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Corel to Sell Off Linux Division
Newsforge (also owned by the sinister Andover keiretsu) is reporting on Corel's latest move in the world of Linux - an advance in the retrograde direction. Corel apparently plans to sell off its Debian-based distro, but retain WordPerfect and CorelDraw. Yahoo and Linux Today also have stories.
Of course, I'll just get modded down for saying this, but operating systems are just not a viable product, especially open-source operating systems with no killer app. One of the reasons I think the DOJ's arguments about Microsoft are stupid is that if you split MS into two companies (OS and applications), the OS company will die. Microsoft makes its money on apps; controlling the OS is only a way of controlling the app space. No wonder Corel couldn't make money selling Linux.
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I had to refresh the page when I saw the top headline...
I could have sworn I'd seen it before...
I have $19.47 and a bus pass in my pocket I can be persuaded to part with.
So I guess Corel bends down: ("..evangelizing the Macintosh to prove that [Corel does] 'think different,'") -for apple .NET)
and bends over:
(..WordPerfect to Microsoft's
-for Microsoft too.
There is no spork.
Corel's linux divison? I mean hell, you can just copy their work for free....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Corel was a major contributor to the WINE project. It was a good business plan when they had applications to port to Linux (WordPerfect, etc.) but now that they're splitting the linux group from the applications, the business case to continue development (and certainly the resource availability) is severely diminished.
My e-mail app just started running on WINE, and now I see no reason to run Windows at all. I suspect many others are realizing the same thing. What would WordPerfect for Linux do to the demand for Word for Linux? Somebody tell me there's no conspiracy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No, really. It is, I saw it not more than an hour ago. Almost bought it, too - except that Mandrake and Win98 together have conspired to turn my poor little box into heaps of plastic (anyone have spare 72-pin memory chips lying around? i could use an upgrade...)
sig not found
But why should we care?
So what if one company has decided to bail out of the world of Linux?
Linux is doing fine by itself
No offense to anyone, but I was a major Corel fan too, but even I knew that it was doomed to failure
Right now, more than anything, us linux/bsd people need to support and open source Office replacement, like Koffice, or Star office
Giving us binaries, that require WINE is something that Linux/bsd users should never stoop too. We showed the world that free and open doesn't mean "suck", it means great!
Power on Linux/bsd users!! and NEVER think about windows binaries again!!
Good thing I'm a history buff, otherwise this blanket bullsh$t statement might convince me. I dunno, but it seems that carriage/cart makers could be considered 'open source', in that their product will work with any 'operating' system out there: horses, donkeys, mules, oxen, people. Worse, in times past, trade secrets just didn't exist ... yes, everybody knew how to make everyone elses products! Heck, even today, an industry as huge as life insurance is based on a few simple tables that everyone has access to.
I happen to like WordPerfect, especially in preference to Word. Reality is, the reason M$ is so successful has nothing to do with the quality of their product (hugely inferior for most of it's life), but the fact it's been sold as part of a 'package' ... a package which, strangely enough, includes it's own OS. M$ virtually gave it's various OS away, for the sole purpose of making the playing field more biased (on many levels) to their other products, such as Word.
Looking at just the OS is shortsighted: look at the whole package ... and then figure how much money they made on the combination.
Face it. Linux is communism, plain and simple
Of course, one could point out that it's more correctly socialistic,or even anarchistic, than communist, but your drivel seems to indicate you believe anything that isn't CAPITALISM (U.S. Version, T.M.) is communism. . Most of the world lives under a system that combines capitalism and socialism. Pure Capitalism is about as viable as Pure Communism, that is, not at all. Based on architecture alone, I suspect *nix will kick WinWhatever: the minor detail that tens of thousands of socially minded geeks are making a better product than the capitalistic monkeys at M$ can kinda proves that IT DOES WORK.
Instead of selling, they should just 'open source' the entire division and let anyone come in and use their offices. I'm sure they won't, money grubbing bastards!
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I read an article back when Corel first introduced their version of Linux. (I actually knew about the release about a year earlier, when I got a tour of the Corel Computers offices, but that's another story...). It stated that Corel's plan, although not publicized in any way, was fairly obvious. By providing a user-friendly, Windows-like Linux distro, they could increase the number of Linux users. Knowing that M$ wouldn't likely port their apps over to Linux, they could then essentially corner the market with the WordPerfect suite. THIS is where the real money would be, not in the OS itself, but in the applications that Corel planned on building up user support for.
Have to admit, this made sense. One cannot make money on a Free OS, no matter how much you charge for the box, manuals, and support, especially in an age where high speed access is becoming more widespread, slowly making traditional distribution models (ie.- off-the-shelf) obsolete. However, by offering "crippled" versions of their applications for free, they COULD make money, especially to the market they were aiming for. Most people who would use Corel Linux wouldn't go near, say, Debian, because they want user-friendliness, and M$-like configurability. These same people would then get the online version of WP, use it, and realize they want more TrueType fonts, macros, filters, etc., that could only be obtained with the commercial version of the software. So, they would dutifully trudge out to their local store, or visit corel.com, and buy the package. The same would apply to CL versions of CorelDraw, etc..
However, there was a problem. The Linux market took a nose-dive. Suddenly the Linux buzz started dying off, and Corel dropped from $61/share to $2.50 ($CDN prices folks). Cowpland resigned, and the plan wasn't looking as feasible. So, spin off the OS now, instead of after the expected boom in usage, because the boom isn't going to happen any time soon. This way, the problem isn't theirs. They can continue to provide the apps, and over time, they just might make a profit from them, especially if the spin-off does a decent job of building and supporting CL.
Mind you, /. readers don't tend to fall into the category Corel was looking for. Not many actually use CL, some might of installed it on a separate partition just to take a look-see, but most returned to their Red-Hat/Debian/Slackware/whatever distros and happily hacked away in their xterms.
Point being, *IF* Linux had continued to stay at its peak, and *IF* Corel's version grabbed a decent share of the market, then the plan of providing the OS for free and selling the apps *COULD* have made them a mint. Unfortunately, none of the ifs were realized, so Corel is once again struggling to stay afloat.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
What will the hundreds of corel linux users do now ? ;)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
- DR (Digital Research) DOS ("A better DOS than DOS"), and
- WordPerfect (including the bulk of the WP suite)
Additionally, they had reasonably good relations with Corel, famous for their Draw product.It would have taken only a few KLoC (K Lines of Code) to integrate the lot or, make the pieces talk to each other but, Novell couldn't decide whether to shit or get off the pot. So, they flushed DR DOS down the can seeing that Windows had just made it's first big surge in the market and, sold WordPerfect to Corel for a fraction of original cost. One major opportunity to produce competition for "the collective" lost.
So now Corel has WordPerfect, a perfectly good non-collective product and ditches their up-and-coming OS, once again terminating (at least part of) another opportunity to compete with "the collective."
On days like this I am really thankful that Linux does not live or die because of one person or one company.
Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Fellow slashdotters,
I am still somewhat new here; is it harmful to me to reply to obviously braindead trolls? Will he come visit me and gun me down? {/sarcasm}
For one SuSE is making a profit, for another, Red Hat actually expects to make a profit earlier than predicted. The point is these companies do not make their money selling support to individuals, but to businesses. Because of their Open Source methods, the individual customer can profit from this even without paying.
In reality, only closed source business models will ever turn a HUGE profit. Open Source businesses just need to turn enough of a profit to pay their staff (mostly Open Source developers).
Yes, this means that Red Hat will probably never become a billion-dollar business. Guess what, mr. Clueless: THEY DON'T INTEND TO! They do intend however to sell lots of servers and eventually workstations with support contracts to businesses big and small, and if IBM can make 75 % of it's profits on that, then I would say this is a viable business model indeed.
Now go and start worshipping monopoly lock-in as a viable business model and trouble us no more with your trolling.
On another note, are the /. servers acting up? /. is horrendously slow all night, and insisted I tried to post this twice, after eating an earlier reply in another discussion.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
This has been said many times before, but since we can read the article 3 times, I'll say it again...
Many may argue, rightly or wrongly, that it was a terrible mistake for Corel to enter the Linux market. Personally, I think it was a good move at the wrong time. They attempted to enter the market with a product line that was under competition from free products, and predictably got horribly beaten within the Linux community.
But it was still a good idea. If they had stayed the course and shifted their base market of law firms over to Linux, they would have saved their base the unnecessary costs of Windows, while at the same time preventing Microsoft from pulling the OS API rug out from under them once they become a serious threat to MSOffice again. The shift to Linux was nothing more than self defense for Corel... they never should have attempted to sell a shrink wrapped box set of Linux and Corel Office. They should have sold the system through partners straight to law firms, and provided the technical support to back it up.
But Corel has been rudderless for far too long. They've attempted a Java office suite which went nowhere. And now, they attempted to enter the Linux market rather than use Linux to shift their own market to their own turf, and now they're back to square one. What a shame, since WordPerfect is still a damn good wordprocessor.
I was really surprised when Corel came out with Corel Linux. It seemed to me to be just another Caldera waiting to happen. Corel's value to the Linux community is in providing commercial applications -- especially WordPerfect office.
I would point the "death of the dream" back not to anything particularly recent, but rather to the failure of "Corel Computers," where they had the intent to sell (and help support!) hordes of computers. Selling fairly proprietary StrongARM-based hardware is a natural route to creating massive cash flow streams, what with sales, software, and ongoing servicing.
My suspicion is that what went wrong was more "behind the scenes" than it was visible; the core strength of WordPerfect and Corel licensing fee streams was with the Canadian government, negotiated years ago.
The "encroachment" of MS Office on all sides led to trying to come up with a strategy, and selling a "SideWinder" complete with web integration, a need for some proprietary assistance, and Corel Office had, at least theoretically, the ability to hit the mark.
The "WINE" strategy could have been meaningful in pulling additional applications to the table; that's not going to buy huge licensing contracts, but if it gets some SideWinder Sales, that suffices. There was also a "deal" having to do with other ways of "remote running" of Windows apps via something not unlike VNC; again, that doesn't lead to huge licensing fees, but if it sells computers, that's a win.
The WINE situation should be paralleled with the Caldera-related enterprise, Willows, that produced a Win16 emulator called TWIN. They eventually GPLed the product because there just wasn't enough market in selling the library to developers.
Thus, I think Corel was "dead" when the computer experiment fell through. Everything else was the icing that would have attracted people to the "cake" that was to be SideWinder. Today? They're just quibbling over the pieces...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think you could talk 'em down to the bus pass. Don't let them screw you over, now...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Your analogy of open-source being equivalent to carts and buggies of old is just lame. And the idea that historically trade secrets didn't exist is even lamer. Have you ever heard of Porcelain? How about Silk? Clockmaking? Tulips? Medicine? You are hardly one to complain about blanket BS statements.
6 Corel to Sell Off Linux Division by michael on Tuesday January 23, @03:30PM EST 103
5 Corel To Sell Linux Arm by Hemos on Thursday December 14, @03:55PM EST 185
5 Corel Looking To Sell Linux Operations? by Hemos on Friday November 17, @11:37AM EST 230
We understand. You can stop posting about it. Has anyone else noticed that slashdot redundantly loves their redundant redundancy?
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Crudely Drawn Games
Well, the OS was lacking but the apps kicked ass. I remember when WP and 1-2-3 were a near-monopoly and the pains that MS had to go through to get Windows apps on people's desktops. Anybody remember Windows Lite (or whatever it was called) that was shipped with Excel just so people didn't have to run Windows? remember that WP keystrokes (and macros if memory serves) could run in Word? Those were not trivial features and MS did its best to put them in there so that people could switch over. Of course they're guarding their formats now, they know where the alternative leads :-)...
/.ers seem to forget sometimes all the things that MS has done *right* (Excel, Word, Outlook, never mind the VBS virii) and remember all the things they've done wrong: if you underestimate your opponent they are bound to trounce all over you...
And as bad as Windows seems at times, it has always been backwardly compatible with MS products. That is also not a trivial feature; and if you take into account the multitude of hardware that MS OSes had to be tested against, maybe you would reconsider the arguments about quality as well.
I am no MS apologist, but
Linux != Communism
Let me make this simple for the people who never bothered to think about it.
Commercial shrinkwrap software is an abberation.
PRICE is determined by DEMAND / SUPPLY
When shrinkwrap software came on physical media, this somewhat held up. People could think of the supply as limited. In reality, software (and any digital information) is practically limitless in supply. Anything / INFINITY = 0.
The software industry developed this tricky little idea called "software licenses" to limit supply and people magically bought the idea. You still go into a store and buy the software like you would buy a shirt. You still pay for the software. However, you no longer own the software. You have a temporary license to use the software that can be revoked at the whim of the software maker.
That's not a free market. That's an artificially controlled market.
Open Source making money relies on the free market. If you don't put money or your own effort into the system, the system will die. Software makers can charge anything they want for the software, but once you buy it (or they give it to you), it's yours to do with as you please.
Communism would be the government explicitly funding and mandating the use of all the software we use.
I disagree. Say you're a chief syasdmin, a COO, whatever, and you're using Win2K and Office 2K. Here comes MS selling Office 2002 for $X dollars and some other company (Corel, Ximian, whomever) selling another OS+Office suite package for $X/2. Hell, make it $0.
Do you think, honestly, that $X is what influences the final decision? No, the deciding factor is $Y, where Y>>X, and Y is equal to the costs associated with the switch: training support staff, training actual users and most importantly lost time and productivity with the new interface. The reason that MS still has a monopoly is that, a) noone has come up with a competitive product that is so much better to overcome $Y+X, and b) noone has gone all the way to eliminate $Y+X. I.e. we need OpenOffice to feel, work and integrate like MS Office and be either cheaper or better. Can Sun or GNU pull it off? I am sorry, but I don't think so --although I hope they do.
I am an idiot: %s/Y+X/Y-X/g
Hey that's not the big news....the big news is that they finally ditched their old cheesy logo. Check out the new logo here. Time to update the /. topic graphic...
Closed source + Closed hardware = Mac & Sun
Closed Source + Open Hardware = Microsoft
Open Source + Open Hardware = Linux
Just because they could have been selling a shrink-wrapped soup-to-nuts solution like Sun and Apple, there's still a difference... with Linux, anybody could do the same. That's competition. That's the open source revolution. What Compaq's reverse-engineering of the IBM bios did for the PC revolution (creating open hardare), Linux does for the next revolution.
Corel, who specializes in applications, could have been playing the same game as Apple, Sun, or Microsoft -- and control the distribution around their applications, rather than chasing the OS maker's tail, and living/dying at the whim of the OS maker.
They could have done Microsoft one better, as Apple and Sun do, by controlling the hardware underneath their distribution and providing a a single source for service -- just like Apple & Sun.
They can have their cake (a soup-to-nuts solution) and eat it to (open hardware and software).
When you understand this, you'll leave your Mac behind!
Chris
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
...but operating systems are just not a viable product, especially open-source operating systems with no killer app.
I went to one of the product launch seminars for Corel Linux where they demoed the product. This distro actually has alot of appeal, but just to a different market. Its geared to those who don't know alot about Linux, who are just coming off of Windows. Problem is that its to early for people to start switching.
Linux is still, very much, an operating system for expert computer users. And the lack of ports for the most popular apps and games aren't helping much either.
The initial setup of this distro of Linux is done in less than 2-3 steps, not even requiring a root password. The applications have been redesigned for more userfriendlyness and the console portion of the distro has almost been completely removed.
This is not nessecarily a bad thing, though I would assume that most Linux users would disagree. But you have to admit that not everyone can use Linux in its true form, those of us working in tech support would have to agree on that.
In my opinion, Corel Linux is ahead of its time. It was, and is, a nice idea, but the world isn't ready for it. Perhaps one day it will be looked on as a starting point that gives Linux an edge in the market, or perhaps it will become the punch line to some cruel jokes.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier