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.

Comments

Re:".NET"

[Samrobb]

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:

• It definitely has it's roots in Java, depite what MS marketing hype says. MS couldn't extend-and-embrace Java for legal reasons, so they dropped their efforts and created .NET out of the ashes.
• The most important part of .NET is the CLR (common language runtime). Unlike Java, where the VM is tailored to one language, the CLR is designed to support multiple languages, and to make interoperability between languages much less of a hassle than it is now.
• As far as I can tell from lurking on the .NET mailing list, MS has been very responsive to feedback from beta testers. It looks like the .NET team has made a commitment to delivering something developers want, not something marketing thinks they can sell.
• In true MS fashion, they've identified and are zeroing in on one of the key weakness of Java: it's not standardized. They're putting the primary .NET components (C# and the common language runtime) in the hands of a standards body.

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..."

Irony for the WINE project anyone?

[cxreg]

Doesn't this mean that Microsoft is now paying other people to reverse engineer its own API? What a bizarre world we live in...

Re:What is MS after?

[Samrobb]

I am suspcious about .NET, because it looks like another way to make proprietary MS technologies defacto standards

Yes, this is the standard MS way. As I pointed out elsewhere, though, one of the real business weaknesses of Java is the fact that Sun has refused to submit it to a standards body. Proving that they will do the right thing, if only for the wrong reasons (to kill Java), MS is planning on handing C# and the .NET CLR over to the EMCA. You might be interested in reading The Microsoft.NET Strategy: Risky, Brilliant, or Both? in Dr. Dobbs:

Now here comes the real shine in .NET. When repeatedly asked what prevents C# and CLR being ported to any operating system (say Unix or Linux), often with wry smiles Microsoft officials, often with wry smiles, said "nothing." This means the .NET Framework of C# and CLR makes Microsoft software not only highly interoperable but also portable. So if Linux takes off, Microsoft software will be there. If some .NET appliance software/hardware combination skyrockets -- Microsoft software can quickly move there. And if the DOJ splits up Microsoft, C# and some portions of CLR are already pledged to be standardized through the European organization, ECMA.

What about the Debian angle?

[Bruce Perens]

MS now owns considerable stock, albeit non-voting, in a company that vends Debian commercially. For some reason I find that amusing.

Bruce

Worse, much worse, than "irony"

[dskoll]

I see something much more sinister for the WINE project that Microsoft simply killing off Corel's involvement in WINE.

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.

Maybe this isn't so bad...

[AFCArchvile]

I mean, think about the benefits that it will spawn. Better D3D support in Bryce and Poser. Secret optimizations for Draw. Full .DOC compatibility for WordPerfect.

It's time to start thinking outside the Linux box.