Hapless software house Corel is finally turning a profit, after years of being little more than WordPerfect's life-support system. Why the turnaround, you ask? According to their executive vice president of software development Graham Brown, it's partly because they stopped developing for Linux:
Looking back, Brown describes the decision to drop Corel Linux as "a successful strategy for Corel and an early step toward the refocusing of our business. At the time we knew that Corel's core focus was moving away from the operating system to concentrate more on our application offerings, and this would almost certainly have an impact on the level of service we could afford to customers and users of Corel Linux." Nor, as a company struggling to regain profitability, was Corel inclined to try to develop the GNU/Linux market by continuing to support WordPerfect for Linux.
WordPerfect for Linux was always at heart a symbolic gesture. It lagged behind its Windows counterparts in features and stability, and was a poor fit, interface-wise, for desktop environments like KDE. It might have been truly useful if they'd ported the DOS version as a console-based high-powered word processor, instead of the lackluster graphical version. It wouldn't have been profitable, but it would've made a lot of Windows refugees happy.
One interesting product that seems to have been forgotten is Corel Office for Java. This was an entire office suite that you could run from a web server, in any Java-enabled browser. We actually ran the beta-release from our old office web server over dial-up, and it worked just fine.
Although Java has lost some its glamour, Corel Office would still beats the pants off of AJAX-y offerings like Writely and Google's Spreadsheets. And it could also work with Safari, something those other products can't do.
Comments (6)
There are Plenty of alterna... (Below threshold)1. Posted by Linux User | July 1, 2006 11:30 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
There are Plenty of alternatives to Corels Products for Linux as example Open-Office, Koffice or Inkscape as a high quality Vector graphik software.
Xara LX will also free availible for Linux under a GPL liscense soon, Xara is also the base for Corel Draw who uses liscensed elements of Xara.
1. Posted by Linux User | July 1, 2006 11:30 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 1, 2006 11:30
2. Posted by Au79 | July 1, 2006 5:55 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Corel's strategic decision to stop Linux related development was most probably dictated by the infussion of cash received from Microsoft.
It's a sad disappointment to see what was once a great company be reduced to yet another of Microsoft's patsies.
Fourtunately, for those of us blessed enough to escape the clutches of the evil empire, we can rely on OpenOffice for a productive life.
2. Posted by Au79 | July 1, 2006 5:55 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 1, 2006 17:55
3. Posted by Don Marti | July 1, 2006 8:05 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
"Corel discontinued all Linux-related operations shortly after Microsoft Corporation's major investment that prevented the firm's collapse."
http://linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/future.html
3. Posted by Don Marti | July 1, 2006 8:05 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 1, 2006 20:05
4. Posted by Rube | July 1, 2006 9:01 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
"...Prevented the firm's collapse". Heh. And why might they have been collapsing in the first place?
Corel has never been a great company. They are and always have been a second-rate re-branding company.
Wordperfect, Quattro Pro, Paint Shop Pro, and even Draw are other people's technologies with the Corel name attached to them.
Dead Dot-Com Walking.
4. Posted by Rube | July 1, 2006 9:01 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 1, 2006 21:01
5. Posted by Ann | July 1, 2006 9:06 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Open Office sucks. Especially when you try writing a thesis with it. Sorry folks.
5. Posted by Ann | July 1, 2006 9:06 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 1, 2006 21:06
6. Posted by Christian Winther | July 2, 2006 8:07 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Corel has made some nice applications specifik for working with graphics !
Wordperfect wasn't original Corel
Corel has been dealing in a industry like the car dealer with selling as tha major income. So they sell standart Software like Microsoft and many others.
In the opensource industry you can't sell standart software the players here like Redhat, Nowel, IBM, SUN, MySQL, Oracle etc. They give away standart softaware sell service, uptime and tailor made applications.
This is what Corel hasn't missed, so they survived the battle but might be killed in the war.
6. Posted by Christian Winther | July 2, 2006 8:07 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 2, 2006 08:07