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Corel Ousted From Public Life?
gagy writes "Ottawa's Corel Corp. has been showing signs of weakness in the past few years, and looks very likely to be bought out by Vector Corp, at which point it will become a privately held company. A Toronto Star story spells out the details of the deal, and takes a brief look at the history of Corel." We mentioned Corel's deal with Vector last month.
Maybe the law firms will think about converting now?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Even back in the days before Linux went mainstream, from Corel Draw onward, Corel was ever a thorn in Microsoft's side. It looks like they went down in the good fight. The name "Corel" may emerge from this yet, but it sure won't be the same rebellious little software firm with a chip on it's shoulder.
Here's to Corel... may it live on in out hearts and minds in "the happy coding ground."
I am about to put my Word Perfect CD-Roms next to my WordStar floppies and Ami-Pro disks. Actually who really cares? Corel has not just hurt Word Perfect, but their other graphics tools just aren't good anymore. If they had spent more time working on Word Perfect and less on porting everything to Java, this might not have happened. How can Intuit survive Microsoft and not these other companies?
"Corel Ousted From Public Life" is a poor choice of words. "Ousted" means "To eject from a position or place; force out." Nobody is forcing anything. Vector is simply making a tender offer.
And when a company goes private it doesn't disappear from "public life." Its ownership merely changes hands.
Insert witty sig here.
However, if htey become private (closed), it's likely to put a stop to their linux activities.
Closed companies have generally been less receptive to Open Source (VA Linux, IBM, and Red Hat are all public companies). The threat of shareholder lawsuits is usually enough to make sure public companies use Linux to save money, and adopt Open Source ideals. Private companies, sadly, often end up being microsoft-only shops.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Actually, Corel didn't kill all of them; it was quite the opposite. MetaCreations was responsible for Bryce and a few others (Most notably Poser, which Corel didn't buy) but they forced to sell out and move out. Corel saved the Bryce product line, and version 5 was a leapfrog over version 4.
A bunch of guys in suits who havent had a product in a decade will sit around wondering why they arent making any money.
Hate to break the news to you, but ALL suits sit around and wornder why they aren't making any money, regardless of their situation. At my company we have 53% marketshare out of a field of three, increased revenues by 14% from last year, and are making enough money that we are keeping our sibling divisions in the corporation afloat. Yet the CEO is still yelling at us for being nogoodniks, laying off people left and right, and outsourcing research and development. He's kvetching and moaning that we're losing money, while the independent industry press is praising us for strong growth during the recession.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Corel, via WordPerfect office, has been pretty instrumental in the emergence of low-cost PCs. The OEM price of this package is insanely low (around $10 +/-) which lets the PC manufacturers sell at a lower price point than they could if they equipped the system with Microsoft products.
Dell, HP/Compaq and Sony all ship Corel/WP Office with their low-end consumer systems due to the cost advantage.
I suspect that this might be a motivation for someone in the VC community to consider buying them. Low-cost PCs are a growth market.
Was that a joke?
Painter originally was a Fractal Design product up to version 5, then is was owned by MetaCreations up to version 6 I think, then and finally bought by Corel and published by them since.
I believe that both Fractal Design and MetaCreations are dead, dead, dead.
Though I agree with you about that first thought, I hope painter goes somewhere, it's too good a product to just let die.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
With Dell machines, you can choose WordPerfect Office instead of Microsoft Office or Works. I saved some money on my laptop when I did that.
I prefer WordPerfect anyhow (I was a die-hard WordPerfect for DOS user).
Is any other word processor ever going to get a Reveal Codes feature? I'm sure I'm not the only person that considers this one of the most powerful features of WordPerfect.
The amount of control over your document with WordPerfect was absolutely amazing, and something I really miss every time I have to use MS Word.
Even so, Wordperfect is still the best word processor out there. From reveal codes to draggable margins (7.0+) to such simple things as justify all, Wordperfect does so much no other word processer can. When I have serious desktop publishing needs, I still seek out wordperfect, difficult though it may be to find.
But such is the way of proprietary software. It comes, it goes, and we can only mourn its passing. Why is it that Wordperfect's clearly superior ideas haven't appeared in OSS word processors? Is the OpenOffice team unfamiliar with WordPerfect?
Let us remember Wordperfect, and let us bring that memory into our own work now.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right