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Microsoft Buys into Corel
Geek Boy writes: "Yahoo is one of the many sites with the story that Microsoft has purchased 24 million non-voting shares of Corel!" So now Microsoft has Word, and a big stake in Word Perfect. Hedging your bets ain't bad, course what will this mean for the Corel Office for Linux suite? And while they are non-voting shares, this looks like a huge percentage of Corel.
The official Corel announcement can be found here.
There already is a Windows emulator that doesn't run on Linux or Windows. It's called Odin, and it has surpassed Wine in functionality.
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WordPerfect 5.1 would make a pretty sweet text-mode editor.
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Living in Ottawa, I am glad that someone has helped Corel out, since having Corel shutdown would be a bit painful to the local economy. I can only wonder what Microsoft wants with Corel, though.
Thoughts that occur to me are:
- Microsoft needs competition, and having WordPerfect go away would be very bad for their Anti-trust suit
- Microsoft wants a decent-quality suite of drawing products (Microsoft frequently seems to buy technology and re-work it over and over until it's just right... Mostly)
- They certainly couldn't want Wordperfect or the WordPerfect suite.. It hasn't been stable since 5.1 (The last WordPerfect Corporation version of WordPerfect).
- Corel Linux (Debian) is uninteresting to them. Microsoft could have bought or built their own Linux distribution, with full MS Office compatibility if they chose. They didn't chose to.
- Corel's hardware business is all but defunct -- they couldn't want that.
- I seem to recall that Corel sold off the Clip-Art division a while ago.
I tend to think item #1 is the real reason this transaction occured, with #2 a second.
Currently Corel ports their windows software and run it on top of WINE. Being strapped for cash they can't afford to add .Net and expand the WINE API. [ No, $135 Million isn't enough to do both, IMHO.]
The net effect is that Corel drifts away from putting their products on Linux and fades from WINE project. No lawsuit necessary.
Like the saying goes "money talks".
You can also look at it as a leverage in case of a break up. In a break it would be in the development/OS groups best interest to have more than one Office suite player in the market.
Like the Apple deal I think this is a "win/win" sort of investment. Since the stock is extremely depressed , if Corel is sucessful and (no matter what path they take to that success) Microsoft wins.
And yes, I know that site was a prank. And one that's worthy of checking out; it can't be long until M$ shuts it down...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The second most important thing about this is that Microsoft gets to control the "bouncing" of Borland Paradox, which appears to be the nearest thing that there is on Linux to a competitor to MS Access.
There are all sorts of other opportunities for "paranoid delusion," notably that this might diminish the ability of Corel to continue to support WINE efforts as a technology that was independent of Microsoft.
Which is distressing if you were planning to put your millions of dollars worth of development effort into cloning Win32 software over to Linux via libWINE, but that sounds rather paranoid-delusional. There are probably as many millions going into that as went into cloning Win16 software over to unix via Willows TWIN...
I think I'll go with "Control over WP's Next Disposition" as the most likely value of this to MSFT...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Well, Corel's stock is getting a nice price bounce. It closed at 3-11/16 but is now trading at about 7-1/8 in after hours. Can't wait to see what happens when the market opens in the morning.
Makes me really happy I held on to my Corel shares even when Linux started falling out of favor with the market. Of course, I miss when Corel was up over 30.
World Beach List, my latest project.
This is very true. And perhaps more on the business side, Corel has another 24 million dollars to play with, considering the low supply of money.
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Hmmm. So if I read correctly, ".NET" is going to allow any language to run anywhere. Presumably through an API. Presumably through a Windows API. Corel has experience hacking the Windows API -- they've had to do it to get their apps to run on Windows, let alone their involvement with WINE.
And who's desperate enough to do MS's bidding on Windows API hacking? Certainly not the core WINE folk... but Corel is!
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Who thinks that Corel's new 'strategic partner' in Redmond will let Corel proceed with any kind of effective deployment of Linux on the desktop? This stinks to heaven.
No, they won't outright cancel it, that would be too obvious. They'll just get a little - defocussed. Yeah. That's it. Defocus them.
We can kiss Corel goodbye as far as Linux goes, and that's one big victory for the evil empire. OK, who's going to step up to the plate now, with a new distro to go head-to-head with Microsoft? Oh yeah. Sun. OK, Scott, your turn... fire two.
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We shouldn't need a major share buyout to get interoperatability between major apps. If Microsfot stuck to open standards, or published details of new API's in the first place we wouldn't have a problem.
The only comfort I draw from this is that they are non-voting shares.
Er, no.
CorelDraw is *the best* vector graphics illustration program on the market. Illustrator notwithstanding.
Corel Ventura is *the best* long document publishing software available. Framemaker not withstanding.
Paradox is *the best* desktop-class database available. Access97 isn't even in the running, lousy piece of expletive-deleted.
Photopaint is *in the top two* bitmap graphics illustration/art/manipulation programs available, despite it's weird interface. Photoshop notwithstanding.
WordPerfect is *in the top two* word processing/simple page layout programs available. And it does a decent job of SGML/XML. Word2000 notwithstanding.
Quattro is *in the top two* spreadsheet programs available. Excel notwithstanding.
Corel has an incredible product line... and an INCREDIBLE inability to market it! Plus, they shoot themselves in the foot every few releases by releasing unusably buggy shite.
They're *so* close to being great... but *so* damn bad at it!
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Woops! That should be 24 million shares, $135 million.
Apologies to BNL,
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Er, no. As a technical writer, I have extensive experience in both products.
WordPerfect is better. It's easier (but different) to use, and it is *far* easier to accomplish many things in WP: indexing, page layout, cross-referencing.
But Word is the defacto standard. Not because it is a better product, but because it was better marketed.
It's now at the point where Word has such dominance that one can't get away from it. It's like white cheddar versus that godawful orange-dyed chedder. It's not impossible to find real cheddar, but it's damn difficult!
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Here is a listing provided by Microsoft of Microsoft investments and acquisitions. It was last updated on 9/18/00 with the acquistion of Pacific Microsonics.
Hmmmmmm.
Corel Office Suite Java ==> Microsoft Office Suite in C# (C-Sharp).
It'd work, if they disguise the appearance of the products. They have very similar functionality. The Corel products would need to lose some functions (ie. "Reveal Codes") and gain some bugs (ie. "Losing track of captions and buggering the numbering"), but with a MSOffice toolbar and paper clip "assistant," I'll betcha it'd slip by most people...
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As someone who picks up stock in "dead stock" companies who still have okay products -- CORL, SGI, etc -- this is a big day for me. Time to start picking out a new ride...
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Yes, you're exactly right. Microsoft's entire infatuation with XML has been in response to Java. They are trying to get the industry behind something that could get people away from this sick (from Microsoft's perspective) obsession with Java .class files and serialized object streams.
Yes, except that the most critical need for standardization (in Java and .NET both) are the
API's, not the language or the JVM. Microsoft
never truly cared about extending the JVM with
new bytecodes or adding syntactical sugar to the
language, they just wanted to dissipate Sun's
ability to define what class libraries software
would be written to.
Microsoft has no intention of standardizing that aspect of .NET any more than
they do of standardizing the Win32 API, and all
talk about the critical importance of standardization to the developer (and the horrid, horrid prospect of all programmer's being forced to use a single language) on the street
is all so much spin to try to cut Sun's legs
out from under them on control of API's.
Which, to be fair, is what Sun is pushing Java against Microsoft for. But let's not pretend that there is something magical about standardization of syntax when the stuff that software is actually built out of (classes) are not being standardized.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
No doubt this will get moderated into oblivion...
.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java. Before dismissing it out of hand, just because it originated from MS, keep this in mind:
All in all, it sounds like this is MS hedging their bets. Having a version of the .NET runtime available for *nix would mean that MS could start trying to lure shops using Java into the MS fold. If C#/.NET become formally standardized, given the number of open source developers out there, someone, somewhere, will do the hard work for them and make their environment available elsewhere (and everywhere...)
Meanwhile, while no *nix developer would think about corrupting their precious kernel to make .NET run any faster, MS has no such qualms. They will probably be tweaking Win2002 to get every last drop of performance from .NET, so they can point at Linux - and the open source supported versions of .NET - and say "See, you can even run your .NET solutions on these low-end systems; and when you're ready to step up to the big time, you can just move your apps over to a real enterprise OS..."
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
True enough. Heck, Microsoft brought us D0S, how could anyone possibly ever threaten such a l337 company?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Corel promised to support Microsoft's ".NET", whatever it really is. I have no idea how, and what will Corel do with its Linux software -- ".NET" is supposed to be tied to Windows.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm surprised not to find any mention of the fact that M$ killed off WordPerfect by bundling Word (a proprietary and arguably inferior product,) and is once again in jeopardy of having evidently engaged in successful anti-competitive behavior.
If Corel dies, M$ find itself in deeper water with the anti-trust case back on again. If they don't play nice, like invest big in Corel, there'll be a courtroom full of Ottawans who will gladly make the trek to heckle the M$ lawyers.
Remember how Word '97 couldn't read some files from earlier Word versions? If you wanted to read '97 files you had to update. Whether you wanted to or not or needed to or not.
This coming on the heels of having to update to the previous version of Word, not bcause you wanted to but because they were bundling enough copies with big enough clients that you ended up needing to switch because you couldn't read the files.
If I tried M$s sales tactics, I'd be in jail. And deservedly so.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Doesn't this mean that Microsoft is now paying other people to reverse engineer its own API? What a bizarre world we live in...
God Fucking Damnit
Do I see a pattern here? MS beats competition (_A_pple, _B_orland _C_orel etc.) to the ground before grabbing a stake in them, "settling legal issues" and leaving them on lifesupport so that everything looks fine and dandy to the gov't watchdogs. Was Corel's Office for Linux a real threat to MS, and what will become of Corel's Linux initiatives after this?
IIRC some state attorney-generals were planning (in '97, '98?) to sue MS for using the Windows monopoly to kill competitors to MS-Office, but that suit was put on a backburner when the DOJ managed to pull the AGs together for the browser/anti-trust case instead. Perhaps Corel didn't have the money to pursue that suit and settled for MS Airsupply instead. How sad, how MS.
Anyway, now I almost hope that Corel the MS-subsidiary would get out of the Linux space and leave the arena to companies and communities not owned by Microsoft.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
The anti-trust case against them has nothing to do with whether there IS competition to Microsoft's products. It has to do with whether their business practices hindered competition and whether they used their monopoly status in one area, operating systems, to create a monopoly in another area, Browsers etc. IANAL and I'm far from being an expert in anti-trust law, but I do know that the issue has never been whether there IS competition, only whether they had hindered competition.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
MS needs competition on the .NET platform too. Without some competition their DoJ situation as well as public acceptance of .NET is at increased risk. Corel simply makes the next most competitive Office suite on Windows and MS needs it to be on .NET too.
/. have to have something to do with Linux? :)
.NET as a serious alternative to locally installed apps they also need stuff like a half decent drawing and painting programs. MS's own attempts at such programs haven't exactly been well received (understatement) - so who do they turn to?
.NETed.
IMHO, it has _nothing_ to do with Linux. (doesn't everything posted on
Okay, seriously, in order for MS to sell
Adobe? not a chance, it'll be a lond time before their heavy duty apps are
Corel's got the goods. Half decent programs marketed at consumers and seriously in need for some cash infusion and positive PR.
It was probably a no-brainer on both sides.
OFF TOPIC QUESTION:
Does anyone else think that Corel may be rethinking their Linux committment anyway? -- Their distro, rejected by core Linux users, and the OS on the whole still not ready for Mom & Pop systems - has left them with a costly investment that isn't showing any signs of making money in the near future.
Perhaps Eazl/Helix will have more success as the OS will have had more time to mature and begin to approach some semblence of (consumer-level)hardware compatability parity with Win9x by the time they debut their consumer oriented offerings. (usb, ieee1394, "soft" printers, DVD...)
--Aaron Greenberg
They would have encouraged Cowpland to stay on as CEO and just let the company lay like a floundering tuna.
I doubt Microsoft cares too much about WordPerfect, it hasn't been a very popular product since before Windows.
Honestly, I don't see what Microsoft see's in Corel. Why would you bail out a company you intended to crush when they were doing such a good job at imploding by themselves?
The only thing I see is the CorelDraw and other creative apps.
They're just trying to prop-up a competitior when they seem likely to fall, so they don't seem like a monopoly. It's the exact same thing they did with Apple when they were in a similar bind.
-Karl
With 24 million non-voting shares, M$ can still tell Corel to "drop Linux and go .NET or else we shall *sell* the shares at a *very* low price", thus causing Corel to totally crash.
Considering Corel hasn't been doing too well, financially speaking, for quite a while I wouldn't be too surprised is M$ was using this kind of tactics to crush a potential competitor in the OS+office apps market.
Call me paranoid, but it sounds "logical" to me. M$ can't do anything else because they have their tentacles tied with a nice antitrust procecution, but they have plenty of money to lose for such games.
I mean, Corel is the only software company that offers a full package without anything from M$, and still have a pretty good reputation when it comes to office apps (much better than StarOffice). And people (the administrative kind) who only use their PCs for word processing, speadsheet and net stuff basically don't give a rat's ass regarding the OS it's running on, since most of them don't know what it is.
What do you guys think?
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
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I just realized something. Corel had a Java version of their office suite out there years ago. PCs were too slow and the Java VMs were still crude but now you should be able to get acceptable performance out of a web browser.
M$ is doing it again. Buying out (or helping out and getting cross licences from the guy with the Vaseline on his butt,) an old competitor for their other IP and turning around and calling it their own invention.
Same crap they've pulled since QDOS.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Perhaps so, but I've been somewhat disappointed with CorelDRAW 9 for Linux. Compared to CorelDRAW 3 (the only other version I've used extensively), it's far more fully featured, but the user interface is awful. It now takes several times longer to accomplish the same tasks. I guess the Windows version has the same flaws, though. Overall performance is OK, but not great, probably due to rushing it to market rather than getting WINE working right, and there are still niggling little bugs. As you say, they're so close, but just keep getting it wrong.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This is a VERY similar deal to the one MS cut with Borland/Inprise about a year and a half ago. Borland's legal claims were actually pretty strong (especially for unfair hiring practices: MS crippled whole teams by throwing multimillion-dollar offers at dozens of key developers), but Microsoft also took a fairly large (10%) stake in Inprise. This was the huge boost in that company's bankroll that enabled them to get back on their feet and become the competitive company that they are today. The deal included all the same "Borland agrees to support MS's API of the hour" stuff as well. Note that Borland started the Kylix project (Linux port of Delphi and C++Builder) only AFTER receiving this Microsoft infusion, so I think the conspiracy theorists should just relax. There are, however, much more compelling antitrust reasons for this deal. If WordPerfect Office completely disappeared (which was pretty unlikely, but not 100% impossible), there would be a whole new line of antitrust inquiries against future versions of Office. Their move to a subscription model could be seen as classic monopolistic behavior (now that they're locked in, we won't even have to come up with upgrades anymore). The real threat to Corel's Linux strategy is the fact that they're not making a lot of money from it (Corel Draw for Linux, anyone?). --JRZ
If this were the case, why does MS have such a vastly greater marketshare than WordPerfect. This isn't the same Windows monopoly: people are actually going to purchase Office over WordPerfect.
As an example, I had a brief parttime job at a computer store over one summer. WordPerfect and Office came out with new editions at roughly the same time. I saw people completely walk past the huge ad display set up for WordPerfect (which sat in the middle of the aisle) and walk straight to Office. They didn't have to buy Word. They wanted to.
The point is, most people don't find WordPerfect better than Word. The people who do normally have been using it for years and have it stuck in their organizations (I find IT divisions have a real hard time removing WordPerfect completely from their company networks. The program and things like Netware gradually get intertwined). Most others, however, find Word superior.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
http://yahoo. cne t.com/news/0-1003-200-2917375.html?pt.yfin.cat_fin .txt.ne
Some choice snippets from the article:
"In turn, the two companies will work together on developing and testing products for Microsoft's .Net effort, which lets customers "rent" software over the Internet. Microsoft.Net will also encompass cell phones and handhelds computers."
Rather unsettling, eh?
"The two companies have also agreed to settle unspecified legal issues between them."
Anybody happen to have an idea on just which legal issues they might be referring to?
""They didn't want Apple to go away as a major competitor and they probably don't want Corel to go away right away, especially when things are on appeal," Enderle said. The deal may also give Microsoft access to in-house technology at Corel, including some Linux technology."
MS Linux? ::shivers::
Microsoft has never tried to use their investment with Apple as leverage, and they won't with Corel, either. It's not the threat (we now own 1/4 of your company!) it's the carrot. "Play well with us, and we'll give you more money, outright, than most companies make in a year." And if they'll give their mortal enemies that much cash, think of what they'll do for their friends....
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"(In order to use .NET you have to run Win2K servers)"
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer.
But we have some lovely parting gifts for you at the receptionists desk.
.Net is many things, but one major aspect of it is cross-platform interoperability through SOAP and other mechanisms.
It really amazes me the number of people who are so blinded by their hatred for Microsoft that they are unwilling or rather unable to admit when the company has a really good idea.
Not investing money in the company would be a much easier way to kill off applications.
I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories that make no sense, much less conspiracy theories in general.
1) This is about 1/4 of corels' outstanding shares.
2) This is NON-VOTING. They have *NO* say in what corel does, period.
3) It IS a good investment. Corel stock is low; linux might be big; and microsoft IS a business.
4) Competition, or perceived competition, is GOOD for Microsoft.
What's wrong with making an investment? This is non-voting stock; purely an investment> That's all it CAN be.
These are 'prefferred' shares, right?
Are they not convertible to 'common' shares, under certain terms? Perhaps those terms hinge on performance of corel?
Very interesting question - especially since they own a significant number of non-voting Apple shares, as well.
Microsoft must simply see a benefit in keeping alive the appearance of competition for anti-trust reasons. "Oh, we're the benevolent ones who try to help everyone out when they're down"
At under $9B market cap, I'd prefer to see Larry Ellison buy Apple with his pocket change and see what might happen.
I can see Larry now... "OK, you artsy-fartsy pansy asses... we're going to make this crap into a rip-roarin' e-business platform driving the Internet. iMac? Expensive NC. Let's rip out the storage, use a G4 Cube as your app server running Oracle 9i, and get you some productivity. Enough with the Picasso shit. No more of this Gandhi on ads. I want to have ads with you pot-smokers sitting on the mounds of cash you can make when we straighten you all out."
-Nev
What did MS get out of this? IE on Mac desktops everywhere and MORE importantly the validation of Apple Inc in the eyes of consumers. This meant that Apple could continue to offer it's products in the same exact stores as MS does. MS makes IE standard (which it is even on Macs), and maintains the view that MS is not alone.
Move forward to Oct 00. MS invests in Corel. Why? Easy, MS NEEDS Linux and more speficially, Corel, which makes an Office suit which it BUNDLES with a Linux, to continue to exist. If Corel die and it's Office Suite divested, it adds to the arguement that MS needs to be broken up. If Corel thives and lives in the consumer space, just as Apple has, MS can point to them and say, "Hey, they bundle Office, and a share of the desktop space...".
MS investment in Apple justified Apple in the consumer world at a time when they were down. MS investment in Corel will do the same.
They can't let Corel die. It's makes bad business sense.
Burn Hollywood Burn
You're one of the real Bruce Perens.
Yeah, and that implicit cast from the integer Bruce Perens makes me kind of uncomfortable, too.
real BrucePerens = 3872;
Bingo Foo
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They have a list of MS' spending spree over the years. (look under 'departments')
AC comments get piped to
Corel, GPL WordPerfect now.
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It's gonna happen, i'm scared. MSlinux.org
Oh goody. Finally a distribution of Linux that's pre-destined to be more pissed on than Red Hat.
It's good not to run the underdog anymore.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
My take is that this is potenially very good, and also potentially bad, but most likely good.
.NET initiative (as stated).
.NET, because it looks like another way to make proprietary MS technologies
.NET you have to run Win2K servers). On the other hand, there just may be a possibity that MS will actually play fair and open up .NET (not too likely). Probably the best we can hope for is that MS will be only partially successfull, and .NET will be one of several choices for application servers.
Why does MS want to invest in Corel?
1. To prop up its
2. To keep a competitor in business, to blunt the monopoly charges.
3. To make money, since Corel shares are likely to go up.
I am suspcious about
defacto standards, with which they can leverage Win2000 deployment, and shut out competitors in the server space. (In order to use
I wonder what else Corel is getting out of this. Could it be that MS will be more forthcomming in
providing information about Windows APIs so Corel apps will be able to run better on Windows?
Perhaps even, they will allow Corel to migrate some technologies to Linux (I'm a dreamer!). One of the reasons why WPO2000 is not feature-complete on Linux (in my limited understanding) is because
MS will not allow certain DLLs to be shipped with programs that run on Wine.
Only time will tell. This is interesting though!
John Craig
If MS is broken up, I am willing to bet that the
Corel shares will go to the OS part of MS. That
way they will might still be able to exert
a great deal of influence on the Office Suite
market. With Corel's puny market share in the Office App market, it might look like a
minor investment now. But I think it would be very good for M$ in the post break up years.
Then we could have two competing Office Suites
with significant developer strength. Office and
MS - Corel Wordperfect Suite.
As much as I stand for the flaming of Microsoft, supposedly, the Word format IS supposedly available on their web site. But I've heard it's documented lamely enough as to be completely unusable, but I guess this is how the Star Office people got the information they needed to implement it.
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Got Rhinos?
Presidential debates?
I hope they do some fucking drug-testing there!
Soylent Green is people!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If they want "Windows everywhere," and they will get called upon to support desktop applications on WINE, they could want to ensure that WINE is in fact able to run.
This is embrace, extend and extinguish: if Office 2002 runs out-of-the-box on Linux+WINE, trouble free, and your company has sold its soul to Office subscriptions anyway, why fight the headaches of StarOffice or other half-compatible solutions?
[
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The money is urgently needed by cash-poor Corel, and this little amount (to M$, of course) can keep a dying competitor on a life-support, just a way to avoid being beaten up by the Justice Dept.
this link returns:
"Your browser sent a message this server could not understand."
Yup, microsoft is in da house.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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This aughta be +5... note why Microsoft has plans to port a lot of its apps to Mac (mostly games, +office too), and why IE is available on Solaris: Microsoft likes to pay off competitors with legal itches by providing products on their platform and investing in them instead of facing the much, much more unpredictable courts. Expect to see IE on Linux soon. Very soon. And bundled with Corel Linux.
MS's investment in Apple was $150 Million, non-voting shares
Apple didn't "drop" Netscape; it is still present to this day on MacOS 9.0.4 install CD's, and will be installed automatically by the default installer script. IE is chosen as the default HTTP handler, and that can be easily switched by changing your Internet preferences.
Hell, you can simply not install IE in the first place if you don't want it.
Once again, when it comes to *actual* information about what Apple does, the Slashdot crowd just simply doesn't know: and the average person doesn't know either.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Hmmm,
Maybe killing all present and future Corel's Linux port of applications? Remember corel draw 10? Bryce?
say bye bye...
ofcourse, with the official claim: "not much demand"...
Mark my words
Hetz (Heunique)
My dear NAIVE friend...
Yes, MS is business, but it's politics also...
Want Example? sure..
According to IDC, Linux got more workstation installations than the Mac (and I'm talking about SOLD Linux distribution copies - NOT the one you downloaded few days ago) - so in reality - Linux workstation installation is at least (being conservative here) twice then Mac..
Yet, MS doesn't port their Office to Linux. We all know that Linux can run Linux port of office quite nicely, and that more and more people install Linux - yet MS claims there is no demand, which is a lie ofcourse...
So, if MS was business only, then we could have a port of MS Office a year ago..
Hetz (Heunique)
They didn't have any control over the course Apple was and is taking, yet Steve Jobs WAS thankful enough to make IE the default browser on the Mac, AND state publicly that it was the BEST browser choice available.
(thank goodness we now have OmniWeb!)
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Many people have wondered why Corel did not sue MS for damages after MS was convicted of being a monopoly. Some of the states had originally wanted to make MS Office the focus of the anti-trust suit. MS did the similar deal with Inprise a few years ago. If Corel is dropping any threat of law suits now then MS is getting off lucky. On the other hand, Corel does not have the resources to spend millions in court and needs the money now not years from now.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
The idea is to take their libraries, bend them to fix the MS Office motif and publish a single word processor. They don't have voting rights now, but they will have them soon, I can guarantee it.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Quark? For long document publishing? You're a loony.
Ventura is for publishing long documents: fifty to five thousand pages of content, in book format.
Quark is for laying out advertisements, brochures and other piddly documents. It simply doesn't support the functions needed to publish long, complicated documents. Not with any grace or ease, at any rate.
I think you'll find this link enlightening: [Comparison of Ventura, Framemaker, Pagemaker and Quark]. Though there's every chance that, having always done things the hard way, you won't realize that features like paragraph numbering, footnotes and page imposition are essential when creating long technical documents.
As for your assertion that Freehand and Illustrator are "first choice" products -- you're right: in the same way that Windows9x is the "first choice" in operating systems.
But that doesn't make them the *best*.
In terms of sheer functionality, the Corel products I listed are best-of-class or in the top two or three.
You can run with the crowd. That's apparently what you've chosen to do. You don't have to think... but you'll have to work harder, and you won't be able to do live up to your potential best.
Or you can use the best products to create the best work, with less work. You'll have to take the time to identify what software has the most functionality, and you'll have to go against the crowd. But at least you'll be able to be the best.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
.NET will be Coming to a Linux Distribution near you.
Time to start studying SOAP!
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Noooo! Noooo! It's just too sad, I'll be forced to VI and ispell, Latex and I don't know what. Man the GNOME word processor source, batten the hatches, the Borg has landed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
...that soon after Cowpland left, something like this would happen. I used to respect Corel for being brave (or is that dumb?) enough to try to take on MS in the Office app market, and folks like Adobe in the graphics market. They had (or have?) a really good product core in the Corel Draw line, but I think the battle on the Office package front, plus diluting the company even more with unfocused forays in linux weakened what was Canada's greatest software giant into the MS fodder it has become today. Sad news.
Going on means going far
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Remember how Word '97 couldn't read some files from earlier Word versions? If you wanted to read '97 files you had to update. Whether you wanted to or not or needed to or not.
I certainly do not remember this because what you state is FALSE
Word 97 was perfectly capable of reading earlier versions of Word files. Earlier versions of Word could not necessarily read Word 97 files, that is what happens when file formats are upgraded. Other software programs have done this. This was documented and announced when Office 97 came out.
The complaint was this, that when you were working with Word 97 and choose to save as a Word 95, it did not save it in true .doc format (binary compatible). Instead, the output was a Rich Text Format, which is not as "robust" as 95 format (ie 6.0). Microsoft goofed, admitted it, and released a binary level converter that would save as true Word 95 docs.
Also, Microsoft released a free Word 97 viewer so users of earlier version could view and print. Also, they released an add-on to Word 95 so that owners could open Word 97 docs and modify them, even if formatting features of the new version were lost if there was not a compatible feature in the 95 version.
More than fair for them to release these freebies. The stink was that they did not inform the user that the Save As command in 97 was RTF.
Get your facts straight. People always complain about the lies MS or others say about Linux and Open Source/Free Software, well make sure you don't spread lies about MS as well. Damn them for what they do, not what you have a vague rememberance of what they might have done. And telling someone who sends you a file, you cannot read it in the format sent is VALID to do. Linux users say it all the time. If they want to communicate to you, they will.
Anyone ever play the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon? There should be a n degrees of Microsoft, 2 or 3 would probably be realistic.
I don't know offhand if there's any Corel-MS litigation recently. But it wouldn't be suprising if the new Corel management used MS's current troubles to extract a little greenmail. After all, they own WordPerfect, Paradox, and Quatro Pro -- all products which MS succeeded in burying, whether by fair means or foul. If this is true, neither company will ever, ever admit it.
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Microsoft signs a special deal so Corel gets access to Windows source code "to help build .NET." M$ sits still for six months. M$ then sues the WINE project, claiming that some of Corel's contributions are covered under NDA. Of course, M$ won't have a leg to stand on, but its ability to draw out court cases will kill off WINE.
I believe the WINE leaders should thank Corel profusely for their contributions in the past -- and immediately cease to accept any further contributions from Corel.
The name of the company is ZINMAL. What is ZINMAL? ZINMAL Is Not Microsoft's Answer to Linux. Zinmal will take all the software that Corel has released under the GPL, repackage it under the Zinmal label, and continue to develope it independantly of Corel. All the Slashdot types who care about the GPL will buy Zinmal distributions and refuse to have anything to do with Corel. Corel's proprietary products will be treated with the same disdain as Microsoft's proprietary products. People who work at Corel will flee to come work for the new startup, and Zinmal will eventually be purchased either by VA Linux (LNUX) or RedHat (RHAT).
This is one stupid purchase. MSFT needs to wake up and realize that Linux can't be bought, and that profitability in the software market is shrinking long term due to the presence of Free Software. Concentrate on the hardware, dum-dums. You can't pirate hardware as easily as you can pirate software.
NOTICE to those who read both Yahoo! stock message boards and Slashdot: istartedi==smm7epub
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Suppose that MS were working on a office for linux port... where else would you go for people experienced with office suites for linux? Corel, of course...
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
It's time to start thinking outside the Linux box.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I don't think this will have any effect at all on Linux. If you read the story, it appears that Microsoft won't actually have any control over the company's strategies. In fact, this seems to be similar to when they bought a good chunk of Apple a few years ago. They essentially don't have any control over the course Apple was and is taking. I think they're just a big shareholder.