Corel to be bought by Vector Capitol

mgeoffrey writes "Corel announced that Vector Capitol will acquire Corel by buying out all outstanding shares at $1.05 a share. They are buying 22,890,000 shares. Vector Capitol has published a full report." Looks like the natural continuation after Microsoft sold off their Corel holdings.

Comments

Ah, the old WordPerfect.

[cmburns69]

Wordperfect seems to be a drag on whoever owns them. First they sold out to Novell. Then, Novell unloaded^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^^H sold them to Corel. Now it seems (and its just a shot in the dark) that they have caused hurt to yet another company.

[MS BASH SECTION]
Of course, if MS had played fair, none of this would have happened.
[/MS BASH SECTION]

Anyway, Corel just hasn't had much of a goal lately. It seems they don't know where to focus their resources; They do everything from linux to graphic software to word processing.. And none of its really working.

*sigh* It was bound to happen!

Re:Ah, the old WordPerfect.

[SubtleNuance]

They do everything from linux

They dumped Corel Linux in an effort to re-align themselves to their (then) new investment from MS, and MS promised them a role in .NET.

MS dumps Corel -- now where are they? Being bought out by some VCs? If COREL had stuck with Corel Linux, they could have used WordPerfect and Corel Office to drive the enterprise GNU/Linux adoption... they would be what Lindows so desperatly wants -- and still be able to compete w/ RedHat et al.

Leaving GNU/Linux was Corel's worst mistake in the last 5 years.

Re:Ah, the old WordPerfect.

[bogie]

Word does nothing but get into the way of what your doing. Want to change the spacing on a few lines? Word reformats everything. Now every line below what you just typed trys to be just like the couple of lines you have custom spacing on.

I fucking hate word for anything but the most generic text functions. Word Perfect simply gets out of the way and let's you do whatever you want without having to deal with it guessing wrong about every little freaking thing you doing.

Every seen how legal documents are indented and how they make motions etc look? Image Ever wonder why Wordperfect has such a huge following at law firms? The fact that law firms are conservative is NOT the answer. Sure you can setup a template or macro, but if you ever color outside the lines Word crumbles.

I know some people are able to write books, thesis's etc on Word, but that's only after you learn to workaround all of Word's annoying behaviors. Word may have the monopoly but ease of use wise it doesn't come close to Wordperfect.

The Sad Story Of Corel

[ihatewinXP]

I have had a special place in my heart for Corel for years, and now they are going the way of so many before them who tried to unsurp the Redmond juggernaut.
Honestly I am suprised they are worth 22 million, Knockout and Paint aren't what the used to be and Corel Office is dead in the water.
Maybe they will go the way of Atari, not even a company anymore but a brand that is labeled on things that the corporate office wants to draw attention to.

Vector Capitol?

[blitzoid]

Now I just may be stupid, but this is the first time I've ever heard of 'Vector Capitol'.

Who are they? Have they done anything I might know of?

Also, bring back CorelDRAW for Linux, damnit!

Re:Vector Capitol?

[ThogScully]

I'll second that - I'm a huge CorelDraw zealot as I've been using it for years. I know the "real" pros use Adobe, but most of those people probably don't realize how ahead of the curve Corel was for graphics technology at times.

The interfaces between the packages were so different that to an Adobe person, Corel seemed lightweight and useless and from my perspective as a Corel user, Adobe often looked the same. Either way, preference goes and I miss using Corel a lot. I got a version of Corel9 for Windows running in WINE, but would much rather get the latest versions...

Somehow, I think Vector Capital may be doing this though... I can't imagine what they expect to do at this point, but it will probably be focusing on something that won't compete with MS at least until Corel gets back on its feet. If so, CorelDRAW is the perfect candidate to bring back to the market.
-N

Wouldn't it be nice Corel Draw where Open source?

[deragon]

It would have been nice that governments of developped countries would have shipped in, bought Corel for $24 millions and released all their products as open source...

Generic applications should be seen as public services, the same as roads and services....

Re:cheap?

[Tancred]

High sales volume is great, but they're losing money, so they're worth nothing (as a whole anyway) unless someone can turn that around. Good luck to everyone at Corel!

Re:va linux buyout?

[00_NOP]

The really interesting thing is not the price, but the volume. Nots since the company was floated has there been this much trading in its shares.

Good luck to them, I say. A bit of financial bounce in companies associated with Linux would be good for all of us concerned with FOSS.

Re:I smell a conspiracy

[Locutus]

I think the pattern is more like this:

Peru is considering Open Source and GNU/Linux

India is considering open Source and GNU/Linux

Germany is considering open source and GNU/Linux

etc, etc, etc

Bill and Steve travel to Peru, China, India, Germany, etc and offer hundreds of millions of dollars to stop any migration to GNU/Linux and OSS.

Peru still continues move to OSS and GNU/Linux

Indian president proclaims need to move to OSS and GNU/Linux

Germany/Munich starts move to OSS and GNU/Linux

etc, etc, etc.

Steve Balmer decides he'd like to have SOMETHING left from his years at Microsoft so he starts selling some stock.

Leaked MS memo shows to the public that GNU/Linux and OSS really is a concern/threat to Microsoft.

In the mean time, Corel has been spinning it's wheels on figuring out what/how it's going to do anything with MS.Net then realizes there's nothing in it for them and that there's no money left in the bank. They put up a "For Sale" sign.

GNU/Linux companies find renewed interest in their companies/stock. ( not chronologically exact ;)

LoB

What an astounding waste of money

[nagora]

You can tell it's not their own cash on the line.

Re:Good way to keep the Third World undeveloped

[TheRaven64]

was to play Wolfenstein-3D.

I'd love to. Perhaps you could provide a link to a vector drawing package that is as good as Corel Draw? With the same amount of (actually useful) clipart?

Bryce

[macaddict]

This is interesting, considering Bryce for Mac was just killed. From MacCentral and MacNN . The Corel suit won't give a straight answer, but the Bryce page no longer lists a Mac version.

Corel was apparently looking for a buyer for Bryce. How this buyout will affect things, who knows. But I'm not going to get my hopes up for Bryce to ever run on the Mac again.

But, we still have Vue. And Eric Wenger, the original creator of Bryce, posted on the U&I forums that he is working on a new landscape creator. Demo images

Dead, anyway.

[mcgroarty]

Corel won't even let you register CorelDraw and similar without agreeing to submit your physical and 'net locations to a sleazy "opt-out" spam house, presumably so they get a kick back, and further -- installs spyware (according to AdAware, anyway) on your system. This is bullshit in what's supposed to be a $500 professional package. CorelDraw is about their only remaining money maker, and they're driving customers away.

I took mine back to the store, exchanged it as decective, then turned around and returned the unopened copy. Good riddance.

open source Corel Word Perfect Office...

[The Lynxpro]

The new owners should send Word Perfect Office into open source...its a better word processor than Open Office... The new owners could continue to release a commercial branded *Word Perfect* specifically for the legal field since Word Perfect still has that market cornered... We'd all benefit from this, much to the chagrin of Microsoft... That would leave the new Corel off the hook to focus back on their graphics software...