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Adobe Attempting Takeover of Corel?
Drizzt sent us a link to
a little blurb over at ZDNet that talks about
Adobe Trying to Take over Corel.
Interesting little bits there basically saying that Corel is
trying to stall things. What would Adobe do with Corel? Would
they continue to support Corel Apps on Linux? What of the Netwinder?
Is Adobe afraid of The Gimp?
Seeing as it was recently sold off to HSC (IIRC) I doubt anything substantial will happen to the Netwinder.
:-)
I have no idea what Adobe could be planning.. they may well indeed want to have part of the Linux cake. If so, then who are we to complain?
I think their real motive though is to kill off Draw!.. aren't they competitors?
This is disconcerning! Adobe has turned a blind eye to the Linux market and without Corel offerring similar products, the consumer will not benefit.
I'm morally against monopolies, govormental or private. The consumer benefits from a capitalistic model only when there is a choice of products. This is troubling indeed.
Patrick
The real story is that Corel is adopting a shareholders' rights plan. Speculation re: Adobe is third-party rumormongering.
Goodbye, Corel Draw. 'Twas nice knowing you. We've reserved a nice little plat for you beside Aldus Photostyler. We will remember you both.
And given the time the rumour started, with Corel stocks plummeting, it seems more like wild speculation from someone who hoped that their stocks would retain at least some of their value, than anything remotely related to the real world.
I wouldn't take too much notice. But then, who knows.
We only can imagine what Adobe would do to Corel if they put their hands on it... ;) (join me...). Seriously, if we expect good things happen without working, our future is far from success. I'm tired of watch, I'll play.
Corel is one company that is actively supporting Linux as a OS for everyone, even my Mother and Grandpa. Let's hope they fail in taking over anything...
The world out there is scary, and all the things We count on are just so volatile that sometimes i fell that many of us (me included) are just waiting behind our monitors to see good things happen, good news, new software, new kernel, new packages coming, ports, etc. And that's why Open Source in general is in some ways fragile and as it grows and turns dangerous for some of those Big Guys in their companies, is a good target for them to atack. When a company based in Open Source has success (Red Hat), many of us start to complain and think that no powerfull company should rule or enviroment. But I think that maybe that's good, because the good 'ol times have gone and THIS IS BUSSINESS! We should support Linux Based bussiness, and we should stop waiting and start doing SERIOUSLY. Support the Open Source Project of your like, search for one in your knowledge area, start one if there's not. Work hard, work right, I your wife can't stand it, divorce
Competition GOOD.
Monopoly BAD.
Opensource FOREVER.
Why can't companies just concentrate on doing what they do better, or, god forbid, a little innovation, instead of trying to rid the world of competitors?
Overall, Corel's main products compete with Adobe's. The only reason for Adobe to buy Corel would be to elminate the competition, primarily from CorelDraw. If this happens, forget about CorelDraw on Linux, Adobe seems to have no interest in Linux, and they seem to have slowed development on their UNIX products.
I do not like adobe at all. They charge outrageously high prices on their products because they have no real competition. They also keep threatening to abandon the Macintosh platform, even though, from what I know, that's where they got their start. Meaning they'll put tons of Macintosh customers in the cold.
Then it is my belief that this might be a strike against Quark. Why? Rumors were flying recently that Corel and Quark were 'getting into bed' with each other.
While Adobe has a near-monopoly on the photo editing market (Photoshop), they lost professional-pagelayout market edge long ago to QuarkXpress and haven't been able to get it back.
Quark and Adobe have up and down relationships similar to Microsoft and (pick you company of the week). Quark recently tried a 'hostile take-over' of Adobe but withdrew the offer after it proved unpopular with users.
Of course, the QuarkXpress angle is only one way to look at this.
What does The Gimp have to do with a Corel takeover?
This is indeed an old rumor. Also, as reported by the Ottawa Citizen. However the article does mention some stuff about "a shareholders' rights plan."
The only merger that went well for Adobe was with Aldus. The other mergers that I can remember (and I worked there) all went poorly, with the acquired products getting dumped, and the acquired employees leaving once their stock-options vested.
... what were they? BluePoint, Emerald City Software, the FontMonger people, the PageMill people, the Emeryville team, Frame, and now GoLive?
Hmmm
The only successful acquisition Adobe made was for the Photoshop product back in 1989. Everything else has been muffed, bigtime. Look at Adobe's stock, and compare it with Microsoft. Now tell me, who has better management?
I got this internal message from Adobe:
Customer Service anticipates a flurry of hiring activity in the coming weeks. If you know of any superior canditates for temporary and or regular Tier II customer service positions (i.e., this is not just a "foot in the door at Adobe"), we would appreciate your recommendations. You can reply and attach resumes or give me a call at [number removed] and I'll come get them from you!
Actually, Adobe *RECOMMENDS* the Gimp to people who ask them about plans to port Photoshop to Linux. (In other words, they don't plan to).
The Anonymous Coward
Muahahahahaha!
EFNet's Own...Doommaker!
Adobe is in a death spiral. Lots of companies
on the rocks go out by buying some other loser
company. By 1901 or 1902, they'll be history.
Interesting. Apparently us "Anonymous Cowards" aren't Y2K compliant.
Try to remember that when feature Hollywood films
are re-released and said to be "ReMastered" many
have been frame-by-frame touched up in photoshop.
J Ferrell
Quark is in bed with Microsoft and Intel.
I'm using a Linux box as a mission-critical web server, file server, and internet gateway. It's worked flawlessly; the hardware and software was virtually free.
But that's not good enough for me. What I want to know is, is Adobe scared? Does Bill Gates experience loss of bladder control when he thinks of Linux? The answers to these questions are important to me; I can't fully enjoy Linux unless I know it is making other people very unhappy.
GoLive Cyberstudio is just about the most important application to me right now. The verdict is still out on how Adobe plans to handle CS; the only thing known for sure is that they are hustling a Windoze version out the door ASAP.
If Adobe does the CS-using Mac community right, I will have some faith in the way they handle Corel (if the rumors are true...)
Wugmump (wugmump@hotmail.com)... no password cookie at work!
I use Linux and the GIMP, but lets be real. The Gimp just can't compete yet with ANY Adobe products. Photoshop has the pull, and with the talks of Adobe porting Photoshop to UNIX - I would think the Gimp would be scared.
I've never heard of PhotoDelux. Corel's raster program is called Photo-Paint, and it's every bit as good as Photoshop, if not better.
I do believe I wrote the most moderated post to Slashdot of 1999 so far. Check out http://slashdot.org/articles/99/01/31/1541250.shtm l and set the threshold to -7. You will see my translation got a score of -7, but ALAS, it was tied with someone else's sarcastic comment.
The way the scoring system works, each moderator can only downgrade a post by one point. That means SEVEN moderators thought my post sucked! Blimey, that must be a record?
Well then, we shouldn't have long to wait. With any luck they'll outlast the horse and buggy business.
BTW, have you looked at your calender lately?
John Waalkes
Ahh...but the port to Irix officially sucked ass. No reason a graphics app should be sluggish on an SGI.
Adobe scared??!??! Oh please, gimp is fine for web graphics but there is a whole larger market out there such as desktop publishing. For that you need CMYK for a start. Even if GIMP had that the fact is there is still no DTP program for Linux anyway so it would be pretty useless..
GIMP is good, but adobe scared.. I highly doubt it.
Unless you are into pre-press??? I would think that that would be Photoshop's major market, therefore why the hell would adobe be scared??
oh PLEEZE what kind of comparison is that???!!!
When Photoshop did come out.. it was probably around 198x? Thats a stupid stupid comparison and you should think before you type.. second.. gimp technically took all/most of its ideas from Photoshop and competing graphics tools.. and put it for linux.. definately in no way is it superior than ps5.. Gimp is a great program for doing home/web graphics though.. great for the non pro user..
I think they did...but with the death of SDCorp (who did all their unix ports) at the end of last year...and little or no evidence of true linux support (where's the bugfix list for xwp, corel? why haven't you released updates or timelines for your unix products?)...it's unlikely they can last a hell of a lot longer.
I suspect linux, unix and the 'winder were they're last hurrah -- games are the only thing that can move linux onto the desktop, and thus keep NT from eroding the open source hold on the web, linux' only stronghold.
If Adobe does buy Corel, who are their compeditors?
If the DOJ does investigate Adobe on monopoly charges, would Adobe cite "MS Paint" as an alternative/compeditor?
That was put out by Autodesk. It had 80% of the features of CorelDraw, and only took 1% of the effort to learn. I'd like to see _that_ republished.
This chatter about Corel is good, I picked up a big lump of stock when it was 1+, and look at it now. Validates the PR maxim, it doesn't matter what others say about you, just as long as they spell your name right.
This is from Wired:
."
"Corel Sets Up Buyout Defenses
Wired News Report
3:15 p.m. 12.Feb.99.PST
Corel on Friday unveiled a shareholders rights plan designed to ward off unsolicited takeover bids for the company, amid speculation that rival Adobe Systems is preparing to attempt a hostile acquisition. . .
Read it at
This is starting to quite real, isn't it? Here is a hint: Companys always say that no one has approached them for hostile buy out.
linux ppl don't know much about DTP stuffs... i'd like to point out, that adobe is NOT a microsoft-type monopoly. adobe creates very stable product. adobe has plenty of competition because it's easy to write a image product, and it's easy for people to swtich from one image editing software to another... much easier than swtiching the OS.
and i don't think adobe conducts bussiness in any dishonorable fashion. again, linux ppl prolly don't know much about. example: adobe's font set are still the best of quality. sure you have to pay a lot of adobe product, but you get what you paid for.
just that adobe don't support linux doesn't mean adobe is horrible.
Let's hope that this article is right, but since Reuter's can't even get the name of Corel's CFO right, who knows!? I think if this merger were to take place it would be very bad news for the Linux support Corel has been promising.
Corel realizes that OS competition means increased software competition, does Adobe know this? If everyone in the commercial sector uses MS OSes the ability to sell software plummets, except for Microsoft ... anyways, getting off topic!
Adobe snatched up Word for Word Pro, the only decent doc conversion tool on the market, released an all-in-one CD with the DOS, Mac, Windows (the worst Windows app I've ever used, BTW), and SCO versions (runs CLI or CUI under iBCS)--then didn't market it at all. They subsequently sold it off to INSO, who gutted it for the filters, which they included in some outrageously priced web design software and some other windows crap, then they dumped it. INSO keep promising to re-release the Word for Word product under some "Gold software" line, but I'm not holding my breath.
As far as rumors of this sort are concerned, almost every tech takeover rumor has had some weight. Even the Netscape takeover deal was shot down as a rumor, at first.
I'd be interested to learn if Adobe has any kind of relationship with Microsoft. Having a bean counter-, marketing weasel-driven company like Adobe snatch up Corel would be a nice way to get rid of a highly anticipated Linux office suite, as well as Linux versions of Draw and Photo-Paint (?), without drawing fire from the feds.
slashdot broke my sig
Posted by Jimmy the Geek:
You could sell this rumor to the National Enquirer.
NO WAY.
Better question to ask....
"Who's going to buy Adobe?"
You guys better polish your crystal balls
better.
Posted by antivert:
I've never used IntelliDraw, but those features sound similar to those in a recent product from Macromedia called FireWorks. Might want to check it out.
If they buy Corel, they *will* cancel all Linux versions of Corel software.
They are shills for Microsoft.
Geez, and you believe everything you read at ZDNet... No, this is not true. According to today's MacNN.com, Corel is not in negotiations with Adobe regarding a takeover, nor it has any knowledge if such intentions exist.
A better question is what would anyone do with Corel? They don't have any software products making money. They don't have a call center pulling in money for support. They sold the Netwinder dog. They haven't had a new office program since 1996.
They did that with Aldus before. You know, Aldus, the ones who created PageMaker and gave a boost to the Macintosh desktop publishing market, who also had worthy competitors to Illustrator (Freehand) and Photoshop (PhotoStyler). So they took over PageMaker and dumped PhotoStyler and Freehand. And now Adobe doesn't have a clue. Monopolies suck.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
I hate Adobe programs, sometimes I think of Adobe as the Microsoft of graphics. In colleges Adobe/Macs are use because "that is what is used". :)
And they're right, if you try to get a Corel Draw file printed it's very hard (at least in my area). They demand Adobe, Adobe, and nothing but the Adobe, on a Mac-formatted zip disk. Perhaps it's time to throw ext2 zips and XCF files at 'em.
I don't know whether to be happy or concerned.
If this thing goes through, who knows what Adobe
has planned.
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
Bwana McCall
bwana@nye.net
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
Maybe the stockholders wouldn't be pleased, but if Adobe is going to buy Corel, it would be a good way to scuttle the ship before it happens. I'm sure Adobe has no interest in continuing the WordPerfect Office Suite. Make the whole thing GPL, and then the Linux community can finish what they started with the port of the entire suite.
My biggest fear is that something like this will kill WPSuite just before it gets ported, in its entirety, to Linux
Don't flatter yourselves, people. I don't think Adobe gives a rats ass about The Gimp. The vast majority of professional artists use and will continue to use Adobe products. Adobe works on Macs, which most digital artists use because they are simple to use.
Adobe does not want buy Corel because of Corel's involvment with Linux. They want to buy Corel because Corel makes CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint, which are great competitors to Illustrator and Photoshop.
You linux zealots really get to me. So many of you think Linux is the end-all solution for everyone. Uhm, hello Betty, wake up! Most computer users aren't as smart as us unix users and really don't give a shit what OS they run.
Don't get me wrong, I like linux alright. Personally, I prefer FreeBSD and Solaris. I just realize that unix has its place (amongst techies) and that most companies and computer users have absolutely no need for it.
-cjs
grumble
Unix was largely written for DTP.
What do you think ed and nroff are for?
grumble grumble snicker snicker
I don't think there's any real comparison between the 2. Photoshop and the gimp are aimed at completely different audiences. Photoshop is aimed at professionals who are willing to pay a premium for the best photo software on the market and those who need heavy duty printing support. Whereas the gimp is aimed at coders and (mostly) non professionals who are interested in web graphics and such. Photoshop and the gimp have nothing to fear from each other any time soon. I'd say that even if Photoshop was available on linux, they would both thrive in their respective markets.
Adobe is (excepting their high prices) one of the few commercial software companies I have an unalloyed liking for. Their software is well-designed, feature-rich, and as close to bug free as any large applications I have ever seen. Maybe they'll keep Draw! and clean out its impressive array of bugs and give it import/export filters and color matching that actually work.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Heh. Doubt it. Now, don't get me wrong. I like and use the Gimp every day. But I don't think it is in any position to be a threat to Photoshop.
And besides, even tho Corel is porting apps to linux, this doensn't mean that they are supporting the Gimp. In fact, their Draw apps would be much more of a threat to Photoshop.
My opinion anyway.
This sig is false.
Photoshop has been ported to the various UNIXes, just not Linux.
The SGI version of photoshop is ancient, 3.0. I'm pretty sure adobe has completely scrapped their UNIX market, a really dumb move IMHO, but then again, I don't own a huge company so what do i know?
-matt
I should add that I can't find anything to substantiate this takeover rumor. The only purpose for this rumor would be to boost Corel's stock price. This kind of rumors in the information-technology industry are getting rather boring. It seems there is a new one every week.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Corel is canada's largest software company.
Without Corel Canada's software industry will be demolished. Also , this would be one of the biggest disasters for linux! Corel is one of our largest supporter.
I really like the direction Corel is going. I predict big gains for Corel in the coming decade.
Adobe's scared of Gimp?
Corel sure ins't Copeland (CEO) actually commented on Gimp and said it's a great application!
First there was Microsoft and now there's Adobe.
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
Check out this Ottawa Citizen article. Both Adobe and Corel say that the takeover rumour is just that -- a rumour. Says Adobe, "there is no absolutely no truth to this whatsoever."