Recently, we have received several inquiries concerning statements made in Applix's most recent press announcement, particularly regarding the use of the term ?discontinued operations?. Confusion has been expressed and and concern has been raised as a result of the following excerpt:
"In December 2000 the Company entered into discussions with several possible buyers and expects to consummate a divestiture or otherwise discontinue the business in the first quarter of 2001."
If you have consistently followed VistaSource through 2000, you will recall two key announcements:
* April 24th press release launching VistaSource as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Applix.
* October 19th press release announcing the engagement of FAC/Equities to explore strategic alternatives for VistaSource, including its possible divestiture.
VistaSource has been on a path to divest from Applix throughout the year 2000. In December, this culminated in discussions with possible buyers. The term "discontinued operations" is a common legal and finance term used in these situations and should not raise concern about VistaSource's long term viability. Our Anyware offering is a leading technology from which we offer customizable, web-enabled, server centric, real-time solutions, and we will continue to focus our business to grow in this market segment. The exercises over the past twelve months have further focused our business on our key differentiators as we look to grow to prominence in 2001. We look forward to your continued support and to your business in the future.
Best Regards,
Allison Antalek
Marketing Communications
VistaSource, Inc.
This letter is in response to the article "Applix Gives Up on the Linux
Desktop" written by Robin Miller and posted on NewsForge on 11/28/00.
It is the belief of VistaSource, Inc. that some of the statements made
in this article are incorrect, and some of the quotations made by RJ
Grandpre were taken out of context. To correct some of the statements
made in this article, please note the following:
* VistaSource is not "throwing in the desktop towel." VistaSource will
still produce and sell its desktop product through traditional and
online retailers and through its own online store. VistaSource has also
committed to future releases of Anyware Desktop (formerly Applixware)
and will continue to provide the same quality product and level of
service to its existing customers.
* The real news is the change of focus from a company that focuses on
desktop applications to one that is forging the way server-centric and
web-based applications. This shift in focus was announced on August
15th, 2000 at Linux World in San Jose. For the complete release which
further describes this strategic shift, please visit:
http://www.vistasource.com//news/press/pr_966348 46 4
* Active development continues for BOTH Anyware Desktop (Applixware) and
the server version, Anyware Application Server. Both products are
recognized as integral components of the VistaSource product mix.
Thank you for your attention and promptness in correcting this matter.
Regards,
Allison Antalek
Marketing Communications
VistaSource, Inc.
This is a comment from our Product Manager for Filters, Joe Dunbar(joe@vistasource.com):
Applixware imports both MS Word formats, RTF (Rich Text Format) their easy to use ASCII format, and.doc their native binary format (both DOS and Windows, all five versions from 2.0 - 2000). Both formats support all features including embedded MS Office OLE objects which our Applixware filters import. Applixware exports to RTF, but does not export to MS Word native.doc due to the complex proprietary format and our choice to go with Open Standards. Note RTF supports all data, layout and formatting information like the.doc binary format. Since there are no features to be gained by directly exporting to their proprietary.doc format, why do two when one will do?
Applix continues to work with Microsoft who have made past versions of their file formats (or at least portions) available to us, however we are still waiting for their latest 2000 formats which they said would be available soon as of last January. While it would be helpful to have the latest Microsoft file formats, Applix is commited to open standards and shared file formats like HTML and XML which will be useful to all applications and users.
We do not statically link with GTK on our 5.0M1 release, if you looked at the shared library libshelf.so you would see that it is dynamically linked with GTK, et al.
Also the themes are not working because for the M1 release we chose to ship the GTK libraries that we were testing with, however they point to the wrong location for the themes. We will not be installing our own GTK for the final release, however it makes it easier to repro bugs when we we all use the same version of GTK.
Slashdot Mirror
Recently, we have received several inquiries concerning statements made in Applix's most recent press announcement, particularly regarding the use of the term ?discontinued operations?. Confusion has been expressed and and concern has been raised as a result of the following excerpt: "In December 2000 the Company entered into discussions with several possible buyers and expects to consummate a divestiture or otherwise discontinue the business in the first quarter of 2001." If you have consistently followed VistaSource through 2000, you will recall two key announcements: * April 24th press release launching VistaSource as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Applix. * October 19th press release announcing the engagement of FAC/Equities to explore strategic alternatives for VistaSource, including its possible divestiture. VistaSource has been on a path to divest from Applix throughout the year 2000. In December, this culminated in discussions with possible buyers. The term "discontinued operations" is a common legal and finance term used in these situations and should not raise concern about VistaSource's long term viability. Our Anyware offering is a leading technology from which we offer customizable, web-enabled, server centric, real-time solutions, and we will continue to focus our business to grow in this market segment. The exercises over the past twelve months have further focused our business on our key differentiators as we look to grow to prominence in 2001. We look forward to your continued support and to your business in the future. Best Regards, Allison Antalek Marketing Communications VistaSource, Inc.
This letter is in response to the article "Applix Gives Up on the Linux
8 46 4
Desktop" written by Robin Miller and posted on NewsForge on 11/28/00.
It is the belief of VistaSource, Inc. that some of the statements made
in this article are incorrect, and some of the quotations made by RJ
Grandpre were taken out of context. To correct some of the statements
made in this article, please note the following:
* VistaSource is not "throwing in the desktop towel." VistaSource will
still produce and sell its desktop product through traditional and
online retailers and through its own online store. VistaSource has also
committed to future releases of Anyware Desktop (formerly Applixware)
and will continue to provide the same quality product and level of
service to its existing customers.
* The real news is the change of focus from a company that focuses on
desktop applications to one that is forging the way server-centric and
web-based applications. This shift in focus was announced on August
15th, 2000 at Linux World in San Jose. For the complete release which
further describes this strategic shift, please visit:
http://www.vistasource.com//news/press/pr_96634
* Active development continues for BOTH Anyware Desktop (Applixware) and
the server version, Anyware Application Server. Both products are
recognized as integral components of the VistaSource product mix.
Thank you for your attention and promptness in correcting this matter.
Regards,
Allison Antalek
Marketing Communications
VistaSource, Inc.
This is a comment from our Product Manager for Filters, Joe Dunbar(joe@vistasource.com):
Applixware imports both MS Word formats, RTF (Rich Text Format) their easy to use ASCII format, and .doc their native binary format (both DOS and Windows, all five versions from 2.0 - 2000). Both formats support all features including embedded MS Office OLE objects which our Applixware filters import. Applixware exports to RTF, but does not export to MS Word native .doc due to the complex proprietary format and our choice to go with Open Standards. Note RTF supports all data, layout and formatting information like the .doc binary format. Since there are no features to be gained by directly exporting to their proprietary .doc format, why do two when one will do?
Applix continues to work with Microsoft who have made past versions of their file formats (or at least portions) available to us, however we are still waiting for their latest 2000 formats which they said would be available soon as of last January. While it would be helpful to have the latest Microsoft file formats, Applix is commited to open standards and shared file formats like HTML and XML which will be useful to all applications and users.
Joe DunbarVistaSource, Inc.,
subsidiary of Applix, Inc.
We do not statically link with GTK on our 5.0M1 release, if you looked at the shared library libshelf.so you would see that it is dynamically linked with GTK, et al.
Also the themes are not working because for the M1 release we chose to ship the GTK libraries that we were testing with, however they point to the wrong location for the themes. We will not be installing our own GTK for the final release, however it makes it easier to repro bugs when we we all use the same version of GTK.