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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 have $19.47 and a bus pass in my pocket I can be persuaded to part with.
Corel was a major contributor to the WINE project. It was a good business plan when they had applications to port to Linux (WordPerfect, etc.) but now that they're splitting the linux group from the applications, the business case to continue development (and certainly the resource availability) is severely diminished.
My e-mail app just started running on WINE, and now I see no reason to run Windows at all. I suspect many others are realizing the same thing. What would WordPerfect for Linux do to the demand for Word for Linux? Somebody tell me there's no conspiracy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.
- 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.
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 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.