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.

Comments

What a fall.

[nightsweat]

From WordPerect's market dominance to getting bought out by a graphics package maker to this.

Maybe the law firms will think about converting now?

Re:What a fall.

[Trigun]

Kenneth Cowpland was the ultimate death of that company. They were following the embrace, extend and extinguish philosopy, unfortunately they never realized that it was the competition that they were supposed to extinguish, and not themselves.
They killed WordPerfect. They let the entire graphics line die. They nearly killed the company when they put a big stake in developing a home computer which ran Java natively. They seemed to always have their heads too far into the future while their products stayed too far in the past.
In short, it is absolutely amazing they stayed alive this long, depite complete and utter mismanagement. Good riddance to bad garbage.

Re:What a fall.

[sisukapalli1]

It is sad to see such a turn of events. The only thing that can make it worse is if some SCO like low lifes buy the company for a few pennies and start suing people at OpenOffice.org or KOffice.org.

Ofcourse, M$FT and even SUN will pay money to those companies to make sure "they respect IP rights."

Sorry about the rant. There is so much reason for outrage.

S

Re:What a fall.

[Jeremy Erwin]

WordPerfect corporation was bought first by Novell, and then by Corel, by which time WordPerfect was already losing out to Microsoft's products.

Re:What a fall.

[obotics]

Maybe the law firms will think about converting now?

Sure we will think about converting. But to what!? OpenOffice!

Re:What a fall.

[crivens]

Kenneth Cowpland? Don't you mean Michael Cowpland and his plastic wife and pink dog?

Re:What a fall.

[herman0221]

I think you mean Michael Cowpland - who, interestingly enough, has voiced an opion and considers the Vector buyout offer "pathetic".

Re:What a fall.

[halo8]

FINALLY!!!!

some that mentions marla his S&M wife!!!!
you must be from Ottawa eh?
take off ya hosher eh!!

Re:What a fall.

[wo1verin3]

>> From WordPerect's market dominance

I always did like Corel Easy CD Creator on my first pinnacle micro

Re:What a fall.

[obotics]

Yes it does. Beautifully.

Re:What a fall.

[Anonymous Bullard]

It is sad to see such a turn of events. The only thing that can make it worse is if some SCO like low lifes buy the company for a few pennies and start suing people at OpenOffice.org or KOffice.org. Ofcourse, M$FT and even SUN will pay money to those companies to make sure "they respect IP rights."

According to another post here a group of Corel people claim that Microsoft arranged this whole farce to bury the company so you weren't that far off the target. The only difference is that MS seems to have their lackeys buying the company to avoid being sued. And to protect Office marketshare of course. I don't what Sun would do with Corel, although WP might have some useful code to contribute to StarOffice. But is Sun serious about StarOffice in the long run?

Re:What a fall.

[QuatMosk]

I hope you like it, cause if you're using the Roxio product, you're still using it! I was one of the support guys on CD Creator when it got sold to Adaptec. That was a black day for us, since the big cheezuz, in their "infinite wisdom", let it go for a song. "We're not in the hardware business anymore!" Two months later, Cowpland and Eid Eid started Corel Computer. Short-sighted, money grubbing idiots, the both of them. Michael Cowpland is good for one thing, and that's getting the ball rolling. Why he never got into the VC business is beyond me. I still think he's a much better marketing/shmooze-hound kinda guy than a good engineer. Sorry about the rant. You comment just brought back all of the old wounds that I was privy to. If anyone wants to know more about the missteps, just ask, and I will provide all the juicy details! QuatMosk

Re:What a fall.

[wo1verin3]

Too bad your e-mail address isn't public, I would have sent you a note and let you chuckle at the reply address. :)

Corel, you will be missed

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:Corel, you will be missed

[molarmass192]

Corel sold out to Microsoft. The only reason they ever even got a cash offer from MS was because they had a Linux product line that was a drop in replacement for MS OS/Office, notice how quickly afterwards it was withdrawn. I appreciate their work on WINE but other than that, good riddance, you danced with the devil and now you have to pay the price. Let this be a lesson to anybody would thinks MS is their white knight. Does anybody here remember Sybase?

Re:Corel, you will be missed

[bigjocker]

As I see it Corel lost a huge chance when they sold their whole Linux division to work with Microsoft on .NET.

They had a set of great graphics/design tools, a wordprocessor with a decent user base and a decent Linux distribution. With the right management (visionary, willing to further the boundaries) they could have been a great company. But they decided to go conservative, keep selling their boxed products and use a few OEMs, kill their linux development and surrender to the .NET platform.

Long live Corel, I would have wanted to have heard a lot more from them, but they had their shot and panicked.

Re:Corel, you will be missed

[Otter]

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.

If anything, that was the problem with Corel. They were so fixated on avenging themselves on Microsoft, they jumped on every bandwagon that came along -- Java, Linux -- with no regard for whether it would work or if anyone would buy it. Apple, in contrast, survives because Steve Jobs and the corporate culture have an attitude of "What can I make that will be good and that people will pay money for?" not "How can I screw Microsoft?"

Sun, are you listening?

Re:Corel, you will be missed

[panaceaa]

Corel was constantly chasing the latest "hot" technologies without ever letting their products mature and becoming marketable. Your reference to the change from Linux to .NET is a great example. But ever since Corel Draw became obsolete, Corel spent large amounts of time and money developing hype-driven products.

The first blunder I remember happened when Java was super hyped-up by Sun. With great fanfare, Corel ported Word Perfect to Java. Corel later cancelled the project, right when it was gaining market traction, seemlingly because the Java hype calming down. Around the same time, Palm sneaked on the scene with their much-hyped PDAs, and Corel announced it would create a PDA running Java (which never made it to market).

The bubble moved on, and in around 1999, Linux became the hot technology. Corel created a Linux distribution and ported Word Perfect to Linux. Only a few years later, Corel cancelled both projects and announced it's amazing new idea to create products for .NET. I can only imagine their .NET products will share the same fate.

I have no sympathy for Corel's demise. Ever since Corel Draw became a cash-cow, Corel never attempted to create products people actually wanted (to pay for, anyway). They chased hot technologies instead of customer's needs. I can't believe so many people, especially people on Slashdot, took the hype to heart and actually believed Corel would follow through on their announcements.

Re:Corel, you will be missed

[The Bungi]

Yes, but Draw was one the the things that legitimized Windows 3.x, along with Aldus PageMaker and a few other "seminal" apps.

Re:Corel, you will be missed

[Anonymous Bullard]

I appreciate their work on WINE but other than that, good riddance, you danced with the devil and now you have to pay the price. Let this be a lesson to anybody would thinks MS is their white knight.

It's funny but the ones actually paying the price of Corel's expedited funeral are the users of Corel's products and especially the shareholders who have been trying to talk some sense into the blindly pro-MS management.

If there's a lesson here it's one where the management of a public company can be threatened and bribed to do Microsoft's bidding in order to keep their jobs a little longer while everybody else loses. Mr. G. W. Bush should be real proud of his appointee John Ashcroft's laissez-fair approach to antitrust violations.

Corel

[MC68040]

Well one would hope they will stay alive, even though they've been around for their fair share of trauma a lot of people actually use their products. The last company I worked for used corel office on over 1000 clients while the rest ran MS office...

Corel's office actually had less support incidents of problems with the actual software, on the other hand, it was a pain because everyone was used to MS office and didden't understand the different GUI hehe.

http://funstuff.digital-bless.com/ - Funny stuff.

Re:Corel

[KillerHamster]

Their GUI is definitely different than MS's, and though I haven't used it much, I really liked what I saw, especially of the latest version of WordPerfect. If I took the trouble to use it more, I'm sure I would come to like it more than MS Word... but then, I've already decided on OpenOffice. Still, I hope Corel stays alive and gives Microsoft some competition. BTW, Didn't some major OEM recently ship Corel Office pre-installed in place of MS Works?

Re:Corel

[sisukapalli1]

However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project, Open Office, that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle and profit from our hard earned IP.


Do we have another SCO in the making? For the record, OpenOffice code is based on StarOffice (bought from some company by SUN, and later donated).

S

Re:Corel

[bigjocker]

However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project, Open Office, that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle and profit from our hard earned IP.

Care to elaborate? AFAIK Corel for Linux has been Closed Source and OpenOffice comes from StarOffice (bought by Sun to StarDivision) which has no relation whatsoever to Corel or WordPerfect.

These are really serious claims, and the least anybody need right now (from OSS shops to closed source and proprietary ones) is another SCO spewing bull around.

If you have proof of your claims please elaborate.

Re:Corel

[geomon]

"As an upper mid-level management member..."

and

Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project...our hard earned IP"

1) As a mid-level manager you never coded anything.
2)*Your* IP amounted to bringing home a paycheck every week.
3) The IP you claim was stolen never belonged to you, it belonged to the shareholders.
4) The IP you claim was stolen never made it into the OSS project, unless you can prove your claim with documentation (not SCO-FUD).
5) You are a whiney little wanker who will soon join the millions of un(der)-employed IT workers.

Re:Corel

[Drakonian]

My foot. "Upper mid-level managers" (oxymoron) sit around on Slashdot posting stuff like this?

Re:Corel

[Theolojin]

As an upper mid-level management member of corel

and ...we set about the massive undertaking of synnergizing

and ...escalating the sales curves

i think i see the problem with corel.

Re:Corel

[Drakonian]

To elaborate... my first tip off that this was a clever troll was "synnergizing" and the second was "our hard earned IP". It's actually a pretty funny troll when you think about it.

Re:Corel

[geomon]

You obviously dont know enough to know the parent post was just a bunch of fancy sounding words in sentences that made absolutely no sense.

And you are too inane to realize that what I wrote was a parody of all the posts in the SCO/IBM debacle.

Here's a penny kid: Go buy yourself a clue.

But you still had to comment on it.

Fishing for idiots like yourself certainly has gotten easier in the last few months.

How brave you were, too, to post anonymously.

Re:Corel

[PetoskeyGuy]

However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project, Open Office, that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle and profit from our hard earned IP.

You could SCO them. Assuming of course you can prove the code was stolen.

BTW, nice job on the big words. That seems to be what middle management is all about. Translating reality to the CEO's in a language they understand. Your synnergizing product lines and escalating sales curves. So I guess you tried to SELL SOFTWARE and MAKE MONEY.

A bunch of guys in suits who havent had a product in a decade will sit around wondering why they arent making any money

This really shows you can talk to your underlings too. You must be very good to survive as a middle manager of any type for 10 years. They always seem to be the first to go around here.

Re:Corel

[flynt]

and later donated

Donated in the same way that my pimp Carlos donated me that "new" BMW last week.

Re:Corel

[Uber Banker]

You failed, like you fail with every post. A well worded intelligent troll got your pis-poor response.

Re:Corel

[rzbx]

"As an upper mid-level management member of corel for the last 10 years..."
"...profit from our hard earned IP."

I don't believe you put much into the actual development of the software.

Also, your logic seems to flow along with SCO's.

Programemrs get paid for services they provide. Even software companies understand that they get paid for services provided, thus the reason for licensing. The business model of selling software as a product is not a very good one. Open source software should give you a good example. Companies selling the Linux OS are not selling a stand-alone product, but services provided based around the product. Believe what you want about ownership of ideas, but if you do as much reading as I do, you too will realize how wrong this is. I won't go into detail, but remember this, service is the fastest growing sector. Ownership of ideas is not capitalistic, it is monopolistic. Even the constitution states this. The only reason it was put in was because it was believed that a short term monopoly on a particular idea would help promote progress (which is very debatable). Since then it has grown into a "we created the idea, we deserve complete ownership and control over it". You can say what you want about "hard earned IP", but that woill not stop the change from rent seeking behavior type business models to an economic shift toward services.

Re:Corel

[rherbert]

Come on people, this is obviously a joke with a bunch of management-speak throw in. Sheesh.

Re:Corel

[geomon]

You failed, like you fail with every post. A well worded intelligent troll got your pis-poor response.

Read the scores, suckers, and weep.

My counter-troll landed a 4 (informative). Another response to the troll landed a 5.

Can't argue with the mods, boys.

And here you are, down at score:1.

Re:Corel

[Arandir]

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.

Re:Corel

[jazman_777]

synnergizing our product lines...escalating the sales curves...intrinsic management pressures...

Thanks for the laugh, I needed one about right now.

Re:Corel

[nvrrobx]

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.

Re:Corel

[geomon]

Watching these whiney little anonymous cowards take nearly an hour to respond to my posts gives me the impression that they are either parked behind 300 baud modems, or they are beating their responses out on large drums.

Re:Corel

[Solkar]

I agree -- I love "reveal codes." And I generally prefer the way WordPerfect handles automatic outlining and numbering to the Word implementation. There are lots of features in WP, but they don't get in the way, like they sometimes can in Word. They don't just take over.

Re:Corel

[Keeper]

The GUI for the last version of WP I used was pretty decent actually, but the damn thing crashed so often it was utterly useless ... I had more crashes from that piece of software than any other software package I have ever used, including Netscape 4.x.

Trying to select half of the menu items resulted in a crash. I could walk away for half an hour, come back, and it would have crashed. I could hit the enter key and it would crash. I could select a new font and it would crash. I would go to print my paper and it would crash. Frick'in rediculous... Never had it crash while saving, fortunately. At least they got that right...

Re:Corel

[anno1a]

"You could SCO them. Assuming of course you can prove the code was stolen."
What does those two things have to do with eachother? SCO never proved anything ;).

Re:Corel

[Reziac]

After looking at the guy's recent-posts page, I tend to agree that was a troll... however, it does bring up a point:

Why not opensource old WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS? or even WP6.1 DOS (or better yet, both)?? It would at the very least create goodwill. And it wouldn't harm the IP value of any current WP source code, since it's all obsolete -- the entire codebase was rewritten from scatch as of WPWin8. (Not to mention that as of v6.2, Corel converted the old WPCorp/Novell codebase from ASM to Watcom C, plus the diffs between DOS and Win coding.)

Re:Corel

[fz00]

Agreed. I got reunited with WordPerfect when 8.0 came out. The Windows versions 6 and 7 sucked ass (although I loved DOS version 6). I used WP since 4.2 before then. I remember when I had to switch Word I was so offended that there was no reveal codes especially during those times when the document wasn't before. In WordPerfect, I could "look under the hood" and fix it myself. No such thing in Word. To this day, Word still pisses me off!

Re:Corel

[spectasaurus]

Here, here. Wordperfect has, and always will my word processor of choice. I however think the problem with Corel and Wordperfect was that they were simply too good at the time. I still use WordPerfect 8 for both Windows and Linux and find both versions so much easier to use than Word ever will be. It's unfortunate, but because they are so good, I have had no reason to pay Corel for their software in a number of years.

Sad to see it finally go

[TheRedHorse]

Word Perfect was an awesome product. I still use it sometimes too. Any hope of open source type port of Word Perfect? I'm guessing probably not. But you can always hope.

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[Lxy]

Openoffice.org has a small branch (wp.openoffice.org I think) of developers working on it. WP offers a few features (reveal codes of course) that are slowly being added into Openoffice.org.

One nice thing about WP is that the file format, AFAIK, hasn't changed since version 6.1. Create a document in WP11, open it in 7, and viola, it opens. Word can't even do backward compatibility, try opening a Word 95 doc in Word XP. It'll open, but you'll most likely have to reformat. Because o the file compatibility, the Wordperfect import filter for Openoffice.org is coming along very nicely.

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[iantri]

I'm not sure if you are asking this because you want to run it on Linux or just want it open-sourced, but Corel provides a (free for personal use) binary of WordPerfect for Linux at their website.

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

and viola, it opens.
I usually open mine with a cello...

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[GuidoJ]

One nice thing about WP is that the file format, AFAIK, hasn't changed since version 6.1. Create a document in WP11, open it in 7, and viola, it opens. Word can't even do backward compatibility, try opening a Word 95 doc in Word XP. It'll open, but you'll most likely have to reformat. Because o the file compatibility, the Wordperfect import filter for Openoffice.org is coming along very nicely.

Of course this is exactly why MS is still selling new versions of Office and why Corel is now out of business. Or did you think it was because WP doesn't have Clippy?

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[usotsuki]

??? I see no such thing.

-uso.

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[rekkanoryo]

No they don't. They've stopped distribution of all their Linux products, including WordPerfect and PhotoPaint. I was too late to get the Linux "port" of WordPerfect but early enough to get PhotoPaint.

If you're lucky you can still find the download on one or two ftp servers, but those are becoming increasingly thin as well. Short form: Linux WordPerfect is dead as a doornail.

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[enjo13]

To bad it's not really true. The file format (in particular from Word 97 on) is pretty compatible going both ways. Documents created in XP can be opened in 97 and vice versa. 97 simply doesn't access the features added in later versions.

The structured storage approach is fairly neat. The close and obsfucated format itself is... something else entirely.

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[iantri]

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/faqs/WordPer fect-Linux-FAQ/WordPerfect-Linux-FAQ (1 Mar 2003)

4. Downloadable WP 8

4.1. Where can I find a copy of WP 8.0 DPE for Linux? What filenames should I
look for?

Most locations that formerly offered the download (for example, CNET's
download.com, ftp.calderasystems.com, and linux.tucows.com) ceased doing so
about the time Corel itself did. It's possible (but pure speculation) that
Corel asked or required that the files be pulled.

However, the download is still available at:

* [ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/wp8/download.htm] ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/wp8/
download.htm (includes all localisation files except French),

* [ftp://ftp.uni-halle.de/pub/Linux/software/wordper fect8/] ftp://
ftp.uni-halle.de/pub/Linux/software/wordperfect8/ (includes all
localisation files) ,

* [http://sunsite.ui.ac.id/pub/linux/nonfree/] http://sunsite.ui.ac.id/pub/
linux/nonfree/ ,

* [http://ftp.urc.ac.ru/pub/OS/Linux/print/] http://ftp.urc.ac.ru/pub/OS/
Linux/print/ ,

* [ftp://ftp.ufscar.br/pub/linux/editortexto/] ftp://ftp.ufscar.br/pub/
linux/editortexto/ ,

* [http://ftp.dreamtime.org/pub/linux/wp8/] http://ftp.dreamtime.org/pub/
linux/wp8/ ,

* [http://alge.anart.no/ftp/pub/Office/WordPerfect/] http://alge.anart.no/
ftp/pub/Office/WordPerfect/ ,

* [ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/corel/wordperfect/ linux/] ftp://
ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/corel/wordperfect/linux/ ,

* [http://www.asker.net/pub/linux/corel/] http://www.asker.net/pub/linux/
corel/ ,

* [http://content.443.ch/pub/linfiles/Gnusoft/wordpe rfect8/] http://
content.443.ch/pub/linfiles/Gnusoft/wordperfect8/ (includes all
localisation files)

* [http://www.invivo.net/pub/SOFTS/telechargement/Li nux/WORDPERF/] http://
www.invivo.net/pub/SOFTS/telechargement/Linux/WORD PERF/ (note FR
localisation files), and

* [http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/apps/] http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/
apps/ (WP 8.0 DPE, all localisation files, the Filtrix fix, and copies of
WP 8.x licences, knowledgebase/FAQs/docs).

Re:Sad to see it finally go

[Reziac]

Openoffice.org has a small branch (wp.openoffice.org I think) of developers working on it. WP offers a few features (reveal codes of course) that are slowly being added into Openoffice.org.

Finally, a reason for this WordPerfect addict to become interested in OpenOffice!!

Does it really matter?

[cageyjames]

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?

Re:Does it really matter?

[oni]

How can Intuit survive Microsoft and not these other companies?

Is it because Microsoft isn't trying? Just wait until they start putting Microsoft Money into Office - or maybe including it with Windows. Intuit will be gone in no time flat. If people already have MS Money do you think they'll go out and buy Quicken? Even if Quicken is better? I don't think they will. It's sad but it's true. This is how MS competes.

The only way to beat MS is to give your software away for free or establish a niche market that MS doesn't care about.

Re:Does it really matter?

[Lxy]

You're mostly trolling, but you have one valid point: Corel responded to MS pressure with crummy software and bad support.

When we had trouble with Wordperfect 8, Corel was there by our side, offering every bit of help, giving us beta service packs, and doing everything they could to resolve our problems. We finally traced it to a fux0red MFC DLL (Microsoft issued), and Corel quickly gave us a fix.

Wordperfect 9 was a solid product, mostly the result of their quickly responding developers. They fixed bugs as they found them, and for the most part didn't create any new ones.

Wordperfect 10 was touted to be the most compatible with Word XP. Tried it, they're lying. Documents with even minor complexity don't convert well. I posted several troubled docs to the newsgroup, other users who claimed XP support was there couldn't open them either. I contacted Corel support, they were friendly but not very helpful.

About a month ago I was troubleshooting printing issues with CorelDraw 11. Not only is this program not worth the upgrade, when I tried to contact support I couldn't get a good answer from anybody. The Knowledge Base has shriveled into a steaming pile of crap, and the only good support left is in the newsgroups. I was finally able to trace it to the print driver thanks to some good folks there, but Corel offered me nothing.

Probably due to layoffs, Corel has been forced to produce a lackluster product and shoddy support. Microsoft won that round, their last remaining competitor is pretty much a non-threat.

Re:Does it really matter?

[timeOday]

Well, MS did make some effort to kill Quicken. MS was giving away MS Money *free* for a time. But unlike IE, they didn't pour resources into developing the product, it never overtook the established leader, and after a while they quit dumping it.

Why? I don't really know, but since this is slashdot I'll give it a shot :) For a while MS was angling to integrate itself deeply with US economic infrastructure, and make itself part of every transaction. People were speculating you wouldn't be able to buy or sell anything without an MS Passport. A Quicken-like client would have been the consumer's gateway to all this. My theory is that the financial industry heavies told MS to take a flying leap; that they were well aware how to make the world go round, and would be a bit harder to knock off than, say, Netscape. So killing Quicken was no longer terribly important.

Re:Does it really matter?

[A Naughty Moose]

This sounds good to me. I remember at one point, Microsoft tried to buy Quickbooks from Intuit. They were going to give a good chunck of change, plus MS Money to Intuit, and then the Justice department stepped in and said NO! After that, there was an attempt to make MS Money a better product, but they never put their resources into trying to take out Intuit.

Source: Justice Sues to Block Microsoft Acquisition.

Vector Capital

[Surak]

is a vulture capital firm. This should be good for them. They already have a history with Corel, having bought Microsoft's shares at 56 cents a piece, taking a 20% stake in the company.

CorelDRAW is still the best illustration package available for PCs today, bar none. Illustrator doesn't hold a candle, IMHO. (This from a guy with many years of experience with both packages in a professional setting).

Re:Vector Capital

[HiThere]

Personally I feel that Deneba Canvas is the best. It is not only a Drawing program but also includes as much of a painting program as most professionals need.

It does, however, fall down on animation, being only good for slide-shows. (That's what they originally designed it for, but the marketing department is billing it as animation.)

Re:Vector Capital

[happyhangone]

I just agree... coreldraw is the only package with all features... you will ever need in a single package.. and without sinking to the plugin trap of illustrator... ilustrator looks more like a bare bone plataform to add plugins for... instead of a full featured illustration program... so many versions... and adobe still doesnt match corel... on feature by feature basis...

Re:Vector Capital

[LimeColoredSloth]

I remember once I got a weird mail from Vector.. not sure if it was the same company. It basically said I got "approved" for their "job." The amazing thing about the letter was that they didn't describe what the job was. Some other peers of mine who also got the letter said it was some crummy marketing job - it was either door-to-door salesperson or telemarketing.

I blame daytraders

[radiumhahn]

I can't blame Corel. If I were being punched in the stomach every 7 seconds I'd want a way out too.

Sad end...

[rf0]

I've always liked wordperfect as well as Corel Support for Linux. First company to bring a commerical wordprocessor to Linux IIRC. Was good but now times are moving on..

Good luck corel whatever the future might hold

Rus

Re:Sad end...

[AndroidCat]

First company to bring a commerical wordprocessor to Linux IIRC

I'm not sure about Linux, but when they brought Wordperfect to SCO UNIX, SVR 3.2.4, UNIXWARE and Coherent, it was still the WordPerfect Corporation (1993).

Poor Headline

[windowpain]

"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.

Re:Poor Headline

[Anonymous Bullard]

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.

What makes you think that this carefully orchestrated takeover attempt is really voluntary?

If Netscape sued MS and received $800M over what was essentially a no-revenue market to start with, wonder what a company which held over 50% retail marketshare in the massively profitable Office suites market only couple of year before the Netscape suit could sue them for? In Corel's case the shareholders have long been asking for such a suit to materialize while the management is completely in Microsoft's pocket. Guess how to solve such a dilemma? Get rid of the shareholders of course!

In this case if Vector and MS win and they're allowed to take Corel under you can bet that for all purposes the company will truly disappear from public life.

Re:Poor Headline

[Valar]

If Netscape sued MS and received $800M over what was essentially a no-revenue market to start with, wonder what a company which held over 50% retail marketshare in the massively profitable Office suites market only couple of year before the Netscape suit could sue them for?
1) Your marginal literacy is truly exceptional.
2) Lost market share does not a monopoly from a competitor make. They would have to prove in court that microsoft did something "unfair" to push them out of the market, and not just that MS Office was the more popular product. And, as it turns out, MS Office really is the more popular product, and had been for a long time (since Corel lost it's technical edge) not really due to any foul play.

Re:Poor Headline

[Anonymous Bullard]

1) Your marginal literacy is truly exceptional.

2) Lost market share does not a monopoly from a competitor make. They would have to prove in court that microsoft did something "unfair" to push them out of the market, and not just that MS Office was the more popular product. And, as it turns out, MS Office really is the more popular product, and had been for a long time (since Corel lost it's technical edge) not really due to any foul play.

1) Thanks for the compliment. English isn't among my native languages so your presumably self-explanatory quip is gratefully accepted as is.

2) You did know that even before the Netscape suit MS was bullying the rest of the industry e.g. by threatening to withdraw bundling offers from OEMs unless they stop shipping Microsoft alternatives, right? And how prior to the Netscape suit several US states were investigating Microsoft's Office monopoly and collusion with their Windows division, only to shelve that investigation to concentrate on the Netscape suit deemed more urgent, right? Despite achieving next to nothing in concrete terms and being too narrowly focused, that Netscape suit still proved that Microsoft routinely abused their Windows monopoly. That court ruling, upheld in appeals court, is what would've made things different for Corel.

When dealing with the mob, popularity or even much lower pricing have little to do with customers' behavior, only that they know how the mob will react to "disloyalty".

When Corel's clueless new CEO signed the investment and alliance deal, MS immediately demanded that they agree never to sue MS, just in time before the monopoly conviction and the "settlement" took effect. However since Corel's shareholders aren't tied by this agreement, taking Corel private would remove those pesky elements from the scene for good.

When Corel started winning some deals with big name OEMs MS suddenly decided to dump their Corel shares to a friendly party which wasted no time in launching this attempt to privatize Corel.

If you still can't put together a pattern of behavior after reading all the news about MS's anti-competitive behavior over the last 10+ years, including the Linux slash funds, sudden interest in SCO licences etc., you're either a MS flunky, or, probably in your case, you simply weren't trying hard enough to understand what history has to teach you.

I KNEW this would happen

[TerryAtWork]

Corel was doomed from the moment they went into competition with Microsoft with WordPerfect.

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[javiercero]

Except that WordPerfect existed way before Word....

So what is your point?

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[ashitaka]

They didn't roll over and die when Word (for DOS) came out.

The seeds of WordPerfect's destruction were actually sown when they didn't adapt to Windows fast enough. That, combined with MS's intrinsic lead in the technology base doomed them.

Not that any of this doesn't keep the law firm I work for from using Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS to produce our bills well into the 21st century. This will change by year-end.

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[Arandir]

And yet it took them over ten years to die from the date they "didn't roll over and die when Word (for DOS) came out". Think about that. They continued to exist for one half of the entire PC era after you say they took the fatal wound.

Methinks you're placing way too much blame on Microsoft, and not nearly enough on Corel.

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[AndroidCat]

..from the moment they went into competition with Microsoft..

And that was the problem: They weren't just in competition with Word, they were in competition with Windows, Word and Excel (later the rest of the Office suite). A lot of companies got whipsawed by the sudden shift to Windows 3.x like Lotus, dBase, Borland, etc. Microsoft was ready and waiting when the playing field changed. (*Their* playing field.)

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[timeOday]

No, their decline was slow because Word Perfect was the mighty, nearly undisputed leader in their market. The inflection point was truly the transition to the GUI.

There's nothing Word Perfect could have done to remain viable in the long run. For obvious reasons MS had access to the GUI months if not years before its competitors, and a guaranteed income stream (from DOS/Windows) to fund further development of Word.

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[A Naughty Moose]

Check out Almost Perfect. It tells the story of Wordperfect Corp as seen by Pete Peterson (Minority owner of WP when it was a private company) The seeds for destruction were sown when the 2 majority owners decieded it was time to take WP (the company) public.

Sure, they were late on the GUI, and they took some risks on other platforms, but they had the momentum to change their technological mistakes, if they could have survived the changes the VC imposed on them, I think that they would have had a good chance of still being the dominate Word Processing company.

Re:I KNEW this would happen

[anno1a]

For my local area, the real killer for Word Perfect was that everyone related the name Word Perfect with the dull blue screen of 5.1... While we, at my school, still sat and watched that screen in dispair, I happily used Word Perfect 6.0 at home, way before my school converted to Word for Windows (which looked surprisingly much like WP6). Later when I kept using Word Perfect, people would stare at me in chock, because they thought it still had that blue interface, even though I used a WYSIWYG Word Perfect long before they switched to Word. I guess I blame my schools for jumping on the Word wagon, rather than sticking to Word Perfect, which I still find superior.

First Bundle, First Old-Version Discount

[handy_vandal]

Two interesting firsts, from the article:

"... [Corel] became the first software company to bundle more than one program into a package. It also became the first to discount older versions, making them accessible for the more thrift-conscious consumer market."

MS lost money

[Gothmolly]

Good to see that they lost their shirts on their Corel stock. Maybe that's why they never handed out dividends. Pricks.

Re:MS lost money

[anno1a]

You think ms lost money? Corel stopped developing for linux didn't they? I think ms got exactly what they wanted for their money...

Re:MS lost money

[Anonymous Bullard]

Good to see that they lost their shirts on their Corel stock. Maybe that's why they never handed out dividends. Pricks.

MS lost, what, $120M when they dumped their Corel stock, but by dumping it to their venture capital friends they're making sure that Corel will never again erode the profitability or marketshare of another MS product, ever. They also stopped all the Linux projects at Corel to their tracks and so forth so this little interlude probably earned them BILLIONS instead. But why worry, this is alright as long as no American company is being taken under by a foreign monopoly.

RIP Corel

[larry bagina]

For those that don't know, Corel used WineLib to recompile thwir Windows Wares under linux. They also contributed a fair amount of code and bug fixes to Wine.

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.

Re:RIP Corel

[Arandir]

Two examples that prove you wrong. Public company that doesn't support Linux: Microsoft; Private company that does: SuSE.

Re:RIP Corel

[justsomebody]

,b.heh, in which century do you live in???

they dropped linux support year, two or three ago COMPLETELY

Re:RIP Corel

[HiThere]

Corel once contributed a lot to Wine, but have they done anything in the last two years? My impression was that when MS bought them out, they stopped contributing then and there. Suddenly enough that I wondered if it was a part of the deal.

Re:RIP Corel

[IamTheRealMike]

In a way they contributed even after dropping the product line. Gav State, who set up TransGaming, found Wine by working at Corel.

Re:RIP Corel

[babyrat]

(VA Linux, IBM, and Red Hat are all public companies)

So are Microsoft and SCO. What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?

Aw, crap. (v1.1)

[Qweezle]

I don't seem to understand why a company which makes such an excellent product as Painter would let themselves be bought out, by anyone.

If things continue on this exponential curve of stupidity, then Adobe should be bought out by Phillip Morris sometime in October.

Hey, why NOT have a Photoshopped image of Liza Minelli smoking her life away on the box?

Re:Aw, crap. (v1.1)

[nelsonal]

You get enough money together and you can buy out any public company. You might have more difficultly getting enough MS or Oracle shareholders to sell, but with a high enough price anything is possible.

Why not MS

[tsa]

I always wonder why they were not bought by MS because CorelDraw is a nice vector drawing program that is used by a lot of people to make pictures with that are then incorporated in a Word document. MS could have had WP and Draw in one nice package.!

Re:Why not MS

[HiThere]

Visio? Better?

Visio isn't even the same kind of product as Corel Draw. You can use Corel Draw to do Visio kinds of things, and if you do then I agree that Visio would be better, but that's not what it's designed to do.

Corel Draw is like AdobeIllustrator. Or, to take a product that I like better, like Deneba Canvas. Comparing it with Visio is like saying that a backhoe isn't good for working on your garden. Well, OK. You're right. But that's not what it was designed to do.

There's still opportunity here...

[DesScorp]

The Corel name, and product line, still have reputation enough to make the company a huge asset IF the right buyer comes along and makes good management decisions. Despite the popularity of OpenOffice among private users, most companies aren't going to adopt it, and Sun is having little success in marketing the professional sibling, StarOffice. WordPerfect, Corel Draw, Quattro Pro, and other apps still have good commercial name recognition and respect, and were a company like HP to come along and buy and distribute it, the Corel line could have a fighting chance. HP is already distributing Corel software with it's home-market PCs. If they were to do a true port to Linux of all the Corel line, it could really kick-start the Linux business desktop. And I mean a REAL port, not the Wine-dependant crap Corel was distributing years ago. And if someone like HP were to buy them, the Corel Linux distro wouldn't be a bad idea for a return either. Corel Linux had some nice features, and was Debian based. Much better package management that way. IBM wouldn't be in the market. They've already got one office suite, and are developing another Java-based suite. Sun has StarOffice. But with Corel going REALLY cheap, maybe they could be presuaded to buy anyway. Dare I hope that Apple might even have an interest? Probably not. Outside of the venture capital crowd gunning for it, a company like HP would be Corel's best hope of making a big return. The competition would certainly nice.

Re:There's still opportunity here...

[Anonymous Bullard]

It is exactly because of these opportunities that MS donated their venture capital friends the stock that enabled them to launch this hostile takeover. If MS had done the disposal directly themselves it might have been a little too obvious and even embarrassing to their friends at the US government.

Re:There's still opportunity here...

[GeeKaLoT]

Absolutely, this is not the end for Corel. When Vector Capital takes the company private it will give them some leeway (no more paying fees to list the company on public stock exchanges, less public scrutiny, not being at the mercy of the market as much) which will give them a chance to recover and concentrate on product development.

Their XML products seem to be gathering steam. I have a feeling Corel will have a resurgence eventually, after a few years of quiet development as a privately held company.

Quite true

[SoVi3t]

That was a big part of the old Anti-Trust lawsuits. When they included IE with Windows, Netscape went through the roof. MS just has to bump up the price of their upcoming versions of Windows, and throw in product X. Consumers are thrifty, and will likely not want/need another word processor, graphics editor, tax filing program, etc. The only way for your product to survive is to beat Windows itself, and that won't likely happen for a LONG time.....or just make games instead ^_^

Corel

[martingunnarsson]

I think there's always been a better option to Corel's programs. They were always some kind of second choice. Perhaps it's just me?

The Corel Touch of Death

[asv108]

Well good riddens as far as I'm concerned. I started using Corel Draw! at version 3, it was revolutionary program for its time especially since for awhile it was the only decent package that ran on a PC. If you think MS has a lousy upgrade path, Corel use to extort its Draw! customers with unnecessary upgrades and buggy released. Coreldraw 6 was probably the last good draw release, while release 7 was the best for photo paint. Photo paint 7 was given a higher rating that photoshop 4/5 at the time by most magazines, but most photo shop regulars were wise not to switch or ran macs anyway.

Corel has a strategy of buying successful products and turning them in to obscure POS's. Here is just a short list off the top of my head of products they still offer:

• Fractal Design Painter (Amazing Program)
• Kai's Power Tools
• Wordperfect
• Bryce

I believe there are also a bunch of excellent products that were acquired and abandoned. If I remember correctly Kai's Goo (easy to use image editor) was extremely popular before digital cameras were common and another product called photo soap was pretty decent too. The "Kai" line of basic image editors and easy effects for the masses could have been insanely successful if Corel didn't touch it.

Re:The Corel Touch of Death

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Corel Touch of Death

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think MS has a lousy upgrade path, Corel use to extort its Draw! customers with unnecessary upgrades and buggy released.

I disagree with your assertion that Corel extorted anyone, but you're right about the buggy releases. Like you, I started with Draw! version 3 and found it an extremely nice program to use. Then came version 4, and they might as well have kicked me in the jimmy for all it was worth -- talk about crap software!

Also, I'd like to correct you on the 'last good Draw! release'. The last good Draw! release was version 9. It's (mostly) unbloated and includes a few fairly useful utilities.

MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL -- Draw! 9 is a veritable swiss army knife for pre-press operators. It will open most (if not all) of the popular raster or vector image file types, will render better postscript than Adobe Illustrator, and is generally the most useful thing you can have on your computer if you're using a PC in the pre-press world.

I'll be sad to see it go. I much prefer Draw! over the alternatives: Freehand and Illustrator.

Re:The Corel Touch of Death

[Snaller]

. The "Kai" line of basic image editors and easy effects for the masses could have been insanely successful if Corel didn't touch it.


And if they had had a decent interface instead of the crappy bloatware interface that just added 50% of requirements to the program.

umm proof?

[asv108]

However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project,

I'm sure if there was any validity to this claim Sun would be getting their pants sued off by now. Is this the effect of SCO? Is every loser company going to start BS claims and legal maneuvering against competitive open source projects?

Re:Caldera?

[arkane1234]

Caldera?

Well, needless to say the Caldera distribution has never been anything more than a proprietary blackhole, but it doesn't have jack to do with Corel as far as I know.

Perhaps you mean the distribution of Linux Corel came out with a few years ago that they dropped?
(Corel Linux)

PHB alert!

[Generic Guy]

Gee, no wonder the product didn't do better with such forward thinking plans:

"massive undertaking", "synnergizing our product lines", "escalating the sales curves."

I suddenly feel like I'm reading the Dilbert archive and not Slashdot. Are you sure this wasn't supposed to be moderated +5 Funny?

Parting out?

[itomato]

I'd like to see Painter set free.

I'd *really* like to see another company like Fractal Design or Metacreations pick it up and run, run, run with it.

Don't write them off just yet...

[mercuryresearch]

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.

Additional complaining about Corel...

[aussersterne]

Not to mention that they burned a lot of goodwill in the Linux community (one of the few viable non-Microsoft markets) when they abandoned their Linux line.

When Corel released WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux and Corel Draw/PhotoPaint 9 for Linux, there was an incredible marketing push. I got samples. I also got Tux plush toys, balloons, beach balls, "Corel Linux" stress cubes, posters and other branding-oriented products sent to me.

I was one of the individuals to decide to pony up $$$ for some trial installations of WordPerfect Office 2000 Deluxe for Linux and Corel Draw 9 for Linux, thinking that these were bigtime apps. The initial release was somewhat (incredibly, you found as time wore on,) buggy, but with service packs already available for the Windows version and assurances that the Linux product line represented a major long-term investment by Corel, I was reasonably confident that the product was viable.

Well... As the weeks turned into months and still no service packs at all, the Corel Office for Linux newsgroup filled up with more and more dissatisfied people wondering about the crashing, the incompatibilities with LPR, and a million other little bugs that had yet to be addressed.

Fast-forward to 2003... The products are orphaned. They have been removed from the Corel Web site without a trace. There has never been so much as a peep out of corel about them since the initial product launch and marketing push. To get anyone at Corel on the phone who even admits that such products ever existed is damn near impossible. The open-source linux.corel.com site that contained Corel's WINE tree is gone.

And no service packs for the Linux versions of these programs ever got released!

In Red Hat 8, they're still unstable, they still sometimes simply error out when you try to save a file you've been working on (can you say "lost work"?), more obscure parts of the programs still tend to crash them or display broken dialogs, and you still have to run a second font server and hand-massage your /etc/printcap file to get them to print to it. These problems that I was sure would be fixed within weeks of release in a service pack are still here years later.

In Red Hat 9, the programs don't install at all. There's a fundamental incompatibility with NTPL. If you grab the Red Hat 8 libraries and use them with an LD_LIBRARY_PATH, you can get the apps to install and run, but they don't save or spool print jobs at all no matter what you do, and they have a tendency to simply turn into runaway processes at the slightest irritation.

And to add final insult to injury, we've recently discovered that about 75% of the files created by the Linux versions of WordPerfect Office 2000 can't be opened by the Windows versions of Corel's products. Old files created with these apps are very orphaned.

I'll never buy Corel again for any reason! And I've heard from other people using Linux in varied environments that who also spent $$$ on the Corel licenses that feel much the same way. They could have ruled the Linux world if they'd stuck with it. Instead, they screwed many thousands of decision-makers who won't ever want to smell them again.

Re:Additional complaining about Corel...

[Keeper]

If it makes you feel any better, the Windows version of WordPerfect worked about as well for me as the Linux version did for you. :)

Re:Caldera?

[myzz]

Xandros is derived from Corel Linux.

Er...

[TheAwfulTruth]

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.

No offense, but ...

[BorgCopyeditor]

Ottawa ... cool?
Ottawa?!
...
COOL?!?!

does not compute
does not compute
does not co...
dos..mpu...
not ... mpute...
..c
...
NO CARRIER

Remember CorelDraw for Linux?

[jago25_98]

I got CorelDraw for Linux ... old glib compiled etc.

Hopefully now things will improve :)

Tell me about it

[DCMonkey]

It is probably a good thing OpenOffice.org has abandoned that integrated desktop UI that the original StarOffice had. If they felt like improving it they could have run afoul of this patent held by Corel: US Patent No. 20030090519

This patent might be something those KParts and Bonobo-UI guys would want to look at, in case this Vector company or someone that buys them goes the profit-by-IP-lawsuit route.

Hint: read the claims and description. The abstract is rather useless.

Michael wrote the Corel ads himself, I was told.

[Futurepower(R)]

A very sad situation. Someone high up in the company told me that Michael was writing the ads himself. The ads killed any chance of selling Corel Draw, which at one time was a hot product.

Nah...

[fz00]

What's really sad is that WordPerfect is a better product than MicroSoft Office and few people realize it. It's cheaper, it's easier to use and it makes PDFs. But I think things are getting better for WordPerfect recently than worse. At least vendors like Gateway, Compaq and Dell are bundling these in their consumer and lower end models to cut costs for both themselves and their customers. This can at least help them survive. Also, I think in Corel's case it's good that they might go private. That way management can make decisions and not be at the whims of the market. Yes it's VCs but VCs are more predictable than the market.

Re:I won't miss them...

[egoots]

WP for Windows - a disaster from the first release; I went through 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, and 7.0

I have also used WP since the DOS days. I actually hated WP 5.1 for DOS because of the crappy interface... but tech support, printer support, and features were great. I have since gone through the many WP for Windows versions with varying degrees of likes/dislikes.

WP for Windows 9 (with the latest service packs applied) running on Win2K is quite stable and I am very pleased with it for what I use it for... WP 10 on WinXp pro is also quite good. I havent tried WP 11 though. However, if truth be told, it's lack of success has nothing to do with its feature comparison with MS Word. I much prefer the feature set in WP compared to Word.

Blame MS for late WordPerfectForWindows

[solprovider]

The story I heard was that MS told WordPerfect that OS2 was the next big thing and WP should concentrate on getting their software ported to OS2. Then MS blasted both IBM and WP by making MSWindows 3.0 the big thing, and MS already had MSWord for Windows ready. MSWfW became the killer app for Microsoft Windows: more people would type "win" to use Word than they would for Solitaire. Back then, you killed Windows as soon as you were done with Word because it was a memory hog, and you needed to do most of your work in DOS apps.

So both the didn't adapt to Windows fast enough and MS's intrinsic lead in the technology base were plans of the evil genius.

In WP's defense, MS had only destroyed about 10 companies at that point, so nobody really believed MS thought of themselves as the snake in a mouse farm.

---
the law firm I work for [is] using Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS

I think it is great that some companies realize that software is meant to accomplish a task. If the current software does what is needed, there is no reason to look for different software, even if it is disguised as an upgrade. You learn to work around bugs in the software. You learn how to use it. A new version may waste some time for the upgrade, but it also means everybody must learn new commands, and learn new workarounds.

Legal secretaries with any experience are more productive using WPForDOS than anybody using MSWord for Windows. I saw WPForDOS running on a Pentium 200, and the software was extremely fast. The user was an retired lawyer, so his typing speed was probably around 50wpm, but he never had to wait for the software to do anything.

I think we will start seeing software last longer. Applied to RedHat, 7.1 had a 500 connection limitation, 7.2 was buggy, but 7.3 could last forever. I think RH noticed this, which is why RH followed MS's lead and announced that old versions must die.
- I really hope Linux users never feel they need to upgrade because of support issues caused by their distributor. I have not read about security holes in the kernel. Patch the applications WHEN A PARTICULAR SECURITY HOLE OR BUG AFFECTS THE SERVER; otherwise leave the software alone. A minimalistic approach to upgrades should keep the users and the company happy.

---
This is Slashdot: everything is MS's fault.

WordPerfect Corporation

[iantri]

I'd just like to mention something that most people seem to have forgotten: Corel really didn't do all that much when it comes to WordPerfect. Yes, the Linux port is theirs, but the core program, up to WP6 for Windows was written by Satellite Software International (at the very start) who changed their name to WordPerfect Corp. after a version or two. Around WP6.1-6.2 for Windows it was bought by Novell (1994) and then before or right after the release of WP7 was bought by Corel (1996).

I'd say that pretty much all the real functionality was in it by version 6 (I'm hard pressed to find anything important missing from WP6 that is in the latest verison, save automatic underlining on misspelled words) and that Corel merely added a few features to give them an excuse to release new versions.

Anyway, the writing has been on the wall for years now..

Re:Hey, Ottawa is cool

[hopbine]

I thought that the Balloon Festival was next door in Gatineau.

and to think, I still have Corel Stock

[asscroft]

HAHAHAHAH too late to sell now. Fun to watch it go down the drain. Only have a coupla shares anyway.

Buying MS (the company)

[solprovider]

Today's market cap for MS is $289 billion.

Normally you need to pay a premium to buy out a company, so it is out of reach for everybody

But according to a stock analyst friend, MS stock price is in a "declining right triangle". Stocks must "break out" of the triangle before it comes to a point. The "breakout" becomes greater when it happens closer to the point. The triangle has a 5 year base, and the point is sometime in the second half of 2004.

MS's actions (high dividends, split, giving software away to make it seem popular) to keep the price up are actually going to make the breakout be bigger, because the breakout will happen closer to the point.

BTW, it is a good time to sell. Unless you convince yourself that the breakout will be upwards, $27 is about the highest it will go.

I need to ask my friend how big the breakout will be. He will not commit to which way the breakout will happen, but statistics can estimate the size of the breakout given a date.

This is Slashdot, so let us assume that the breakout will be to a lower price. I cannot think of anything that could breakout to a higher price: announce a big win, release another product - these events have already happened and did not cause a breakout.

The release of OpenOffice2, plus a few months to prove it is not buggy could set it off in NOV. Or JAN when the new budgets are approved. I believe it will happen around FEB when all the new migrations are annnounced.

I will be optimistic and say that the stock stabilizes at $3. That puts the market cap around $30 billion. If it keeps declining, MS could be a candidate for a buyout.

But who would buy it whole? Their cash cows will be disappearing, and the most of the divisions are unprofitable. Intel, IBM, and Cisco are the only other IT companies with market caps over $100B. Each is a hardware vendor, and owning the Windows OS would hurt their company. (Well, maybe IBM would buy them as revenge, but that would be more emotion than strategy.)

I believe that the divisions will be sold off individually over the next 5 years. With decent management, there is the possibility that some of them could become profitable. And the price will be right.

And don't forget Paradox...

[jbuilder]

The last release of Paradox (v10) actually *removed* features that were in Paradox 9. Rather than fix the problems in them, they just killed the functionality outright. That's just a joke. People still use that database for their work. I don't know who I feel sorry for more, Corel or those stupid enough to still invest money and time in their products.

Corel's been a walking corpse for some time. I'm just glad someone's going to finally get Corel to realize that it's time to crawl in it's grave and call it done.

Paradox is dead, Long live Paradox.

Re:I won't miss them..Niether will MIcroshaft.

[ratfynk]

If I remember correctly MS did not exactly help things by creating Word .doc as a numericaly formatted script even now there is formatting that cannot be used with any other program except word even though they have been told to cut it out by the courts. I can remember when major corporations like Canfor used Dos Word Perfect and found it to be great because of speed, flexability and ease of use. For that matter it was pretty much the standard in business word processing. What happened is that the company that controls OS developement can screw any software company it chooses to put out of business so it can dominate the market. No Corel could not succeed because they couldn't sue MS for stealing ideas. Symantec was a different story. If you control the code that must be used to access internet functionality, system calls to printer, etc and control who gets to use browser interfaces then you can screw any company you see as a major competitive treat. No I will miss Corel even though they got things wrong.

The truth is if you are seen to be a competitor to MS then you are on the hit list, unfortunately Corel went right to the top, along with AOL, and Netscape, who's next Adobe? No if some one takes over Word Perfect and makes a really great all in one Unix/Apple/Linux/FreeBSD version I will gladly pay for it, and I am sure there are many others who will also. There is no reason why WordPerfect, Corel Draw etc. cannot remain proprietary, but they had better be good.

Re:Hey, Ottawa is cool

[Dashing Leech]

You forgot to mention the canal, the greenbelt, the recreational pathways everywhere, and the world's longest skating rink. I live in the middle of the city and from my house I could bike or in-line skate for 30 minutes to university (in the city core) all the way through the woods on a paved pathway without a car in sight (except for occasional street crossings). Now I bike 30 minutes the other way to an industrial park in the suburbs (north Kanata) and I still take a pathway through the woods with no cars in sight. Not too many cities you can do that in.

Keeping it alive

[dspeyer]

I, too, used Wordperfect since version 5.0 for Dos. I followed up through 8.0 for GNU/Linux (which was far better than 9). I left looking partly for more polish, but mostly just for freedom.

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.

Re:Corel shareholders fight suspicious takeover de

[Anonymous Bullard]

Whoa! Seems that Mircosoft doesn't feel any need to even try being discreet about their tactics these days, having gotten US Department of Justice's consent in the consent decree.

If this was a US company being ripped apart by a foreign monopoly the press would be all over this story! I must wonder if things were a bit different if Corel was based in Europe instead of Canada.

hang on they haven't signaled yet

[Grizzlysmit]

Their desire to be bought that is, you do it by sueing IBM for something totally ludicrous like violating your copyright, on things you don't own. :-D, :-P

You forgot WP for real computers

[Vitus Wagner]

There was also Word Perferct for Unix and VMS.
And it was the better solution for host-terminal
systems.

Unfortunately their open offerring of WP 8 for Linux
didn't included non-GUI version, but I was quite
impressed with performance of GUI version.

It works on 20Mb 486 for few users simultaneously,
i.e. it ate no more resources then wordprocessing
deserve.

Unfortuately, it didn't support Russian locale,
although WP 5.1 for DOS have very descent Russian
localisation.

Also, Quattro Pro 5.0 was best spreadsheet ever
released.

Reveal Codes

[vasqzr]

Word - Tools - Options

Under 'view' you can hide/show as many or as little of the formatting codes as you want.

Re:Reveal Codes

[QuatMosk]

Good point, but it's still not quite there...

In WordPerfect, I would see things like {i}broken{/i} ("paraphrasing", since I don't remember the actual codes), and if need be, I could just move the close of the italic tag to another section of the text in a line.

Take Word as the alternate example, and HTML conversion, specifically. If I'm in Word, and decide I'm going to italicize a word or phrase, then change my mind, the code will still be there. This is the (unofficial?) reason why Word documents have the bloat that they do. They never clean themselves up!

When I do Word to HTML conversions, I spend half of my time just getting rid of empty italic and bold tags. Blech!

QuatMosk

WP for Linux resources

[rickmoen]

aussersterne wrote:

Fast-forward to 2003... The products are orphaned. They have been removed from the Corel Web site without a trace.

It's certainly true that they've been orphaned, but WP8 for Linux Download Personal Edition remains available at a large number of sites, listed in my WordPerfect for Linux FAQ. You can also find PhotoPaint9 (Winelib) tarballs, here and there, if so interested.

The open-source linux.corel.com site that contained Corel's WINE tree is gone.

Substantially all of the former linux.corel.com Web site remains mirrored on http://corellinux.com/. The Corelwine fork remains maintained, for now, by Michael Torrie at http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/.

And no service packs for the Linux versions of these programs ever got released!

Torrie's third-party updates to Corelwine, the Fontastic server, and other support code are said to make WP9 for Linux almost acceptable, although I find WP8 generally superior in fundamental ways. Valentijn Sessink has contributed a third-party fix to the Filtrix date-rollover problem, and there are numerous Corel-issued fixes to little bugs at http://corellinux.com/.

Your point generally is well taken: The corellinux.com site even enshrines Corel's lastingly broken promise to post an "Update coming soon for Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux/UNIX import/export filter issue", which failure Sessink eventually worked around for the user community's benefit without Corel's help. However, I just wanted to point out that many problems can be fixed to a significant degree, despite Corel having cast the entire thing to the winds.

Library-support problems for WP8.x on modern Linux distributions can be fixed, given varying amounts of determination. In extreme cases, you can install all needed libs from a tarball available for that purpose. My FAQ has details.

I suspect you'd find WP8.x much less frustrating than the lamentable WP9, especially if you acquire a copy of the WP8.1 Personal Edition -- the best release by far of WP for Linux -- still sometimes available (on eBay and other places) bundled as part of Corel Linux OS Standard or Deluxe Editions.

But the long term answer is to realise that proprietary codebases are prone to being here today, gone tomorrow, and to realise that AbiWord 1.9.1 is starting to look awfully good and cannot suffer that same fate. (OpenOffice.org Writer 1.1 beta 2 is useful, too.)

Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com

Death By Stupidity...

[webzombie]

Copeland and Microsoft should have been more then enough to sink Corel.

Loyal users kept them afloat by paying their outrageous upgrade prices hoping that Corel would eventually give up on their ADD business strategies and focus on their true strength... graphics products

Corel should return to Linux development but only with their flagship products, no Corel Linux or any other distracting product, just their core products on Linux.

Linux is the next NEW thing and the big players including like IBM and MS know it and MS will do everything in their power to stop it and kill it in it's tracks.

Corel and its users and its shareholders have an opportunity to truly lead the charge for change and should.

For now it remains to be seen if they have any innovative gas left in the tank

Re:Hey, Ottawa is cool

[GeeKaLoT]

Notoriously conservative! Well, Michael Cowpland's (former CEO of Corel) wife, Marlen Cowpland, has certainly spiced things up in Ottawa. =) With her dyed poodle and cavorting to events in eccentric designer clothes including a million-dollar Richard Robinson leather catsuit with a massive diamond nipple is hardly boring. ;)

There was once a photo spread in the Ottawa Sun, taken at a bar in the market called the Rum Shack (a downtown area with many trendy shops, restaurants, bars) with Michael by the jacuzzi with topless girls. That's pretty liberal. =)

Impact on shareholders when company goes private?

[GeeKaLoT]

Corel has been a publicly held company and many people own their shares. Now a venture capital firm is buying them out at $1.05 US per share.

Does anyone know how shareholders are typically compensated when a public company goes private?

Does the brokerage charge fees as if the shareholder traded?

On the day of the sale, does the shareholder just get cash put into their brokerage account equivalent to the last listed value of the shares?

My bank still uses it :)

[gnalle]

I have an account in Nordea, (a middle sized bank in northern Europe). My bank advisor was somewhat embarrassed when I recognized Wordperfect 5.1 on his screen.

Personally I have had many good experiences with wordperfect 5.1. Once you know some basic keys (f3 and f7), then it is a very useful program. It hasn't got much eyecandy, but then again who needs that.

libwpd - a library for wordperfect compatibility

[gnugnugnu]

Skip the openoffice page and go straight to the real action libwpd.sourceforge.net

It is being developed by Will Lachance and Marc Maurer for Abiword 2.0 (and OpenOffice too, and KOffice hopefully), I believe there are already Abiword builds with WordPerfect support already available. WordPerfect support will definately be included in Abiword 2.0

I am sure developers willing to help or testers who can break it would be appreciated.

lp?

[110100]

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