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Corel Graphics Software

Corel Goes Private 145

Posted by CowboyNeal from the taking-things-underground dept.
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.
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Corel Goes Private More

Corel Goes Private

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  • Corel Draw (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    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!
    • Heh heh! You wish! Next thing you know they'll start suing the world , saying they own Linux!!

      Hey what am i saying! SCO owns the kernel, right? ;)

      Kash


    • You know, like Blender.

    • Re:Corel Draw (Score:5, Informative)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @11:25AM (#6772882) Journal
      yes. The reason is that vector is the company that originally supported the linux stuff. Hopefully, they will do it right this time. If they are smart, they will move all the graphics to Linux and then catch the rest. Why graphics? one word. Hollywood.
      • And one even better reason why.

        Corel already got burned on Windows market. Their major losses started right after droping Linux and M$ deal
      • one word. Hollywood

        What graphics package does Corel have in it's portfolio that is suited for movie industry work? Vector graphics (e.g. CorelDRAW) aren't big in movie production. Corel PhotoPAINT is good, but can only do a maximum of 8 bits of color data per channel, which makes it ill suited for movie work. Plus, it works on single images, not multiple frames. Corel doesn't have an industrial grade editing package. I don't even thing they have a professional, prosumer, or consumer level editing package.

        • They've made 3D-rendering packages, animation packages, etc. It's not just CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint. And by the way, Photo-Paint does work with frame-based animation graphics/movies - not sure where you got the idea it doesn't.
          -N

    • Re:Corel Draw (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Word around Ottawa is Corel's Linux department was completely dispursed a long time ago.

      Corel would have to assemble a new team of Linux developers if they were ever to release a new Linux product. Not very likely.

  • Does anyone see IP issues inthe future? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WanderingGhost ( 535445 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @09:23AM (#6772505)
    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? (Score:4, Informative)

      by tsa ( 15680 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @09:37AM (#6772534) Homepage
      The difference with SCO is that Corel has had a positive attitude towards linux. They contributed a lot to the wine project while developing Corel Draw and WP for Linux. I would be very surprised if they turn around 180 degrees all of a sudden.

      • Re:Does anyone see IP issues inthe future? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @09:46AM (#6772551)
        Corel's attitude is now irrelevant.

        What is that attitude of Vector Capital, for whom Corel is simply now an owned brand?

        I think you might find that it's very different than Corel's traditional point of view.

        KFG
        • What is that attitude of Vector Capital, for whom Corel is simply now an owned brand?
          I think you might find that it's very different than Corel's traditional point of view.

          Does anyone have references to statements or whatever else by Vector Capital on their plans for Corel?

          • Statements made by Vector Capital in this article (Score:5, Informative)

            by Kircle ( 564389 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:36AM (#6772709)
            Does anyone have references to statements or whatever else by Vector Capital on their plans for Corel?

            Interesting quotes from this article [globetechnology.com]:
            "At this point, nothing has been contemplated that would change [as a result of] this transaction," Alex Slusky, Vector Capital managing partner, said in an interview yesterday. "Current Corel management continues to run Corel."


            [Slusky] believes Corel is going to be "very successful" if it doesn't have to worry about all the costs and complexities of maintaining its public status.

        • Re:Does anyone see IP issues inthe future? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:01AM (#6772599) Homepage Journal
          What is that attitude of Vector Capital, for whom Corel is simply now an owned brand?
          Good question. Here's a partial answer: a list of software companies owned by Vector. [vectorcapital.com] The majority of them seem to be the types of names you don't recognize unless you work in a specific field -- "enterprise software" tailored to a very specific business application. And like it or not, that usually means Windows these days. I'd love to see more Linux and OS X releases from Corel (I'd love an OS X - native WordPerfect) but I'm not terribly optimistic.

          OTOH, "simply an owned brand" might be a bit harsh -- I get the impression that VC (nice abbreviation, huh?) is basically a holding company and doesn't necessarily run the businesses they own. So who knows. Maybe given some money to play with and some space to breathe, the forward thinkers at Corel (there must be some left, right?) can come up with some good stuff.

          • great advantage to Vector in free software. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @11:11AM (#6772843) Homepage Journal
            a list of software companies owned by Vector. The majority of them seem to be the types of names you don't recognize unless you work in a specific field -- "enterprise software" tailored to a very specific business application. And like it or not, that usually means Windows these days.

            So, by purchasing a company with experience porting software to free they could establish a distro and port all their other stuff to free and save themselves that many coppies of M$ dependence and development costs? What could be better for specialty software than that?

            The direction Microsoft took Corel when they bought 25% of them and shut down their Linux work was obviously and disaserously wrong. Corel has continued to lose market share, even in government work where it once ruled. Hell, they used to rule the comercial text editor world. They did not lose out because Microsoft made something better, they lost out because Microsfot made Word Perfect into an expensive Windows only additional purchase most people would not make. They OS/2'd them, making Word Perfect more expensive than Word in all cases. That's easy to do when you own the platform and sell everyone else required libraries.

            There is still a market and it seems obvious that Linux is the way to go. Those who remember Word Perfect want it back on a stable platform. It will cost less for Vector to do things this way and customers will get more of what they want.

            • That's what we Macheads have been saying for years. ;)

              Seriously, I think you're right; I just hope Vector/Corel sees it that way. It's blindingly obvious to you, me, and everyone else who pays attention that developing business software for Windows is a mug's game, because if you get successful enough, sooner or later M$ will crush you. (If you're very lucky, they might buy you out, but more likely they'll just whip up a messy hacked copy of your software -- and no matter how good or elegant your product

            • The direction Microsoft took Corel when they bought 25% of them and shut down their Linux work was obviously and disaserously wrong. Corel has continued to lose market share, even in government work where it once ruled.

              Your understanding of Microsoft's investment in Corel is simplistic. They didn't buy "25% of Corel". The bought a bunch of non-voting shares for a price that amounted to 25% of Corel's market capitalization. Given that Corel has been bleeding money since forever (that's what killed the Borl

          • Good question. Here's a partial answer: a list of software companies owned by Vector.

            Vector doesn't OWN those companies, they're in its PORTFOLIO. That means they own PART of those companies, i.e. they are investors. Now, they may or may not have a controlling interest, but OWN? No.

        • simply now an owned brand

          Isn't that a bit like RAW vs. Smackdown...

        • Re:Does anyone see IP issues inthe future? (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Vector is motivated a lot by the SCO situation. It's generally known that they plan to start leveraging lawsuits of a similar nature against OSS projects, backed by the amount of work and code they put into the WINE and KDE projects.
          • It's generally known that they plan to start leveraging lawsuits of a similar nature against OSS projects

            It's "generally known" by whom?

            Can you cite references please?
          • It's generally known that they plan to start leveraging lawsuits of a similar nature against OSS projects, backed by the amount of work and code they put into the WINE and KDE projects.

            Vector was very involved with making the choice to move to Linux years ago. More importantly, they own real. The company that is now offering all sorts of "IP" to the OSS world.
            <saying that mom should have said>If you can not say something intelligent, than please do not say anything</saying that mom should have
      • The difference with SCO is that Corel has had a positive attitude towards linux. They contributed a lot to the wine project

        Well, yes, but since someone else (literally) owns them now, it would be possible that the new boss has a completely different idea about that... (I really hope this is not the case)
        • Ah, but if they contributed in good faith, with code that's properly licensed (and more than likely they did) they're unlikely to attempt to pull a SCO.

          They'd have even less grounds to do so than SCO (who have none it's looking like) and thier time and money would be better spent on furthing their product line (Maybe make Word Perfect a competitor again).
      • The difference with SCO is that Corel has had a positive attitude towards linux. They contributed a lot to the wine project while developing Corel Draw and WP for Linux. I would be very surprised if they turn around 180 degrees all of a sudden.

        Wasn't Caldera the Linux company that bought the original UNIX code while we all cheered and expected it to finally become Free Software?

        I'm talking out of my own memory here, but this IS what I remember of it.
      • Corel didn't have a positive attitude. Michael Copeland did (former CEO). His ego believed that Corel could take on MS and win in both the Office suite and OS. He was ahead of the game too soon. Almost while he was emptying his office, the Linux product was dropped and Corel crawled back to MS begging forgiveness.
    • No, of course not. They're going private, which means they won't be evil anymore. When companies do evil things, it's almost always because they're trying to satisfy the stupid stockholders.

    • Maybe we can pull another blender or two, and buy Corel Draw, Word Perfect, etc.

      They were willing to sell Corel Linux so maybe they will sell some of the other stuff they were working on.

      I highly doubt Corel will do what SCO did, The blender company didnt do that.
    • 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.
      • I agree. My father is a judge and my mother runs a law firm. My Dad still uses WordPerfect even though the whole courthouse switched to Word. I think my Mom's office might be half and half. In any case, I'll probably encourage her to switch from her MS Exchange Based Network to something Linux based in the next few years. The real roadblock there is good distributed organizing software for Linux. Perhaps, Corel can get into the small business planning sector? It's one area where OSS is severely lacki
        • Hmm...

          It's not OSS, but if you're looking to switch to a non-MS groupware system, why not try Novell? As of next version the server is going to be kernal-swappable, so it can run on Linux (which is an infinite boon, speaking from experience) and they've got a Groupwise client for Linux & Mac out now, too.

          Sure, GW is a PITA--but it does what it does, and no one seems to taget it for viri attacks.
          • Thanks. I'll look into it.

            I still think that an OSS groupware (thanks for the proper term) system would greatly speed adoption of Linux by small businesses which is an extremely important market (I guess I should use that term with respect to free software).

  • One thing the article missed... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...who are they planning to sue?

  • context (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobertTaylor ( 444958 ) <roberttaylor1234 AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday August 23, 2003 @09:35AM (#6772531) Homepage Journal
    "Microsoft paid $135M for 25% of the shares, so Vector Capital paying $124M for 100% stake looks like a pretty good deal."

    Microsoft paid that in 2000, the year when anyone with an understanding of Frontpage Express could get zillions in venture capital.

    $124 million in 2003 however is a fair whack!

    • poop. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:48AM (#6772766) Homepage Journal
      $124 million in 2003 however is a fair whack!

      Considering Microsoft pays about one billion dollars each time they lose an anti-trust lawsuit, $124 was nothing. They got to shut down a Linux distro and crippled Word Perfect, the then dominant comercial text editor and main competitor to Microsoft Office, Microsoft't big cash cow. It was a predatory practice and Corel decline in value of 75% reflects the result. 75% is much greater than the decline of other IT firms with as much going for them. Corell lost that value because Word Perfect lost it's market share, market share it could easily have maintained with it's Linux distribution. Lawfirms still use Word Perfect and they cry out for stable software underneath it. Had they been given that platform, they would have eaten it up and proved the value of a comercial Linux distribution five years ago as well as it is proven today. By purchasing 25% of Corel, Microsoft pushed back Linux competition five years, prevented an anti-trust lawsuit and gained all the fruits of predatory behavior. It saved them a minimum of a billion dollars and much more in lost sales revenue.

      • They got to shut down a Linux distro and crippled Word Perfect, the then dominant comercial text editor and main competitor to Microsoft Office, Microsoft't big cash cow.

        How was MS able to do this? When you buy stock in a company, do you get to decide what products that company produces? If so - let's all buy MS stock and force them to stop making windows!

        Corell lost that value because Word Perfect lost it's market share, market share it could easily have maintained with it's Linux distribution.

        Okay
      • Corell lost that value because Word Perfect lost it's market share, market share it could easily have maintained with it's Linux distribution.

        WordPerfect had so little market share to lose, and you can't blame the bastard Linux version on Microsoft. Corel Linux had some things going for it, but its loss can hardly be said to have set back Linux-based operating systems for five years.

        I'd love to see more Corel products ported to Linux. Hopefully, it will see how Linux, KDE, and GNOME have improved since

  • Well lets hope. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @09:38AM (#6772539)
    Now that Corel is no longer under the whims of stockholders they can actually get to making a really good product and focus on other platforms and finally declaired that they loss the Windows Market. Including a Good modern version of WordPerfect for linux (Not that crappy windows emulated version) and I hope they will be more Mac friendly.

    • Re:Well lets hope. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bellers ( 254327 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:09AM (#6772617) Homepage
      >>>Now that Corel is no longer under the whims of stockholders they can actually get to making a really good product and focus on other platforms and finally declaired that they loss the Windows Market.


      Oh, yeah. Now they're just under the whim of venture capitalists. That's much, much better.


      Those poor bastards.


      Alas, poor Corel. I knew him, Horatio!

      • Just to nitpick a little, it doesn't appear that vector capital is a really a vc company, but rather more of a privaty equity fund. Venture capitalists are nice people compared to anyone I've ever met in the private equity market.

    • Re:Well lets hope. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:14AM (#6772624)
      It's sad to say, but as a company that is prone to jump on every band wagon and falling off - Corel simply lacks the direction needed to set the company strait. They take in good products, and they watch them spiral into oblivion.

      If I were Corel, I would be setting up a relationship with Novell like yesterday. Novell will move to a Linux solution - and with the purchase of Ximian they seem to have some end user software package in mind as well. So why not try to get Word Perfect in there? If the Novell thing takes off they'd be sitting pretty well off as an office suite distributed with a buisness package where Microsoft can't touch them.

      Word Perfect has better name recognition, but if they don't get their ass in gear, then open/star office will be the last nail in the coffin.

    • Once bitten, twice shy. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:17AM (#6772633)
      While I agree that your suggestion would be nice, I wouldn't hold my breath. The fact is that, even if Corel is not answering to shareholders anymore, they are still a for profit company and will do their best to generate profit.

      Corel tried the Linux route, producing their own distribution and a few Linux native versions of their apps. That endeavour failed miserably and they abandonded the effort completey, similar to their plan to port all their apps to Java.

      Having already failed in the Linux arena and "wasted" millions of dollars in the process, Corel is unlikely to revisit what was for them a boondoggle anytime in the near future. Frankly, I do not know where Corel is going to go. In all likelyhood they will develop for the most pervasive platform but, they are unlikely to make inroads against MS Word with Wordperfect and PhotoShop seems to have a firm grip on the would be Draw market. They need a new product and I'm not sure they know what that is.

      • Re:Once bitten, twice shy. (Score:4, Informative)

        by TeXMaster ( 593524 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:52AM (#6772785)
        > Corel tried the Linux route, producing their own distribution and a few Linux native versions of their apps. That endeavour failed miserably and they abandonded the effort completey, similar to their plan to port all their apps to Java.

        Corel's attempt at Linux were not successful by themselves, but the 'heirs' of Corel in the Linux world (i.e. Xandros) managed to turn it into a pretty effective product; at least for what I hear from people that have been trying the various distributions, Xandros is one of the easiest to install, most user friendly and it's rather complete too.

        The most dangerous competitors for Corel now are precisely those in the open source world: for example, OpenOffice.org is in a good position to steal market from WordPerfect Office, even though Writer is not as good as WordPerfect and QuattroPro doesn't suffer from the size limitations that haunt Calc (or Excel).

        • Corel's mistake was that they were actually ahead of the field. They predicted the oncome of free software and linux, but they did it way too soon. During the dotcom boom, everyone was looking at linux having some potential, but it wasn't until after the bust that IT depts started worrying about money and ways to save (e.g. linux).

          Corel's only sin was trying to move everyone over too soon, and for that...they got burned.

      • Hmmm, Corel feels a pain in the ass, what is it? It's the head of a big snake from Redmond, what else? Duh.

        Apply your reasoning to their Microsoft stratagy. They continue to lose share, yet they continue to feed the beast that would destroy them. Do Linux, have a chance. Continue Windoze, die. What would you spend your efforts on? Oh yeah, you would continue with your oh so sucessful statagy of purchasing M$ licenses, development kits, and doing what M$ wants you to do, which is die. Good move. Nex

        • There was a time when MS were considered "good guys." Yeah, yeah, if you read "Accidental Empires" you learn Bill was always Bill from the beginning and was one step ahead in terms of sharp business practices than anyone else. But MS started out as the outsider/upstart.

          In the 1980's you had VAXen, some ran VMS, some ran UNIX, and then you had workstations, SUN, Apollo, SGI (largely UNIX although Apollo was some kind of its own thing): expensive hardware, vendor lock in, only thin source-code compatibili

          • For myself, personally, I began to seriously dislike MS when I found out that my Win 3.11 was woefully behind the times when compared with the Mac and OS/2. Of course, first I had to find out that those other two OSes existed and overcome the standard "I-don't-want-to-learn-how-to-use-Macintosh-it-lo o ks-strange-and-different" syndrome. But about a month after all that, I began to get seriously dissasisfied with Win 3.11. It felt like I'd been conned. Nobody had even told me that there was this alterna

          • Before he dumbpster dived BASIC, before he wrote his infamous open letter, he was a theif [slashdot.org].
      • :...PhotoShop seems to have a firm grip on the would be Draw market."

        I think you're confused. Photoshop does not compete with Draw at all. Photoshop is a raster graphics program, ie. a painting program, whereas, Draw is a vector graphics program, ie. illustration. Illustrator and Draw would be a better comparison since they are both vector programs. Corels equivilent to Photoshop is Paint.

      • Different management.
        As soon as they got into the market, they ran out of money and MS paid them to pull out. Vector is interested in being in a market where the competition is minimal rather than being dominated by 1 company. Vector is headed straight for Linux.
      • Let's hope that this time they don't try to push their own distro. And also hope that they do native conversions rather than depending on winelib.
      • similar to their plan to port all their apps to Java

        I remember Wordperfect for Java - it was quite well done, I didn't find any bugs in the beta version, but performance was slow. I remember thinking I'd need a computer at least twice as fast to run it.

        This was on my PowerMac 7200/90, in '97 or thereabouts.

    • Re:Well lets hope. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bushcat ( 615449 )
      they can actually get to making a really good product

      They seem to have shown an inability to develop bought-in products in a timely manner, if at all. Their acquisition of Ventura is a case in point: an outstanding DTP solution, well-liked because of the ease with which huge documents could be laid out, turned rapidly into a bug-ridden monster. WordPerfect fared a little better, but still failed to keep up with the competition. The problem was, around 1998, that no-one really believed a Corel product would

    • and fast! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @11:02AM (#6772819) Homepage Journal
      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!

    • Come on, Linux users. Let's fess up at something...how many of us have actually BOUGHT commercial Linux software? A show of hands, please?

      Ahh, just as I thought. All 3 of you.

      While some people have actually PAID for thier distros, most have not.

      "Pay? Are you INSANE? I can just download it".

      I've never paid for Linux software. I confess. Every distro I've ever used, every piece of Linux software I've ever installed has been cost free. Either I downloaded it, got it in the mail, or got in a book of some ki
      • how many of us have actually BOUGHT commercial Linux software?

        Speak for yourself. I've bought WordPerfect, Opera, Win4Lin, a three-month subscription to WineX, and about a dozen games. I usually download Red Hat ISOs, but I recently bought SuSE Linux 8.2.

        It's true that many Linux users are price sensitive, and it's true that the barrier to entry is rising, as you have to compete with Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice, and others. However, the market is growing, so you'll only see more paying users.

      • Come on, Linux users. Let's fess up at something...how many of us have actually BOUGHT commercial Linux software? A show of hands, please?

        Aside from buying distros (Corel, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware), I have also purchased applications such as Word Perfect for Linux.

        Of course, I also bought Corel stock, so I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer...
        • There are certain commercial applications I *need*, or linux is of no everyday use to me. WordPerfect and PhotoPaint are the two foremost. And if I have to pay for 'em, well, it's better than doing without. After all, I paid for 'em to use on Windows, so what's the difference?

  • A Pretty Good Deal (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @09:40AM (#6772542)
    Microsoft paid $135M for 25% of the shares, so Vector Capital paying $124M for 100% stake looks like a pretty good deal.

    If you've think that's a good deal, I've got some great deals on stock. I'll sell you shares of pets.com, PanAm airlines, 3dfx, and hundreds of others for a mere fraction of what they used to cost! You can't go wrong!

  • "It's a steal" (Score:5, Informative)

    by smallpaul ( 65919 ) <paul@@@prescod...net> on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:01AM (#6772601)
    This deal is so sweet for Vector that it is barely legal. $124M is nothing for a company with annual revenues of $127M and 70M in cash. This is also the most illogical time to sell the company. The market is in the toilet, Corel shares are at an all-time low, Corel has plenty of cash in the bank, Corel has new product lines that have not been given time to prove themselves, etc. The whole thing looks very poorly thought out [corelrescue.com].

    • Re:"It's a steal" (Score:5, Informative)

      by ortholattice ( 175065 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @11:05AM (#6772826)
      I agree it's a terrible deal for the stockholders. For example, its price/sales ratio is only 0.76 (compared to say 4 for Amazon, 17.5 for Yahoo, 21.41 for Ebay). I bought 3700 shares on 8/29/02 at $1.04 expecting to hold them a long time and to appreciate considerably, since my research at that time indicated it was severely undervalued. Now I'm forced to sell, against my will, at $1.05 a share. So even though I'm making a $37.00 profit before commissions, I'm actually losing $39.98 - $37.00 = $2.98 after commissions are taken into account. At least I won't have to pay taxes.

      Ironically even though the stockholders got screwed, they screwed themselves by voting for this, or more likely by not voting at all (I voted against it). Apparently it was 37.8 million in favor versus 8.1 million against; the rest of the 91 million shares didn't vote. Now of the 37.8 million in favor, 23 million were controlled by Vector, who is now laughing all the way to the bank. Moral: always vote your shares. You may think it won't make much difference, but this is what happened when everyone thought that way.

    • Surelly individual Corel shareholders don't have to sell their shares to Vector if they don't want to?
  • I sent repeated emails to Corel and to Lotus/IBM begging them to port their respective office suites to Linux, but without success. At the time StarOffice sucked arse (v6? v7?), when it was still using that horrid all-in-one interface. Had they released ports of Word Perfect, Quattro Pro, and Presentations as an office suite they could have easily dominated the Linux office suite market space.

    Most of the people I knew and worked with in the Linux community at that time would have gladly paid a few hundre

  • And not to forget the truly spectacular Netwinder (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Halvard ( 102061 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @10:15AM (#6772626)

    Yes, Virginia, Corel sold hardware! The Netwinder lives on [netwinder.net]. 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 [netwinder.org] 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.

    • (snipped to take out of context)

      I've got one running behind me running me.

      /me holds up a large cannon plug

      So where does thing go?

      Wait.

      Never mind....

      /me convers ears

      TMI, TMI.
    • Wow, only $400? Incredible, I can't even buy a computer for that price. Oh, wait, I can. Not the greatest machine, but a damned site faster than the netwinder.

      I really wanted NC's to take off. A little more than a dumb terminal, a lot less (in terms of management headaches) than a PC. But the price point was always way the hell off. Now, at $400, I can buy an actual PC. With a minimum of effort, I can set up any of a dozen linux distros to be a terminal server. But, as it's a full fledged PC, I can offload
  • 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 (Score:1, Interesting)

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

  • Corel Linux.....*sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vertical_98 ( 463483 ) on Saturday August 23, 2003 @11:17AM (#6772855) Homepage
    I still have a copy of v1.2 of Corel Linux. I never understood why it never caught on as a desktop linux. If they had done a good port of WP Office, I truly believe it would have been a Windows Killer.

    I used it as an X-server when I was learning about X-terminals (using Slack on the clients). If it hadn't been for the fact that Debian changed dpkg, effectively breaking Corel's version, I'd still be using it today probably. Oh well, Debian works great, just not as nice for desktop work.

    I thought about trying Xandros, but have hesitated, since Debian fullfils (sp?) all my server needs.

    Best of Luck to Corel, I hope beening owned by VC doesn't ruin them completely. I have fond memories of Corel Draw.

    Vertical
  • That sounds like a strange headline... but WP's Canadian ownership hsa been a thorn in the side of companies that have to deal with the Canadian government.

    In a ploy to keep jobs in Canada, they require documents sent to them to be in WP format, versus the international standards of PDF for virtually every other country, or at least the MS Word standard used by virtually every major corporation.

    As a specialist in electronic submissions for a pharmaceutical company, it will greatly reduce my workload if Ca
    • Word DOC format is not a standard. It is a proprietary format that requires you to own Windows to open them properly. Same with Wordperfect WPF files.

      PDF, at least, has a free reader available. And isn't RTF an open standard? Somehow MS mucks that up, too, an RTF of the exact same text and formatting saved from Word is twice the file size as one saved from Final Writer from my Amiga. Hey, got in my obligatory "I miss my Amiga!" post! ;') I am hoping when (crossing my fingers) the new PPC Amiga OS 4 comes o
    • Actually, I'm suprised that the Canadian government hasn't bailed out Corel in order to keep it a Canadian owned company. This is actually very un-canadian.

      For those who are remotely familiar with Canadian politics, you'll know that each election, Ontario and Quebec basically dictates which party will be in power because they have the majority of seats for representatives.

      Typically the Liberal party (who is in power now) strongly protects any company that is in Ontario or Quebec. *COUGH* Bombardier*
  • As one of the people who purchased the expensive version of WP Office 2000 for Linux directly from Corel (about $175 IIRC) almost purely to show support for their Linux endeavors, I hope they can revisit this product. With the 2-3 years passage since they made it available, Wine has improved so markedly that I would hope many of the issues of the program needing an update of some RPMs to work on newer distros would go away (or at least be greatly reduced). And frankly, they need a better multi-platform GUI

  • Bryce (Score:2, Interesting)

    by The_Pey ( 532136 )

    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.

  • I think (correct me if I'm wrong), if you don't vote, the default is a 'Yea', which throws into doubt the 80% 'for' number... it's probably more like "20% voted, and they ALL voted NO, but 80% don't care, which are counted as YES votes...". PASSED WITH A GLORIOUS 80%!

    It would be awesome if this happened in Politics, and the default vote was something really moronic to try to encourage voting....

    "20% voted for Bush, 20% voted for Gore, but since 60% didn't vote, our new President AGAIN is a TI pocket calcu

  • WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux (Score:1, Interesting)

    by 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
  • I wouldn't be surprised if new versions of Corel Draw and their other graphics applications are eventually released for Linux. I have always felt that Corel was a little too early getting into Linux to actually profit from their efforts - mind you, they did get a great temporary run in stock price during the "Linux" stock mania.

    But now, three years later, porting is easier - they've done the work on their sources already, and WINE has improved considerably. The market is bigger - Linux is gaining quick

  • Word Perfect 5.1 for linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RGRistroph ( 86936 ) <rgristroph@gmail.com> on Saturday August 23, 2003 @07:09PM (#6775056) Homepage
    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.
    • I still use WP5.1 DOS every day. A complete package still sells for $30 to $80 at swap meets, so it's not like there isn't demand. And while I didn't get specific in my other post, it's one of the apps I can't live without. And yeah, the probability of the source code being lost forever in one of these corporate reworkings terrifies me.

      As to WP5.1 being GPL'd, if Corel played it right, they could work that as a hook to get more people interested in their products, thus: "old version free, privately-coded u
      • You have to have a copy of SCO/Unix to get the .so files you need out of there and copy them to the linux.

        I searched for the instructions I remembered seeing, and I found this [wlug.org.nz], which has instructions to do the same thing but isn't the page I was thinking off.

        As you observe, the old copies still sell for a good price. The real solution is to get corel to re-assemble and re-link the binary for unix and sell it for a reasonable price.

        The alternitive is to start writing a replacement from scratch.

        • My WP4.2 for SCO/UNIX is on low-denisity floppies, which I was able to archive (I vaguely recall jumping thru some hoops involving a raw copy with some old Norton util for DOS) and could be read by a linux user, so at least that part is accessable. I didn't care much for WP4.2 DOS, and the SCO version looks identical per the docs, so I didn't get too excited one way or the other. More of an exercise in Ancient Software For Collectors. :)

          Anyway, thanks for the link to the HowTo. On looking for one of the do
          • I think WP 6 would be ok, but the people I know who use WP the most all prefer 5.1, and they say it is faster. I don't care so much, except that I think you should be able to operate it from a linux console. 5.1 is, according to rumour, the last version written in assembler.

            Some people use WP 5.1 because they like the fact that they can fit and several printer drivers on a single bootable dos diskette and take their entire system with them to school, for last minute editing and then printing. This may
            • That's the bush I was beating around [g] -- WP6.x DOS has its fans, but the unmovable userbase is WP5.1. And the expectation isn't solely for speed (because with today's machines, any DOS app flies) -- tho it can still be installed and run perfectly well on a 2-floppy XT!! but more because its behaviour is 100% controllable, predictable, and consistent, and it never, EVER crashes or eats your document. Consequently, I don't think the entrenched userbase would be at all tolerant of bugs, unless they are clea
  • However, I would be interested to see where they're going head in the next couple of years. For me, I would love to see Corel have a come back, however, they need to do the following:

    1) Listen to customers. There is a reason why people don't use Corel Graphics Suite for in their production environment, find out the problems and fix them. Talk to people, find out the issues. Indesign 2 is making BIG inroads into Quarks territory because they neglected the Mac market. Corel is in a strong position by the fac
  • We had a copy of Corel Linux back in the day at the office I worked in and loved having WP running on Linux. There are still many people out there that still like WP instead of Word, I am one of them. WP does everything I need with out the annoying "We are detecting you are doing x, let us screw up all the margins and stuff!".

    Star/Openoffice has come a LONG way, but its still not quite there yet. I wouldn't even mind to pay the retail for Corel office for Linux if it cost the what about $100 in the sto

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