Hence Bill Gates going about countries like India, Australia, New Zealand.. talking about high-bandwidth connections.

Of course I could be completely wrong so feel free to correct me, kids.

-- and look at me now, I'm the King of the World!

I was curious about this too. Aparently .NET refers to Microsoft.net... whose welcome screen reads:

From what I gather -("new offerings (that will)deliver the reliability, performance, scalability, and manageability required for enterprise solutions") MS is planning on co-branding Corel Linux... how else can they get such features into an enterprise server? "Microsoft's .NET Enterprise Servers provide the fastest way to integrate, manage, and Web-enable your enterprise business. Find out how these new offerings deliver the reliability, performance, scalability, and manageability required for enterprise solutions."

Corel is snagged in Microsoft's .NET

"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road look like roadkill to me." --Linus

No doubt this will get moderated into oblivion...

.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java. Before dismissing it out of hand, just because it originated from MS, keep this in mind:

• It definitely has it's roots in Java, depite what MS marketing hype says. MS couldn't extend-and-embrace Java for legal reasons, so they dropped their efforts and created .NET out of the ashes.
• The most important part of .NET is the CLR (common language runtime). Unlike Java, where the VM is tailored to one language, the CLR is designed to support multiple languages, and to make interoperability between languages much less of a hassle than it is now.
• As far as I can tell from lurking on the .NET mailing list, MS has been very responsive to feedback from beta testers. It looks like the .NET team has made a commitment to delivering something developers want, not something marketing thinks they can sell.
• In true MS fashion, they've identified and are zeroing in on one of the key weakness of Java: it's not standardized. They're putting the primary .NET components (C# and the common language runtime) in the hands of a standards body.

All in all, it sounds like this is MS hedging their bets. Having a version of the .NET runtime available for *nix would mean that MS could start trying to lure shops using Java into the MS fold. If C#/.NET become formally standardized, given the number of open source developers out there, someone, somewhere, will do the hard work for them and make their environment available elsewhere (and everywhere...)

Meanwhile, while no *nix developer would think about corrupting their precious kernel to make .NET run any faster, MS has no such qualms. They will probably be tweaking Win2002 to get every last drop of performance from .NET, so they can point at Linux - and the open source supported versions of .NET - and say "See, you can even run your .NET solutions on these low-end systems; and when you're ready to step up to the big time, you can just move your apps over to a real enterprise OS..."

Yes, you're exactly right. Microsoft's entire infatuation with XML has been in response to Java. They are trying to get the industry behind something that could get people away from this sick (from Microsoft's perspective) obsession with Java .class files and serialized object streams.

In true MS fashion, they've identified and are zeroing in on one of the key weakness of Java: it's not standardized. They're putting the primary .NET components (C# and the common language runtime) in the hands of a standards body.

Yes, except that the most critical need for standardization (in Java and .NET both) are the API's, not the language or the JVM. Microsoft never truly cared about extending the JVM with new bytecodes or adding syntactical sugar to the language, they just wanted to dissipate Sun's ability to define what class libraries software would be written to.

Microsoft has no intention of standardizing that aspect of .NET any more than they do of standardizing the Win32 API, and all talk about the critical importance of standardization to the developer (and the horrid, horrid prospect of all programmer's being forced to use a single language) on the street is all so much spin to try to cut Sun's legs out from under them on control of API's.

Which, to be fair, is what Sun is pushing Java against Microsoft for. But let's not pretend that there is something magical about standardization of syntax when the stuff that software is actually built out of (classes) are not being standardized.

A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
Vote Nader.

The .NET strategy is really designed to get your Internet servers talking a language (XML) that any kind of device (cell phone, PDA, web browser, etc.) can translate into a readable document given the proper template.

What's disappointing is the amount of marketing bunk going on at http://microsoft.net. Suddenly every product is about .NET, it's analogous to a release of a suite a daemons sendmail.NET, httpd.NET, mysql.NET, quotd.NET, etc. So if you're wondering about how Corel Linux might get tied to .NET, imagine XML parsers everywhere and a wholesale rename of every major system daemon.

It's starting to feel more like CDO, RDO, ADO all over again. This is the first step to a slightly different vision of the Internet, don't be surprised if the name changes and even some of the core XML strategies get revised.

Eric W. Sarjeant
ericsarjeant[@]mediaone.net
http://sarjeant.ods.org/a

A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
Vote Nader.

If they want "Windows everywhere," and they will get called upon to support desktop applications on WINE, they could want to ensure that WINE is in fact able to run.

This is embrace, extend and extinguish: if Office 2002 runs out-of-the-box on Linux+WINE, trouble free, and your company has sold its soul to Office subscriptions anyway, why fight the headaches of StarOffice or other half-compatible solutions?

Then what would it run on? Windows? A Windows emulator on Windows? What's that? A whino?
Nope, WOW (Windows On Windows). Check an NT box for "wowexec" some time.

Microsoft signs a special deal so Corel gets access to Windows source code "to help build .NET." M$ sits still for six months. M$ then sues the WINE project, claiming that some of Corel's contributions are covered under NDA. Of course, M$ won't have a leg to stand on, but its ability to draw out court cases will kill off WINE.

I believe the WINE leaders should thank Corel profusely for their contributions in the past -- and immediately cease to accept any further contributions from Corel.

Currently Corel ports their windows software and run it on top of WINE. Being strapped for cash they can't afford to add .Net and expand the WINE API. [ No, $135 Million isn't enough to do both, IMHO.]

The net effect is that Corel drifts away from putting their products on Linux and fades from WINE project. No lawsuit necessary.

Like the saying goes "money talks".

You can also look at it as a leverage in case of a break up. In a break it would be in the development/OS groups best interest to have more than one Office suite player in the market.

Like the Apple deal I think this is a "win/win" sort of investment. Since the stock is extremely depressed , if Corel is sucessful and (no matter what path they take to that success) Microsoft wins.

Being strapped for cash they can't afford to add .Net and expand the WINE API. [ No, $135 Million isn't enough to do both, IMHO.]

Well, that nonsense is over. So are Corel's commercial Linux apps.

Microsoft doesn't like competition, and Corel is about the only company doing commercial apps that run on Linux.

This is Microsoft's strategy to keep Linux off the desktop.

blessings,
Master Bait

• Corel pulls out of the WINE project and ceases working on Linux ports of their applications based on WINE. This is one way of MS keeping hold of their monopoly of the desktop.
• The next version of Corel office (whatever it's called exactly??) and/or MS office works on Linux and Windows. Even if MS don't keep their monopoly of desktop operating systems, they can still keep a monopoly on applications, and/or benefit from Corel's growing or set-to-grow share of that market.

San Jose, CA (ICU) 49% of non-voting shares in my personal debt have just been bought by Microsoft. As they could sell off those shares at any given moment if they are displease and I lose value or must immediately pay off my debt, I have nothing to say, except that they are the nicest people in the whole world!

I think what Microsoft is looking for is exactly what you said: to make other companies' products parts of their own. But I think you missed something very, very important.

Look back at Microsoft's history of "innovation." In other words, pretty much none. What they did is take ideas from competitors.

Do you see what I'm driving at? Without Corel, Microsoft has no real competition, and hence nowhere to take new ideas from. Without a constant stream of new ideas, they can't convince people to upgrade Microsoft Office every new release -- and so having Corel around is good for Microsoft's business, too.

Bruce
The real Bruce Perens has Slashdot ID 3872. Anyone else is an impostor.

They also dropped $150 million on non voting Apple stock a few years back if I am not mistaken....

"When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood."
-Tom Jones

"When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood."
-Tom Jones

I don't know offhand if there's any Corel-MS litigation recently. But it wouldn't be suprising if the new Corel management used MS's current troubles to extract a little greenmail. After all, they own WordPerfect, Paradox, and Quatro Pro -- all products which MS succeeded in burying, whether by fair means or foul. If this is true, neither company will ever, ever admit it.

__________
Warning! Minion of the Corporate Elite!

__________
Warning! Minion of the Corporate Elite!

__________
Warning! Minion of the Corporate Elite!

Yeah, and that implicit cast from the integer Bruce Perens makes me kind of uncomfortable, too.

real BrucePerens = 3872;

Bingo Foo

---
Microsoft does write "free" software. Not free as in "free beer," or "free speech," but "Free Tibet."

Extra money is always good.
John Glass /. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com

The money is urgently needed by cash-poor Corel, and this little amount (to M$, of course) can keep a dying competitor on a life-support, just a way to avoid being beaten up by the Justice Dept.

-- My 2Bits...

Oh goody. Finally a distribution of Linux that's pre-destined to be more pissed on than Red Hat.

It's good not to run the underdog anymore.

And yes, I know that site was a prank. And one that's worthy of checking out; it can't be long until M$ shuts it down...

They have a list of MS' spending spree over the years. (look under 'departments')

Perhaps so, but I've been somewhat disappointed with CorelDRAW 9 for Linux. Compared to CorelDRAW 3 (the only other version I've used extensively), it's far more fully featured, but the user interface is awful. It now takes several times longer to accomplish the same tasks. I guess the Windows version has the same flaws, though. Overall performance is OK, but not great, probably due to rushing it to market rather than getting WINE working right, and there are still niggling little bugs. As you say, they're so close, but just keep getting it wrong.

No, that's not true. WordPerfect had its followers (I know), and I guess so did Quattro. None of those cared about the rest of the "office package", and Corel didn't do much to keep the apps up-to-date, so it had to go down. But it was never a pure "anti-microsoft" thingy.

--
It's my belief that my big balls should be held every night.

It's time to start thinking outside the Linux box.

Software designers are so infatuated with the fact that they can, that they don't stop to think if they should.

Noooo! Noooo! It's just too sad, I'll be forced to VI and ispell, Latex and I don't know what. Man the GNOME word processor source, batten the hatches, the Borg has landed.

on the upside... at least they bought a bad one :)

-------
"Idiot. 'Lego' actually comes from the Klingon le'Qo', meaning 'building blocks of war'"

anyhow, in my opinion, it's the worst distro. with the possible exception of linuxone ;) but, any free *nix is still better than windows, so hey, whatever floats your boat.

-------
"Idiot. 'Lego' actually comes from the Klingon le'Qo', meaning 'building blocks of war'"

Many people seem puzzled about Microsoft's motives. After all, their shares in Corel are non-voting, right?

What's escaping everyone's notice (as MS intended) is that in anybody else's hands, these shares are convertible to voting shares. They are therefore every bit as valuable on the market. So ask yourself this: who wouldn't trade their own voting shares with Microsoft? Especially if MS was to offer a little incentive bonus?

Making these shares non-voting is legal smoke and mirrors. Non-coercive my ass! Corel is on Microsoft's leash now. They will heal or they will get yanked good and hard.

Well, Corel's stock is getting a nice price bounce. It closed at 3-11/16 but is now trading at about 7-1/8 in after hours. Can't wait to see what happens when the market opens in the morning.

Makes me really happy I held on to my Corel shares even when Linux started falling out of favor with the market. Of course, I miss when Corel was up over 30.

As someone who picks up stock in "dead stock" companies who still have okay products -- CORL, SGI, etc -- this is a big day for me. Time to start picking out a new ride...

----
In my school, being smart is exactly like being radioactive.

It seems that MS is just trying to put a little buffer between them and the justice department.

--
Marc C.

True enough. Heck, Microsoft brought us D0S, how could anyone possibly ever threaten such a l337 company?

From what I hear, CORL is not in the best shape financially. So, perhaps, MSFT sees this as a (cheap?) way to own a good bit of CORL's assets when the Chapter 11 happens. Plus, if they're shareholders, they have preference over other parties trying to bid for CORL's assets.

Perhaps they go for the apps, to kill the competition. But that doesn't seem to make sense from the monopoly point of view.

Perhaps they go for the OS? What plans to follow? To get a brand name, then fork Linux? Try to jump-start fragmentation a la Unix?

The question is of course when Corel sosay joined the Linux camp why did they mess about with creating a distro (which didn't work with serial ice) instead of doing what would have helped Linux (and theselves) ported corel office to Linux properly and quickly
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.

First, this would be a massive SEC violation. When you own 100 shares you can do a lot of things you can't do when you own 24 million (which is over 5%) Here's a chart

Second, Microsoft may have a lot of money, but they don't just throw away $135 million dollars without raising some eyebrows in the DOJ/SEC/etc.

Third, investments this large are normally done with limits on sales. The Apple shares that MS bought years ago was with a lock for 3 years (IIRC) when they converted into voting shares. Though I see no details in the news articles to this end, I'm sure they're in there.

Then they wouldn't really be non-voting shares. It may seem like it, but you can't just do whatever you want with stocks 'n stuff.

-Pete
This week's movie

MS doesn't want to be seen as a monopoly.

If they are the biggest, best office suite by a huge margin, they are certainly closer to being seen as a monopoly.

The same exact thing happend when they bought shares in Apple a while back.

Microsoft will help it's competition just enough to help it'self!!!

It is very bad when you are the only huge, 800lb gorilla and you've crushed all the other monkeys in your cage. If so, they send the zoo keeper after you pretty quickly!

--
Marc C.

What did MS get out of this? IE on Mac desktops everywhere and MORE importantly the validation of Apple Inc in the eyes of consumers. This meant that Apple could continue to offer it's products in the same exact stores as MS does. MS makes IE standard (which it is even on Macs), and maintains the view that MS is not alone.

Move forward to Oct 00. MS invests in Corel. Why? Easy, MS NEEDS Linux and more speficially, Corel, which makes an Office suit which it BUNDLES with a Linux, to continue to exist. If Corel die and it's Office Suite divested, it adds to the arguement that MS needs to be broken up. If Corel thives and lives in the consumer space, just as Apple has, MS can point to them and say, "Hey, they bundle Office, and a share of the desktop space...".

MS investment in Apple justified Apple in the consumer world at a time when they were down. MS investment in Corel will do the same.

They can't let Corel die. It's makes bad business sense.

Living Microsoft Free: 27 years and counting.

The Corel deal sounds different. Unlike the Apple deal, there were no ongoing patent disputes and no "undisclosed sum". MS just threw a low 9-figure wad of cash (chump change to them) at Corel to help keep them alive, probably so that they will be able to point to them later and say, "See, we have competitors! We're not a monopoly!"

Go is a very deep game, rich in strategy. Entire books have been written about how go strategy compares to business strategy.

Microsoft business tactics are very much like intermediate go strategy - give your opponent a "heavy" group, one that's too awkward to be of much use, but you leave it living anyway so you have something to chase around and make solid territory (profit) from as you chase it.

The heavy group is the weakling business, apple or corel. Your goal isn't to make it thrive and overwhelm one of your groups, but to keep it just barely alive, because businesses and weak groups on life support have their uses.

Sources have informed us that Yahoo! is one of the many sites with the story that the evil oppressors have purchased 24 bazillion non-voting (but when you have that many, you have a vote anyway) shares of Corel, the creators of the buggiest art software ever created by man or monkey! So now Micro$oft has Word (as well as Def, and Fly) and a big stake in that second-place word processor, whatever it's called. Hedging your bets ain't bad, even when totally unnecessary, 'course what will this mean for the corel office for linux suite that no one got excited about back when it was just wordperfect on linux? And while they are supposedly non-voting shares, this looks like a huge percentage of... What were those guys called, anyway?

I'd be on thin ice to speculate on what Microsoft was thinking here. First of all, I have two neurons to rub together and get a spark. Ha ha, just a little joke, folks. We all know that there really are some brilliant people at Microsoft -- And no, this is not patronization. Even Billy Boy is pretty damned sharp, even if in no other way than knowing who to listen to.

Microsoft has a big piece of Apple, too, right? Perhaps not as big as this, and Apple is somewhat more successful than Corel, which has been taking a very odd and bumpy roller coaster ride as long as I can remember. Then there's the weird offshoots (like Corel Computer) which seem to totally miss the point in the same way that corel does. I remember when Corel brought out the netwinder. There's a press release from June of 1998 which has the following tidbits:

NetWinders with a 810 MB drive are available for US $699 or US $779 for a 2.1 GB drive. A 3.2 GB drive is available for US $869 while a diskless version (to be available late Summer 1998) will be available for US $569.

Even then it was easily possible to build a PC with the same capabilities for less money; The only good thing about the netwinder is that it's smaller. All you needed was 32mb of ram, some crappy IDE disk, and an ATI video card with video input. It didn't have a floppy drive, or a CD-Rom drive, et cetera.

So what the hell is Microsoft thinking? I can see only one real possibility I'm willing to speculate toward, which is that they're planning to get into the graphics market, and this is just their way of making it more attractive for Corel to sell them big chunks of Corel Draw.

This is a rare opportunity for Microsoft programmers to actually make code better. How often does a chance like that come along?

This might have been marginally clever the first time anybody said it,
but now it just makes people want to smack the guy.

-Pete
This week's movie

The notes from last week's meeting of ECMA TC39 group were just published. In it there was a discussion of C# and the CLI (is this a new acronym for the CLR?) that contained some very interesting snippets of information. Apparently Microsoft (along with HP, Intel & Fujitsu) is intending to submit C# & the CLI to ECMA for standardization in November. Other interesting points:

1. Tony (last name not give - was it maybe Goodhew?) said Microsoft has 2 implementations of C# & CLI internally, and that they are working on an open source implementation.

2. Tony also said that the CLI was available on non-WinTel platforms, but Microsoft couldn't comment on this at this time.

Here's the link: http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/t c39 /mins-28sep00.html

Mountain Dew and Taco Bell

Hmm, isn't that about the number they kicked in to Apple as well?

There's a missing from your sentence.

-Pete
This week's movie

Many people have wondered why Corel did not sue MS for damages after MS was convicted of being a monopoly. Some of the states had originally wanted to make MS Office the focus of the anti-trust suit. MS did the similar deal with Inprise a few years ago. If Corel is dropping any threat of law suits now then MS is getting off lucky. On the other hand, Corel does not have the resources to spend millions in court and needs the money now not years from now.

No matter where you go ... there you are.

The dead hand of Asimov's mass psychology wins every time.

The idea is to take their libraries, bend them to fix the MS Office motif and publish a single word processor. They don't have voting rights now, but they will have them soon, I can guarantee it.

I GREATLY prefer WordPerfect because the data format is visible and similar to a script, with ordered "tags" a lot like HTML. Font change start in the wrong place? Just Reveal Codes, then cut and paste the tag where you want it. Word's idea of tags is a lot of silly tool tips that tell you very little about the actual underlying structure of the document and don't let you work with it.

In short, Mac:Linux::M$Word:WordPerfect; both sides have a pretty GUI, but only Linux/WordPerfect let you see and tweak the source. WordPerfect isn't Quark XPress, but it's light-years ahead of Word for precise and complex page-layout functions.

I sincerely hope this does not spell doom for WordPerfect, because it is a dramatically superior product to Word, at least for those willing to learn a few ropes. And it's a whole lot easier than LaTeX!

We can reduce ideas to bits and people to genes, but "can" does not imply "should".

If this were the case, why does MS have such a vastly greater marketshare than WordPerfect. This isn't the same Windows monopoly: people are actually going to purchase Office over WordPerfect.

As an example, I had a brief parttime job at a computer store over one summer. WordPerfect and Office came out with new editions at roughly the same time. I saw people completely walk past the huge ad display set up for WordPerfect (which sat in the middle of the aisle) and walk straight to Office. They didn't have to buy Word. They wanted to.

The point is, most people don't find WordPerfect better than Word. The people who do normally have been using it for years and have it stuck in their organizations (I find IT divisions have a real hard time removing WordPerfect completely from their company networks. The program and things like Netware gradually get intertwined). Most others, however, find Word superior.

On the good side, Corel was practically worthless to begin with. It was looking fairly likely that they could go under at any time. This investment seems to at least keep Corel, as one of the largest contributing companies to Linux, afloat for a while longer, whatever the actual motivation for it may be, that is the immediate result.

Good or bad? Maybe some of both. It's definitely puzzling though, and the final result is just a little uncomfortable.

________
You have moved your mouse. Windows will now reboot.

The name of the company is ZINMAL. What is ZINMAL? ZINMAL Is Not Microsoft's Answer to Linux. Zinmal will take all the software that Corel has released under the GPL, repackage it under the Zinmal label, and continue to develope it independantly of Corel. All the Slashdot types who care about the GPL will buy Zinmal distributions and refuse to have anything to do with Corel. Corel's proprietary products will be treated with the same disdain as Microsoft's proprietary products. People who work at Corel will flee to come work for the new startup, and Zinmal will eventually be purchased either by VA Linux (LNUX) or RedHat (RHAT).

This is one stupid purchase. MSFT needs to wake up and realize that Linux can't be bought, and that profitability in the software market is shrinking long term due to the presence of Free Software. Concentrate on the hardware, dum-dums. You can't pirate hardware as easily as you can pirate software.

NOTICE to those who read both Yahoo! stock message boards and Slashdot: istartedi==smm7epub

The second most important thing about this is that Microsoft gets to control the "bouncing" of Borland Paradox, which appears to be the nearest thing that there is on Linux to a competitor to MS Access.

There are all sorts of other opportunities for "paranoid delusion," notably that this might diminish the ability of Corel to continue to support WINE efforts as a technology that was independent of Microsoft.

Which is distressing if you were planning to put your millions of dollars worth of development effort into cloning Win32 software over to Linux via libWINE, but that sounds rather paranoid-delusional. There are probably as many millions going into that as went into cloning Win16 software over to unix via Willows TWIN...

I think I'll go with "Control over WP's Next Disposition" as the most likely value of this to MSFT...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

http://yahoo. cne t.com/news/0-1003-200-2917375.html?pt.yfin.cat_fin.txt.ne

Some choice snippets from the article:

"In turn, the two companies will work together on developing and testing products for Microsoft's .Net effort, which lets customers "rent" software over the Internet. Microsoft.Net will also encompass cell phones and handhelds computers."

Rather unsettling, eh?

"The two companies have also agreed to settle unspecified legal issues between them."

Anybody happen to have an idea on just which legal issues they might be referring to?

""They didn't want Apple to go away as a major competitor and they probably don't want Corel to go away right away, especially when things are on appeal," Enderle said. The deal may also give Microsoft access to in-house technology at Corel, including some Linux technology."

MS Linux? ::shivers::

Hmmmmm. M$ buys dividend paying shares but can't vote.... what could they do to 'encourage' Corel to turn larger profits (and pay higher dividends).... The jaded, the consipiracy theorists, and the realistic will probably all have similar answers... [hint: the trail (of $$) goes TOWARD Redmond.]

Now, did you really think that M$ dropped that suit out of the kindness of Bill's heart? (for the sake of argument, let's just say he had one)

Remember how Word '97 couldn't read some files from earlier Word versions? If you wanted to read '97 files you had to update. Whether you wanted to or not or needed to or not.

I certainly do not remember this because what you state is FALSE

Word 97 was perfectly capable of reading earlier versions of Word files. Earlier versions of Word could not necessarily read Word 97 files, that is what happens when file formats are upgraded. Other software programs have done this. This was documented and announced when Office 97 came out.

The complaint was this, that when you were working with Word 97 and choose to save as a Word 95, it did not save it in true .doc format (binary compatible). Instead, the output was a Rich Text Format, which is not as "robust" as 95 format (ie 6.0). Microsoft goofed, admitted it, and released a binary level converter that would save as true Word 95 docs.

Also, Microsoft released a free Word 97 viewer so users of earlier version could view and print. Also, they released an add-on to Word 95 so that owners could open Word 97 docs and modify them, even if formatting features of the new version were lost if there was not a compatible feature in the 95 version.

More than fair for them to release these freebies. The stink was that they did not inform the user that the Save As command in 97 was RTF.

Get your facts straight. People always complain about the lies MS or others say about Linux and Open Source/Free Software, well make sure you don't spread lies about MS as well. Damn them for what they do, not what you have a vague rememberance of what they might have done. And telling someone who sends you a file, you cannot read it in the format sent is VALID to do. Linux users say it all the time. If they want to communicate to you, they will.

Microsoft is going all out with its own monopolistic products, Windows and Office, to drive customers into the arms of .NET, its proprietary Internet-as-a-service scheme. The end goal is to have every Internet using paying Microsoft a fee. Give it a year; XML and HTML will be so corrupted that you can't help but use a Microsoft product to view the Internet.

Bribing Corel into using .NET in its own products is just a small step in locking us all into that mess. Considering Corel's recent financial trouble, selling its soul to the devil may have been easier than standing up for the right thing. I'm just thankful we still have products like StarOffice, ApplixWare, and AppleWorks that don't depend on .NET to function.

Paul Rickard, Editor, The Microsoft Boycott Campaign

"An apology for the Devil: it must be remembered we have heard only one side of the story. God has written all the books." -Samuel Butler

--Aaron Greenberg

BTW I disagree that Corel will be rethinking their Linux strategy. They made all their money back in the first week of sales. PCData said Corel had 23% of Linux retail sales in Jul. Corel has also been a very popular download at CNet and TUCOWS. True that last quarter's earnings showed only $1.2 million in Linux sales but this was due to the rebates used to clear the channel of the older version to make way for ver 1.2. Originally they were only going to put it out as a free download but as a retail product only released last Nov they have made $12 mil in sales which is not too bad considering it is only a sideline product.

Corel is planning an enterprise version along with Rebel and Graph on which will have higher margins. WP 10-Linux will be native to Linux which should make the critics happy. I think Corel can make money with Linux but it will take time. At least now they have the resources to make it work.

No matter where you go ... there you are.

Okay, seriously, in order for MS to sell .NET as a serious alternative to locally installed apps they also need stuff like a half decent drawing and painting programs. MS's own attempts at such programs haven't exactly been well received (understatement) - so who do they turn to?

If a customer is using Corel products, and Corel doesn't choose to support .NET, that customer may well ignore .NET and try to survive with a standalone software model. M$ cannot allow that to happen, so they have a vested interest in making sure the standalone software providers are either assimilated or removed...

There is another reason that M$ needs Corel: Did anyone else see the Corel office suite beta written in Java back around 1995? If M$ can get them to port it to C#, they have a ready made .NET application that probably already works better than anything they will be able to produce for the next 3 to 5 years...

0x0000
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--
It's my belief that my big balls should be held every night.