Corel Chief On Corel, Open Source, .NET And Others

taylor_b writes "CEO Chief Derek Burney has some interesting ideas about open source. Among other things he says in this interview that the open source concept is 'one notch better' when you keep the code to yourself. And Corel wonders why the community never received them with open arms?" It's actually more interesting than just that comment - Burney has an interesting perspective on what's needed to make Linux/Open Source ultimately work. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm sure you folks can debate it *grin*

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Re:I think he's saying..

[twitter]

Derek Burney: We don't have a date set for it, but [we plan on porting] many of our major applications. Ideally we would like to have all of our applications running on Linux. We'll take that as it comes depending on what the business model looks like.

Looks like he also said that he has no idea of where he's going next and (later on in the intervies) that if he did, the legal department would make him keep his mouth shut. Mostly, he was self contradicting and vauge. That's what happens when you get Borg implants.

Eliminating Corel's MS dependency was a good idea poorly deployed.

The Road Ahead

[Trepalium]

My favorite quote from that article has to be:

Let me give you some more specifics. In my opinion, one of the things Microsoft is good at is looking down the road a few years and talking about what that world is like. But sometimes, because it's so far away, the casual consumer doesn't understand what they're talking about because they've skipped a couple of years.

Now, I don't know how many people read Bill Gate's book, "The Road Ahead", but in there he predicted a number of things, such as the concept of the Internet would never take off, and that proprietary online services like the Microsoft Network would be much more popular, only relying on the Internet for e-mail. Just about the only vision that has come anywhere close to coming into being is the idea of a PC in [nearly] every home.

Microsoft has a consistent business strategy of waiting to see what their competitors do, watch them make the mistakes, and then release software that's a generation behind what their competitors are sporting, but tie it close enough to their other products that the other vendors' products aren't as worthwhile to use. With a few exceptions (Microsoft Bob), few Microsoft products have ever failed miserably due to the level of integration and marketing, although Microsoft still refuses to acknowledge that Bob was a failure (official company line is it was 'ahead of it's time').

Re:The Road Ahead

[Surak]

Well, FWIW, Gates did rewrite the book and changed the whole twist from "the Internet will never take off" to "the Internet will be in your refrigerator." Actually, Gates probably didn't even write the book, but that's another story. :)

Microsoft has a consistent business strategy of waiting to see what their competitors do, watch them make the mistakes, and then release software that's a generation behind what their competitors are sporting, but tie it close enough to their other products that the other vendors' products aren't as worthwhile to use. With a few exceptions (Microsoft Bob), few Microsoft products have ever failed miserably due to the level of integration and marketing

You're right... but let's not forget Microsoft Money. I wouldn't put it in the category of miserable failure, but I'll bet some people at Microsoft do. They intended that thing to take over the personal finance market, but Intuit continues to beat 'em...Microsoft even tried to buy Intuit until the FTC came in. :) In any respect, Quicken continues to be the most popular product because they beat Microsoft at their own game... to begin with, it was first to market, but Microsoft underestimated the popularity of market because they felt you could do everything you can do with Quicken in Microsoft Excel (which is ostly true). Then they came out with a product that was too little too late... Intuit just couldn't be tripped up, because they had done their research, and they knew that they could continue to own that market. They continued to innovate, and Microsoft continued to chase them... now they've rolled the whole thing into MSN to try to make Quicken irrelevant, but i don't think it's working ...

Re:A legitimate business standpoint

[Znork]

What Burney further fails to understand is that there is no surviving viable market for proprietary consumer applications either. That market is squarely divided between Microsoft (who will ensure there is no serious competition to their products in proprietaryland) and the free alternatives. There simply isnt any niche to fill between anymore.

People would rather go with a pirated copy of Office than buy a decent cheaper office suite that fulfills their needs. Or they will go with the entirely free one.