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Corel Sells GraphicCorp Division
Zalgon 26 McGee writes: "Corel has announced the sale of their GraphicCorp division to Hemera, according to a report on CBC News Online. Is this just another step in Corel's death spiral? A way to hide assets from creditors? Or some of the bold leadership Corel needs to find their way again?" Weren't we asking the same questions last week?
"Let them live in their igloos and talk with their funny accents. "
:)
Why, whatever are you talking aboot?
Mmm, cold in here, better throw another log on the fire before I freeze... uh oh, there goes the AC from the generato^%*^&*^*&
I'm no big fan of the CBC, I'd like to see it privatized or restructured, but it's definitely not the government mouthpiece you say it is.
You're confusing two aspects of wine: 1) the WINE Win32 API to compile code against and end up with a native binary and 2) an environment for running windows binaries under. The latter is a stopgap measure until companies start doing more of the former.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Unless I COMPLETELY missed something, Wordperfect for Linux uses libwine, not WINE. Wordperfect for Linux is NOT Wordperfect for Windows + WINE but an actual version of the Wordperfect codebase which has been targeted for Linux x86 and linked with libwine. Indeed, I believe you'll find it quite impossible to get Wordperfect for Linux to run on Windows, and if you run Wordperfect for Windows in Wine it'll behave differently than Wordperfect for Linux.
sigs are a waste of space
Don't we ask the same questions every week?
Idaho? That is a northwestern state, not midwestern. If its got anything resembling mountains, it isn't in the midwest.
Unless you are figuring Katz is one of the coasters who gets Idaho confused with Iowa (which is in the midwest) and Ohio (which is a northeastern industrial state, not midwestern either).
While I was never sure about the office java thing, I think it was just a rumor, but could have been true. The TV commericals promoting the "power of java" were refering to the ability of Wordperfect to use java, sort of in the same way that MS office uses VB. But WordPerfect was never written in java, and never will be.
Quattro, their other "advantage", runs excellently in native mode under Linux, but it's not Corel's any longer, since their merger with Borland/Inprise fell through.
I don't follow. QuattroPro, nee Quattro, was born a Borland product long ago, but wasn't it sold to Novell and then to Corel as part of the WP Office? Quattro being in Corel's office suite didn't have to do with their failed engagement with Borprise.
When quattro was born, the competition was 1-2-3, hence the name. How times change.
This is the endgame for Corel. They are desperate to raise enough cash to keep going for a few more quarters.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
A none core business that doesn't make much money.
The clipart is sold cheap and frankly it must have cost something to assemble and catalog so intensely. My guess is that it lost money. Hamera on the other hand is a startup with rapid growth and the possibility of catching one of the few remaining internet stile IPOs.
Make no mistake about it there are a few of those left and Corel is likely to cash in on one. rebel.com ( Worst company renaming in my memory ) and this new corp are both likely candidates and Corel has a whopping 1/4 of each.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
It takes a little bit of a mindset shift, but I've finally come around to arguing this point:
A Windows application compiled with libwine _IS_ a Linux application. It's a chunk of code that's been compiled on a Linux box and linked with a static library that handles display issues and threading and such. But the binary that's output is a Linux native application -- the only external dependancies are Linux libraries and the kernel. The fact that the source code speaks Win32 is no more important than, for instance, the fact that Perl's source code speaks Posix/Unix -- ActivePerl is still very much a Windows application.
In this configuration, Wine can be thought of as a tangled overcomplicated widget set, handling windowing, display, and threading. It's really only about twice the size of GTK/glib, and less than 50% larger than QT (source tarballs being used for comparison), so the comparison is not too much of a stretch. Plus you get the exciting side bonus of being able to run actual Windows binaries under pseudo-emulation in the other 'traditional' configuration.
I know it's easy to pooh-pooh an application because its source code is originally Win32-based, but really, what is a 'native' Linux application? One that makes only kernel calls? One that only links to libc? If WordPerfect is not 'native' then it could safely be argued that Communicator, for instance, isn't either, since Motif, a display library not 'native' to Linux, is statically linked in.
Once we've compiled an ELF binary whose only external dependencies are libraries that come stock with every Linux distribution, don't we have a native Linux app?
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star awful-ice is a heap of shit. it's bloated, slow, and forces that horrible browser/file manager/word processor metaphor down your throat. what sort of godless wretch would design such a useless interface?
now... consider mozilla. it's taken two years to get to the point where they are considering a beta release. star awful-ice is (in my estimation) at least twice as big as mozilla - (correct me if i'm wrong, please) you do the math.
and even if star awful-ice does grow to dominate the linux office suite market, there are going to be high-quality alternatives, such as abiword.
until sun gets their act together with star awful-ice, more power to corel. they are leading the way for commercial software houses, by proving that their apps can be ported to linux. they have good products (quattro pro kicks excel's ass any day) and are a good company, despite their current financial problems.
plus, with corel's current level of commitment to linux, if they go under it's a possibility that they will just release their code. i'd much rather see the code for wp/qpro released than the trash from sun.
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Corel may need cash badly, but this deal didn't get them any. They got a 23% stake in Hemera and no cash. See http://dailynews.yahoo. com/h/nm/20000717/tc/corel_dc_3.html.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Actually, in a lot of ways I'd rather live in Mississippi than California, although Mississippi isn't my pick of the best places in the southeast to live... I've actually contemplated moving to central Florida. Georgia and the Carolinas don't seem that bad either.
WordPerfect and PhotoPaint in their Linux versions are Win32 .exe's, running under Wine. You can check that yourself (the /usr/bin/photopaint thing is a shell script, launching wine and a /usr/lib/corel/[...]/paint.exe which is the actual program).
They're not native linux binaries, using libwine.
As I said, check for yourself.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
So what if Corel has sold off its library of graphics? It didn't sell off its software (like CorelDraw), and it kept royalty-free redistribution rights. So Corel spun off an non-core buisness. Big deal.
Steven E. Ehrbar
C'mon, why do people have to bring this up EVERY time Corel seems to be having problems (and sometimes even when they're not)?
Yes they did try to port WordPerfect to Java, and they did. It was one of the better Java program ports, but it ended up that in order to make it small and fast enough, they had to take out features that people demanded. Remember that this was around 1996....everybody thought Java was god at the time.....so get over it already.
Corel Draw was the only program I've ever seen with a genuine y2k issue. In June 1999, I got constant GPF's from the app. Tech support told me to check the date on my system, and sure enough it was set for June 2000. A switch back to 1999 fixed the problem.
I'm going to miss their product.
Corel should just bow down to Microsoft and let Office reign supreme. Ever since the helpful magic paperclip, MS Office ruled!
Rader
In fact, having a former life in the photographic industry, I could never figure out what Corel was doing in the stock photographic / images business anyhow. The quality of their libraries were fairly well below the industry normals in addition to some fairly draconian and muddled contract agreements.
In particular, there was an instance where a former employer of mine used some Corel stock images for their catalog. The photographer who actually took the shots summarily attempted to sue my former employer. When Corel was contacted, we learned that certain images in the library were still property of the original artist.
This caused us some deal of confusion since this is not the not the norm for stock photographic images.
This is a prime example of a company getting into a business they really didn't understand (Corel), its about time they started dumping their ancillary business and focusing on software development, rather than services like stock imagery.
I wish them luch, I've been using Corel Wordperfect Office on Win98 and Win2k just to avoid supporting MS Office. I would like to see Corel survive. the new Redmond Applications unit will need competitors.
Corel Office 2000 is a bargain! You can get the whole darned suite for $20 at most places (OEM version) If people cant buy this product at THAT price, then Microsoft will never have any competition I guess.
What would it take for Corel to regain the Office market? How inexpensive do they have to make their products before they're seen as an alternative to MS?
I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure WordPerfect is the only Windows platform product that supports DocBook, anyone have info on others? I dont think Word supports this?
The success of Corel would be a Goodthing(tm), We need more companies like Corel and Adobe that are not swallowed up by Microsoft. I wish them luck, and will continue to support them.
Fear the government that fears your guns. Fear the government that fears your computers. Remove them from my email.
I'm from Ottawa, and something else that was in the news here today (which I doubt appeared anywhere else) is that they closed one of their satellite offices in town to consolidate into their main building. This is logical cost-cutting, and as it doesn't affect their main businesses, I think it's a Good Thing.
This is NOT Corel's death-knell, they are merely selling off some of their clip-art libraries. It's not like clip-art is their core business. They even get to retain permanent license to the material, so that they can still sell clip-art with their graphics programs.
This seems like a win/win scenerio, and annother case of Slashdot overemotional reporting.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Corel's WordPerfect has been viewed as their unique advantage. However, WordPerfect isn't even really a Linux application! It's a Windows application running emulated under WINE. They don't say that on the box, either. Quattro, their other "advantage", runs excellently in native mode under Linux, but it's not Corel's any longer, since their merger with Borland/Inprise fell through.
How much of an advantage will Corel retain once other Linux distributions pick up StarOffice and when Free Software developers put real work into it?
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The money obviously isn't in selling linux. That should go without saying. The money is in selling the other programs that you can't download for free. Perfect Office for example. Corel has problems, yes, and they may not make it, yes, but it's not because their linux excursion is based on a faulty business model. This is a tried and true business model. You think M$ makes much money off Windows? They make the bulk of their income off their application programs (and support contracts) and sell Windows for practically nothing because it increases the demand for those products. Since M$ is using their control of Windows to kill Corel, Corel is seeking to stay alive through expanding to the linux market, and expanding the linux market itself with their distro. This may or may not work, but it's certainly sound strategy.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Honestly, I don't think StarOffice will have that much of an effect, GPL or no GPL. As others have pointed out, it's an absolutely enourmous codebase, and while Open Source has a great track record on projects suited to it (such as the kernel itself) you only need to check out Mozilla for proof that there are some projects it isn't as well suited to, and it is no panacea. StarOffice looks a lot more like Mozilla than Linux to me. At best I expect that if StarOffice is GPLd it will be a boost to projects like AbiWord that will be able to cull it for useful snippets.
Quattro is of course not affected by the Borland merger falling through, but you know that by now. Quattro and WP itself are IMOP far superior products to the M$ competitors, that have been beaten rather badly solely as a consequence of M$ marketing clout resting on control of the OS. Their strategy of trying to produce an end-user friendly linux distro and convert Windows users to Linux (knowing full well that their products simply by virtue of being commercial are unacceptable to a good chunk of existing linux users, and that the people that could be customers are not going to be that eager to change operating systems) is a ballsy move, and I am honestly a little disappointed you seem to want to give them short shrift. Win or lose, they're fighting the good fight against Redmond, and you have to admire that.
I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble getting WP working, but the earlier version that I have here works just fine, I can't help thinking this must be a problem particular to your installation. Admittedly I don't use it that often (I'm a text editor type not a word processor type by inclination, and I also avoid using proprietary software when I can reasonably avoid it) but it is very handy for converting word documents, and adding formatting to text before printing it out, and I've certainly gone well over 4 pages in it. With my link I won't even attempt to download StarOffice, but I have had occasion to use it on another machine, and I must say I was singularly unimpressed. Big (enourmous actually) slow clunky and not at all in the same league as WP. Maybe the subset of hackers that really want an office suite will find it usable, but I don't see many secretaries finding it usable - or many financial officers wanting to write big checks for hardware upgrades to run it at an acceptable speed for that matter.
Finally, I want to say that the programs in the WP suite are far from Corels "unique advantages" - but I have to admit at the moment that statement may be fair. That's what they have on Linux right now. If they can survive a few more months we may see far bigger stuff ported though - things like CorelDraw, Painter, Bryce, and Ventura. WordPerfect is a toy compared to Ventura. The GIMP is great for basic graphics manipulation, but it's no Corel Painter. And I can't think of any Free Software that even attempts to be comparable to Bryce. Truly professional level painting, 3d modelling, and DTP programs are things that the hackers can and will live without, but they are also things that a great many offices cannot. These offices will therefore have no choice but to continue to run Windows or Macs if Corel goes down.
Given all that, I honestly don't see your position here. And I usually find myself agreeing with what you write.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The Java port of the WP Office suite had reached a reasonable beta quality by the time they scrapped it. Public demos were available. It has a pretty broad feature set, and an interesting, somewhat StarOffice-like single-window user interface.
However, this being 1996 and Java being what it was back then, it was too slow to be useful on 95% of the hardware of the day. The level of polish, while not perfect, was very impressive considering that it was done with AWT, these being pre-Swing (and pre-JIT) days.
Since it needed insanely fast hardware (for the time) to run, the goal of deploying it on low-end networked computers wasn't realistic. Add to that the clear trend in the world of terminal computing toward very-thin clients (X, Citrix, Tarantella, etc.), and the reasons for making an office suite for Java-enabled diskless stations fall away. Corel put their thin-client energy, such as it was, into projects like the NetWinder and GraphOn's Citrix-like remote-display-server technology.
It wasn't a "rumor". It was a well-publicized project and a nifty proof-of-concept with working demos open to the public on their website.
The computing world wasn't ready (literally, from a hardware standpoint) for large-scale Java desktop apps at the time.. but Corel, incompetent though they may be, did manage to prove it could be done.
Auctually that would be a brilliant marketing move. Then they sell off their patent to some other company which quickly goes public and is bought out by Corel executives as soon as Corel goes completly dead. They then wait for another business to die a slow painfull death and sue there asses off while they still have some money left. Of course they would have to make several patents to maximize profits. Sorta modularize the proccess.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
His point that they stand no chance up here is a total load of crap, and it shows that he has no idea what's going on in Ottawa. Consider the companies in this area besides Corel: Nortel, Alcatel, Cognos, JDS Uniphase, MDS Nordion, JetForm, Rebel.com, Catena, Nokia, Cisco, Entrust, WorldHeart, webPLAN, Research in Motion, Dy4 Systems, Marconi, GSI Lumonics, CrossKeys, Lockheed Martin, E-Cruiter.com, ....should I go on???
The point is, Canada has a huge talent pool, and the taxes are offset by the low currency value compared to the US dollar. Believe it or not, high-tech companies can exist outside the San Jose hellhole, and many are doing so very successfully, thank you.
Corel's any longer, since their merger with Borland/Inprise fell through.
Uh.....no. Corel owns Quattro Pro and has for awhile...it's been part of the WordPerfect suite since version 7 or earlier. (7 was Corel's first release.) And Quattro Pro doesn't run natively on linux either, it uses libwine like all the rest of WordPerfect Office.
Correct.
This is what Corel's using, so there's no emulation involved. It's a native app.
No, it's not . See my other post on that topic.
This is a (-1, Overrrated)
Correct.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
Televangelism? I know how to get DirecTV, and I know how to turn the TV off when I want. The Klan? Last I checked they were just about everywhere. And although I find them distasteful, it is unlikely that they are going to bother a white boy like me. Rush Limbaugh listeners? You think its any different where I live now? Although the guy annoys me even when I agree with him (which is not all the time of course), he is mostly harmless. He is just a radio personality after all.
You really think that California is any better when it comes to wacky people, big corporations and special interests running things?
There is no place you can get away from such things, but at least the weather in Florida is nice. And yes, I do like hot, humid weather.
There are racists everywhere, I ran into plenty of them when I was in California. Heck, I saw a black guy and a gay guy start a fight right in the middle of the order line at Arby's when I lived in San Francisco.
There are plenty of rednecks where I live now (in the midwest). There are plenty of people in California that I find just as offensive (in different ways) than Rednecks.