Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Borland Being Purchased By Micro Focus

Posted by Soulskill on from the reaching-the-bottom-of-the-hill dept.

An anonymous reader tips news that Micro Focus is in the process of buying Borland Software for $75 million. They also picked up Compuware's application testing and automated software quality business. Quoting ZDNet: "The boards of both companies agreed to the deal, which is expected to complete around mid-2009. ... In 2008, Texas-based Borland made a pre-tax loss of $204m, almost four times the size of the previous year's loss. It had revenues of $172m, part of a consistent downward trend since at least 2004. ... Borland was one of the oldest software companies in the PC software business, having been founded in 1981. Its most successful era was in the late 1980s via massive sales of Sidekick, a DOS-based terminate-and-stay-resident personal productivity application, and development tool Turbo Pascal, which challenged Microsoft's dominance in the application-development market."

17 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. How many more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    How many more companies are going to bust becuase of Microsoft before the US DOJ splits the company up?

  2. Who is Micro Focus? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Micro Focus Net Express® is the market-leading COBOL development environment"

    So, a company that should've died off in the nineties is being bought by a company that noone has ever heard of that should've died off in the eighties. Weird.

    1. Re:Who is Micro Focus? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes, it's rather like a newsflash that the Hanseatic league has declared war on the Duchy of Burgundy. What? Where? And who cares?

      To get back to the subject, in my first "proper" (post college) job the first month was training on Microfukers Cowbull. I will never forgive anyone involved, including myself.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:Who is Micro Focus? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2, Funny

      COBOL programmers who were maintaining applications on a mainframe were no longer tied to an 8-color terminal connected at 9600 baud, or by using a terminal-emulation program that was just as bad.

      Indeed. In much the same vein, I hope that gcc will some day include support for AppleBASIC.

    3. Re:Who is Micro Focus? by NewWorldDan · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, and the second thing to cross my mind when I read the headline was "holy crap, Micro Focus is still around?"

    4. Re:Who is Micro Focus? by Beyond_GoodandEvil · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, it's rather like a newsflash that the Hanseatic league has declared war on the Duchy of Burgundy. What? Where? And who cares?
      You mean it's too late to catch the 11:30 auto-gyro to the Prussian embassy in Siam?

      --
      I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
    5. Re:Who is Micro Focus? by syrinx · · Score: 5, Funny

      Believe it or not, the also push OO COBOL.

      Presumably that's called ADD 1 TO COBOL?

      --
      Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
    6. Re:Who is Micro Focus? by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

      providing COBOL development on the PC. COBOL programmers who were maintaining applications on a mainframe were no longer tied to an 8-color [mainframe] terminal...

      Having a million-color monitor makes COBOL soooo much friendlier than 8. It's just the touch COBOL needed. I like my GO TO statements to be Sunrise Chartreuse. Any other color and they'd be mistaken for PIC statements.
                 

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  3. ah borland by Zashi · · Score: 3, Funny

    I remember, back in the day, when all malware was written in borland C/C++.

    Er.. not that i wrote malware. >_>

    --
    Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
  4. turbo-Pascal by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 5, Funny
    Man - bring me back to the 80s - when EVERYTHING was "TURBO". Go shopping for flatware "get this new stainless steel TURBO flatware - the spoons are extra-round!". You get your fucking cable bill and it's not delivered by letter post, it's deliverred by TURBO letter post. And the computer had a TURBO button on it to make it go faster. And the cooling fan the kicked in made you think - "hey maybe there IS a turbo in there!". And you go to the deli to pick up some fish, and they're selling TURBOT, but not just ANY TURBOT, but TURBOTURBOT!!!

    Man - between all that bullshit and bands like "A Flock of Haircuts" it was enough to make Max Headroom hurhurhur-HURL!

    RS

    --
    Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
    1. Re:turbo-Pascal by Rary · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm glad the "turbo" trend died. Long live "X-treme"!

      --

      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

  5. Re:C++ Builder is the best C++ IDE for RAD, by far by StikyPad · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can design forms and controls in the same way as Visual Basic, but it is C++.

    I thought that was called Visual C++.

    --
    https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  6. Odd by Rary · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm not sure what surprised me more when I read this: that Borland still exists, or that Micro Focus still exists.

    --

    "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

  7. Re:You are Micro Focus by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    COBOL may not have much mindshare among slashdotters, but there's a lot of COBOL code out there. Most of those boring apps that do nothing but apply simple business logic, like the one that cuts your paycheck, are written in COBOL.

    Do you have Tourette's syndrome, or is there some other reason why your post is liberally sprinkled with shouted obscenities?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. Re:You are Micro Focus by fm6 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Go FORTRAN yourself, you FrameMaker.

  9. Re:You are Micro Focus by fm6 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Troll? What idiot did I offend this time? And how? Is somebody a Grace Hopper fanboy? If so, you really need to get a life!

  10. Re:TSR by Dave+Emami · · Score: 3, Funny

    Aaah good old terminate-and-stay-resident programs,

    Terminate and stay resident? You mean, when a cyborg that looks like Arnold Scharzenegger kills someone and then moves into their house?

    --

    "The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."