Corel Goes Private

prostoalex writes "Ottawa-based Corel, known for its CorelDRAW, WordPerfect, Painter and Bryce products, has been acquired by Vector Capital Corp. for $124 mln. with the intent to get de-listed from Nasdaq and Toronto stock markets and go private. 80% of shareholders approved the deal, according to the story. At certain points of its corporate history Corel was a Linux vendor and even partially owned by Microsoft. Microsoft paid $135M for 25% of the shares, so Vector Capital paying $124M for 100% stake looks like a pretty good deal." It's been over a month since this was first announced, but it's actually come to pass now.

Comments

Corel Draw

[tsa]

Does this mean we get to keep Corel Draw? Maybe there will be a new Linux version in the future? That'll be soo cool!

Does anyone see IP issues inthe future?

[WanderingGhost]

How much did Corel contribute to Open Source projects? With all the problems SCO has been causing, the news about Corel going private makes me sort of uncomfortable. Could they start doing the same?

Re:Does anyone see IP issues inthe future?

[Planesdragon]

With all the problems SCO has been causing, the news about Corel going private makes me sort of uncomfortable.

You misunderstand the stock market.

A publicly-traded company, like SCO or Microsoft, has to issue quarterly earnings reports, and is simply unable to focus on anything but profit. OSS is very, VERY hard to sell to publicly-traded software shops because OSS means that they're spending capital and getting no resources in return. (Publicly-traded hardware shops, like IBM and Apple, or service-shops, like AOL, are much easier sells--they simply write off the OSS programming as "support and maintenance")

Privately-held companies, like Corel will be, are a LOT easier to convince to use OSS. They can issue earnings reports at about any interval they want, they can market themselves in odd ways, and, being free of the whims of the stock market, they can pursue their business plan without worrying too much about hostile takeovers or the tides of politics.

A good release of Wordperfect office and a very stable Linux desktop would make an almost perfect MS replacement. Even though Word is the market-leader in word-processing (which, I wager, is what most users-hours are), Wordperfect still has sufficient mindshare to challenge MS--espeically in the legal field.

gmip, pah

[DrSkwid]

you should try Corel Painter

It's where Fractal Painter went

it is one of the best "natural media" packages available

Gimp will *never* catch up without massive input and to be honest, I'd rather Gimp was frozen and another application started.

Re:I missed corel draw.

[tsa]

The only problem with CorelDraw for Linux was that it was rpm-based and therefore very difficult to install on my Slackware system. If they release a next version I hope it has a decent install program like OO and Mozilla.

And not to forget the truly spectacular Netwinder

[Halvard]

Yes, Virginia, Corel sold hardware! The Netwinder lives on. For the unitiated, this originally was a StrongArm platform and there's a later Transmeta version.

Originally, these were available in Office Server, web server and desktop machine versions, different loads on the same hardware. Eventually a dual chassis rackmount appeared. With a couple of NICs and IPChains, they'd NAT an office. (No, I don't want to debate running Samba, etc. on the firewall just leave it at it was an inexpensive powerful small business solution).

It's got a strong developer base still. Went through a Rebel phase. When Rebel tanked, the CEOs new company used the customer list he brought but didn't own to spam people saying their Netwinders weren't secure and offered to sell them a blackbox firewall to plug in in front of it that wasn't secure. Ah, the scruples of a VC inspired world.

Anyway, these are great boxes that can be had new for cheap (~US$400) and less on eBay for used. Small, functional, reliable. I've got one running behind me running me.

Maybe they will sell us their code?

[HanzoSan]

You know, like Blender.

Open Source Fund to buy out these companies?

[AJ_Levy]

I'm just wondering if the Open Source community should set up a fund to, in future, buy out companies like Corel, and release their intellectual property as open source under GNU. Perhaps not as much Corel as Adobe, and its ilk. Think '80s style corporate raiding, except we raid intellectual property. Stuff like offices and the like get sold on the market, funding more purchases. Or am I just insane?

Painter on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know of a port? This is the only thing I still use on Windows.

and fast!

[twitter]

Let's hope they revive that Linux package before Paladium swings into action. People want what they have and the people who want it are influential.

There's a huge market of lawfirms just waiting for this one. They are sick to death of M$ nonsense and know about free software now. Between a Linux Word Perfect for their documents and printing and Star Office for M$ translation, Microsoft does not stand a chance there. I don't have to mention that government offices would be happy to have this too, do I?

When free software makes it into those places, where everyone can see them, the myth of Microsoft dependence will be completely crushed. There's something about seeing free software running where you go for good advice that does way more than an IBM advert in the Wall Street Journal. Many good things will come from that.

Go Go, Vector!

Bryce

[The_Pey]

I truly hope that nothing disasterous happens with Bryce or any of the other graphic software packages that Corel produced. For those who don't know, Corel acquired Bryce after Metacreations fell apart. Bryce is a relatively inexpensive "natural landscape renderer" similar to World Construction Set or other packages. Some very beautiful renderings were made with Bryce.

WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a beta tester for this product and to me, it held a lot of potential. It just came a bit too early, ie. before
(1) KDE got a reasonnable end-user manageable print infrastructure, in version 2.2 and
(2) XF86 got fontconfig.

KDE has progressed since, CUPS is almost everywhere in the Free *nix world and XF86 now has a modern font management infrastructure. Heck, even WINE has apparently improved a fair bit since the time they were involved with it -- for those who don't remember, they used libwine to port their s/w to Linux. The improved underlying (sp?) layers could only help Corel in developping a "must have" upgrade to the Linux/*BSD port of their office suite.

I really hope that we could see WPO v11 out for Linux/*BSD, as there is no current FOSS OA software that can hold a candle to it. What is really holding the Free Unices from the desktop is more on the *application* side of things, *not the OS* side. With the current wave/rash of serious M$-centric virii & worms, the next wave of Linux distros (or even of the various BSDs) mated with a decent port of WPO v11 could be something many wary CIOs could no longer ignore. With the amount of time & money being wasted on fighting MSBlaster and co, how could anyone ignore a platform that would be immune to such malware?

When CNN is starting covering MS-Centric malware extensively (from what I've seen in the last 2/3 days), this could be a sales pitch hard to dismiss easily.

Word Perfect 5.1 for linux

[RGRistroph]

I would consider between $20 and $50 a fair price to pay for a one-person license to a linux version of Word Perfect 5.1. It should work just like the DOS version, including a graphical print-preview option, that could use SVGAlib.

I would give a lot more than that to a fund that would buy the source (well documented assembly, from what I understand) and put it under the GPL.

It can't be that much work; there was a version of this for the SCO unix, and there are even directions on how to get that binary to run on linux.