50 retail. Here is Corel, giving away something that cost $495 retail! And if you didn't notice, only the Linux version is free. This point, that the Windows version is not-free, points to Corel's business plan. They are using this as a leg up in the emerging Linux market. By keeping the Windows version for pay, they protect a cash cow, while getting the Linux crowd (who don't want to pay for anything :) to jump on their bandwagon. I can assure you, that if Linux comes to even a fraction of the market (say when 25% of Photo-Paint users are Linux users) they will pull out this free thing to protect their money. There will already be an installed base of users, and most will pony up the $495 than bother to switch to another program for their work. This also gives them a leg-up in the market because they're here first. The Linux community seems intensely loyal, and it seems that many will continue to use Photo-Paint, simply because Corel has supported the Linux movement, and even if better products come along. This is demonstrated vivedly in the whole nVidia/3DFx fiasco, people still use 3DFx, even though nVidia is better, just because nVidia doesn't give a damn about OSS.
As for you people bitching about this not being OpenSource, get over yourselves. Corel is releasing a product to further their business. That's what companies do. You can bet that RedHat would close up Linux in an instant (if they were allowed to.) The contingent that won't use PhotoPaint just because it is not OSS is relativly small, and frankly, I doubt Corel cares about you. There is an art of managing consumers. Only cater to those you know can affect your business. The hardcore OSS community is a very small contingent, and thus Corel can piss you off all they want and not affect their business...
Corel (to Stalinite): Ha ha, this isn't Open Source!
Stalinite:No! (Goes over and talks to another user.) Look, they're not releasing this open source. Boycott them. Burn their products!
Normal Consumer:Get away from me! I'll use this product all I want... It's FREE. As in no moolah.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Gimp. That's all you need. Just don't compile in any unnecessary stuff. Of course, I'm a bit biased :)
The product that Corel just released is PhotoPaint *9*, not 8. PP9 has lens flares as one of the built-in effects, so you don't need PhotoShop for that anymore....
The place where PhotoPaint shines over PhotoShop is it's brush support. You can do some extremely cool things with orbits, for example. You can tune pretty much any brush parameter you can think of, and even have some of the parameters vary randomly (within set limits) over the course of the stroke.
And you can paint butterflys with the Image Sprayer. 8-)
PhotoPaint for Linux also comes with a tutorial that shows you how to put together a custom KDE desktop theme.
Read more about the linux version here:a tion/Corel_PAINT_9_Linu x/rg-paint-09-lnx-std-na.pdf
http://www.corel.com/Technical_Marketing_Document
It looks like it can import GIMP (xcf) files.
They aren't giving away everything, and they hope to make money on the stuff they are giving away by 'network affect.' Corel has a huge stable of Office/Graphics/DTP programs, most of which haven't been released for Linux yet. What they have given away:
- Work done on WINE to help porting their programs.
- Work done on KDE to offer a more comfortable environment to their existing users.
- WordPerfect. The Word Processor, not the Office Suite. The Suite they charge for, whichever platform.
- The downloadable distribution. They still charge, of course, for shrink wrapped distributions that include their commercial software.
- Now, Photo-Paint. Which is a nice little gadget, but only a component of the commercial product they would like you to buy, CorelDraw. My bet is they intend it mainly as a convincer, to show everyone that they are making progress on CorelDraw for Linux, and that it will be worth buying.
Don't expect to see programs like Bryce, Catalyst, and Ventura to become freeware. Do look for them to be ported to Linux, and do look for Corel to start working out hardware partnerships and trying to convince businesses that use these programs to run them on Linux instead of Windows.=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Many of the design decisions in Linux (including GNU and X11) system are aimed at the power user. I use Linux precisely because its engineering tradeoffs are aimed at the power user.
If we followed your suggestion and "recruit outside experts" who know how to build applications for the "non-geek" majority, we'd end up with a system for the non-geek majority. If I wanted to use that kind of system, I already have multiple excellent choices, foremost Windows and MacOS. Windows and MacOS are well adapted to the needs of non-geek users, and the tradeoffs they made were driven by those needs. If Linux starts seriously addressing those needs as well, it will turn into a system that will not be very different from them. In fact, it has already started, where system administration and other parts of the system are driven by the needs of graphical configuration tools, rather than easy configurability with a text editor.
I don't want Linux to take over the desktop; I'm happy if it merely occupies a niche for powerusers. And I believe that niche can be large enough to keep companies interested in providing drivers and tools.
For someone who feels that they have the knowledge and experience to comment on a program's user interface, you sure do have some language on you.
And, as the other fellow posted, the pre-1.2 series actually has a very nice UI. I havn't had a chance to try PhotoPaint yet, but I bet it's one window with sub-windows inside it, a-la Opera browser. No offense, but that concept was thought up partially due to limits in Windows, and is simply a bad user interface. It sucks up screen real-estate, and makes working with more than one app nearly impossible.
If PhotoPaint has a window for each image being worked on, I apologize.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
I'm sure Corel is only laying off those employees because they wanted a nice, round 1000.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Actually, I was trying to say that survival requires big cutbacks, not that they'll survive. (Although I'd say odds are that they will.)
As for how to make money once a product GPL's to the community? It would have to be that they package or add-on or distribute or support better than others (which, compared to Linux software vendors, they do, except support).
But, hey, I'm worried enough that I sold before it dropped off the board. Wishful thinking had already cost me my gains, I didn't want it to cost me my initial investment.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I have a partial mirror with the tar.gz file on it at ftp://ftp.squadron.org/pub/PhotoPaint9
I'm trying to get the others as well...
this is great news! i've been using Corel Draw since v3...i've always liked it because i does what i want it to when i want it to. maybe other companies will follow this trend ;) then again... well...time to try to find a mirror.
bye,
-jimbo
But I still won't download it. It isn't so much better than the Gimp that it's a "must have" for me. On the other hand, PhotoPaint would take away from the Gimp user community. Every bug report or feature request sent to Corel is a bug report or feature request not sent to the Gimp developers. The more people learn its UI, the less likely they will be to switch to a free software equivalent, no matter how good.
Software lives and dies by its users. The value of Microsoft Office isn't in the software itself (which is mediocre) but in the thousands of hours each serious user has invested in becoming familiar with its UI and quirks, the millions of files people have in its proprietary format, and the bug reports and feedback they have sent to Redmond. Even a very high quality free office suite can't displace MS Office at this point because it won't read all the old data flawlessly and because it just won't be familiar to users, quirks and all.
I'm not religious about not using proprietary software and I do use some. But if there is a "good enough" free package, I'll stick with that. In this case, I think there is. And much as I wish Corel success in general, I still hope others will do the same.
I think the problem you are looking at has more to do with the idea of critical mass than the "give me everything for free" mentality common to a certain segment of the Open Source community.
It takes a certain amount of development capital to build up the foundational pieces for a modern GUI, and Linux is just reaching that point with Gnome and KDE. With the foundations built, however, it becomes progressively easier to deploy the kind of advanced applications which power users and corporations are willing to shell out the bigger bucks for. It also requires a "critical mass" of users willing to shell out the money to make the more advanced development possible.
So perhaps it's a chicken and the egg type thing -- is it "if you build it we will come..." or is it "we'll build it if you'll come..." ??
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Another key factor is that most commercial software packages do not make their fortunes selling boxed software to individuals. They make the real money licensing software to corporations.
That is the real weak spot in getting Linux on the desktop. Until Linux is widely used by corporations that license thousands of copies of whatever software they use, producing shrink-wrapped, commercial Linux software will be a low margin business. Once Linux products acquire a reasonable share of the corporate market, use by individuals will snowball, and the commercial Linux applications market will be as viable as with any other OS.
I believe the main thing standing in the way of this right now is the unwillingness of suits to accept Linux as a legitimate product, which goes directly back to the point I mentioned first, that people don't trust a free product.
In fact, many users (corp or individual) will put themselves thru all manner of contortions in order to hide from themselves the fact that they were ripped off when they bought a commercial package.
This is true not just in the world of computing. It is human nature. Often times, a persons self-esteem or professional reputation is dependent on the perception that they made a right decision. They cannot admit that they could have gotten a better product for less (or for free) because it would mean admitting that they were wrong...
An example: I know of at least one major US corp whose policy disallows Linux, per se, but allows ports Linux-native apps to Solaris. While the ports are pretty trivial, the relative cost is not.
IMO, the best thing that could happen right now to further acceptance of Linux would be the appearance of some reasonably priced, commercially shrink-wrapped linux versions of some trusted and useful software packages. KDE/KOffice would spread faster if Joe Shmoe IT guy could write a purchase order for 500 copies and have a reasonable expectation of getting something that Sally Secretary could use, and that would make him look good to his bosses. If the product is free, he is going to have to ask permission to bring it in, and sooner or later some one is going to ask "where'd this come from" and they're going to wind up thinking it was created by a bunch of weirdo interenet geek/hacker types, and want it of the LAN on general pricipals.
A couple tangental points:
Running Linux is hardly free. I pay for hardware, bandwidth, and software (when I can get it). It is a lot cheaper than running e.g Windoze, but owning and operating any kind of a system is never 'free'.
I will always have issues with companies like Corel, AutoCAD, and others who want to charge more for one copy of their software than I paid for all the hardware on my LAN combined. Overpriced is overpriced, no matter what OS you run.
Dilbert wuz here
"The Internet is made of cats."
1. You certify that you are not a minor and that you agree to be bound by all of the terms and conditions set out in the license below. downloading and/or using corel photo-paint for linux will be an irrevocable acceptance of the terms and conditions of the license.
Don't they learn?
1. create scandalous, obscene, defamatory or immoral works using the Image(s) nor use the Image(s) for any other purpose which is prohibited by law;
Does that mean I cannot use it to create more Bill-Gates-as-Hitler images?
Damn right. Who are you to defame Hitler?
Really. About the only thing Corel PhotoPaint 3 has over GIMP is a more socially-acceptable name. :)
:) Personally, I think this is more of a mistake than a good move for Corel. Doing so more or less admits to the world that they can't compete in the same market. Countless hours of development down the tubes with no way of recouping costs = a bad thing.
Its hard to sell a product when your competitor is giving theirs away for free. Just ask Netscape.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I'm not complaining, mind you. This is definately a step in the right direction (commercial apps released for Linux). But IMHO the timing is a little too perfect... But maybe I'm just pessimistic.
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this is something i was always wondering might happen - a product which is released both on Windows (and/or mac), and Linux. in particular, in one case free, and in the other, not.
i can see windows users sitting there going "hey, i paid $lots for Corel Suite, why are Linux users getting it for free?". essentially, they are discriminating on the grounds of operating system. Imagine if it was like that the other way round, a software product you wanted to use that was free on a platform you didn't like, but you had to pay to use it on your platform of choice?
i am all for corel going in and giving the gimp some good competition - and even beating macromedia and adobe and others to the OS - this can only bring better products through competition. but the cross-platform payment issue does raise this interesting question. where does it go from here? does microsoft sue corel because they're discriminating against windows?
fross
What you don't pay for in cash, you pay for in other ways:
* you don't get a CD (or you have to burn your own).
* you don't get a printed manual.
* you have to download it, and it's big.
* you don't get technical support.
* you don't get all the perks and thrills that the commercial version packages with it.
Why this can work
Because Corel is giving it away to people who wouldn't ever have bought it anyway. They're not losing sales.
Their commercial offering is going to sell based on its added value: its manual, CD, tech support and a ton of goodies.
Professional users will continue to pay for it based on the added value being worth the price.
The trick is for Corel to make sure the added value is valued...
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
There is some good commercial software for Linux where the Open Source equivalents simply don't stack up. For instance, nobody's writing a programmers' editor with full BRIEF keymap compatibility, color syntax highlighting, and all the other "modern" features you'd expect. (KDevelop comes close but ruins it by forcing you to use the default M$ Visual Studio keymap with no possibility of change. I've used BRIEF-style editors (both BRIEF itself and now CodeWright) for 6 years at work and I ain't switching now ;-) Free software authors like to push skins - how about USEFUL customization options instead?
:-) So that immediately opens up a market for more traditional (read MS Office-like) programs like Corel's.
So, my solution was to pay (a lot of) money for CRISP. It's not ideal, but it does have all the neat features I enjoy from CodeWright at work and so it makes me more productive when I'm using Linux. That in itself is worth every penny.
There are other needs in the marketplace. KOffice is gonna be good, but I don't think the average user wants to put up with a FrameMaker style word processor. Heck, I've used FrameMaker and I'm pretty sure I don't
Corel is really just trying to jump onto the Linux buzzword bandwagon to increase their stock value and maybe make a bit of cash in the long run (by packaging cool Tux toys with the commercial version of their distro, maybe). Obviously, they wouldn't be releasing all this free stuff for Linux if they had not been totally screwed over by Microsoft's business practices that forced WordPerfect out of the market. Corel still doesn't get that they should release source or at least provide binaries for Power PC, Alpha, etc.
However, this is still a good thing for Linux. Maybe not for most Linux users who want source code, but for people who want to see Desktop Software they've heard of on Linux.
Word Perfect Office is a competant office suite, and supports filetypes from MS Word. Corel's graphics package , to my knowledge, provides more mainstream graphics tools than the GIMP.
This will hopefully make people realize that one can use Linux for a desktop OS once they get used to something that looks and feels different than Microsoft Windows. With Corel giving their stuff out for free (even without source), people can check out Linux as a Desktop without it costing them much cash.
Of course, what I'd really like to see now from Corel is support for BeOS and other Operating Systems. I'm sure they could do it, and it would help people see that there is not only one alternative to Microsoft Windows, but many.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The UI is VERY customizable -- you can configure the toolbars, menus, dialogs, and keys to be whatever and wherever you like.
The GIMP is a great project, and I applaud everyone who has put effort into it. I hope PhotoPaint can serve as a wake-up call and inspire the GIMP people to do some serious UI work.
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Anyone who pays $500 for PhotoPaint is getting rooked big-time. The suggested price for the full CorelDraw suite is $695, and I don't think anyone sells it at full retail. The CorelDRAW suite is worth spending money on, but PhotoPaint is not. For far less money one can buy Paint Shop Pro which takes care of almost everything PhotoPaint can do, and if you're looking for full Photoshop compatibility for your service bureau, Photoshop is only $114 more through Adobe and cheaper on the street.
Prices for many of these programs seem steep for home use, but the main market for these programs is professional users, who can write off the cost of the program as a business expense (saving 28% or more in the US), and who will use the program to make money. $700 is a lot of money, but if the program saves you 7 to 14 hours over time, it's paid for itself.
Oh well.
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"The crowning intellectual accomplishment of the brain is the real world."
Corel announced that they would be offering PhotoPaint for free when their stock was still high, when they were the darling of Wall Street and Bay Street. It just took them a while to get it out.
Be smart and work to create. Don't ride on the backs of others.
Below are the direct links to download this software so you dont have to waste your time trying to surf linux.corel.com :)
CorelPHOTOPAINT9Lnx.tar.gz 182520 Kb Wed Jun 28 21:00:00 2000 Unix Tape Archive
CorelPHOTOPAINT9LnxDEB.tar.gz 91989 Kb Wed Jun 28 20:54:00 2000 Unix Tape Archive
CorelPHOTOPAINT9LnxRPM.tar.gz 92601 Kb Wed Jun 28 20:56:00 2000 Unix Tape Archive
I have a question that's been bugging me. Open source software and GPL is fabulous, but is there a market for commercial software on the Linux platform?
It seems to me as if the Linux culture is based around everything being for free. Maybe there will be some revenue model that will allow this to become mainstream in the future, but for the immediate success of Linux, I wonder the following: is it possible that larger software companies are unwilling to release their main products on Linux because they're worried they won't be able to make money?
Honest, I'm not trying to troll. It's just that this story is the latest to make me wonder about the financial viabillity of Linux as a targetted OS for commercial software.
The thing is, they are trying to keep their feet in both Windows and Linux, which may some day pay off strategically, but is right now a big costly pain in the ass. And what's it getting them? Their Windows app revenue is plummeting (they took too long getting the version 9 of everything out, and don't have the marketing cash, shelf space, or OEM clout of MS), while the Linux app revenue is barely a blip.
Right now they're getting all the pain of open source (low price) and none of the gain (code donations). They need to go on a job-cutting spree, encourage the code donations (GPL), and hope that their products can be nurtured by the community long enough for them to gain momentum and revenue. Of course, if they GPL everything, it won't necessarily be Corel that gets to cash in on the momentum...
This is why commercial software companies need to be wary about opening established products too fast -- they've already made the investment in their commercial products, and opening them up just undermines their ability to make a short-term return.
BTW, I feel for your stock story -- I got in at 4 last June, watched it go to 45, and then finally gave up and sold at, you guessed it, 4. Kinda like a bad dream -- no harm done but a lot of lost sleep along the way!
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I grabbed it yesterday and have been using it for a couple hours now. It uses Wine and actually has a few .exe files in the install dir (defaults to /usr/lib/corel).
It's geared more towards image editing rather than creation (though you can do this too). This is somewhat in contrast to Gimp, which seems easier to use for new logos and suchlike. Though I'd expected it to be slow (like parts of StarOffice), it actually is pretty responsive on my PII350.
People put it down, because it comes as part of the Corel Draw suite, but it is a very good program with quite a professional following. It does everything you'd want from Photoshop, with a less cluttered and confusing interface. It handles some things better than Photoshop, like paletted images. It's also a better choice for doing actual painting work (as opposed to image retouching). Good job Corel!
Comparing Photo Paint to the Gimp is tricky, because the Gimp is such a beast in many ways, at least when you view it through something other than eyes of zealotry. Telling a graphic artist to use The Gimp is like telling a programmer to use lcc over all other compilers. I'm not flaming The Gimp, just pointing out that its main benefits have always been (a) it's free, and (b) it runs under Linux.
I predict that this sort of thing is another perfect example of what Linux needs.
Corel's software isn't beautiful (their Office package is a hell of a lot better than M$, but could be improved), but where they really excel is that my mom has no problem installing and using their products. They're intuitive, they're pretty, there's a lot of hand-holding involved.
And, strangely, people like my parents--and all the business execs and fat cats their age--prefer to pay for their software. "You get what you pay for," they say. "That's the way I was raised, and that's what I think."
In conclusion, paying for software is only good if you somehow can't figure out how to use free software--but anything that brings Linux more mainstream is also good.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."