Corel Shuts Down Open Source Development Site 198
evil_one writes: "The
end is finally here for Corel, who released a Debian based linux distro a couple years ago (now owned by Xandros) Has announced that they are shutting down their Open Source Development web site as of March 1st. As many readers already know, Corel has helped the community on a huge scale, providing the Linux world with versions of Corel Draw and Corel WordPerfect. It's sad to see this, especially with the amount of work that Corel has put into Wine and their other projects, which include add-ons to KDE."
Guess I can retire this topic icon ;)
Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
Open Source Theory (Score:1, Interesting)
My theory about open source is that Linux in particular is being privately funded by IBM, Sun, AOL and other big companies with the sole intention of breaking up Microsoft. I have no doubt that Linux will be sucessful in eventually becoming the predominant desktop OS. After all, how can Microsoft even with it's monopoly power compete with a product that is free that has similar or better performance?
A bridge to Linux from Windows now gone...sad... (Score:4, Interesting)
This would've gone a long way had it been better promoted and developed, to expose the masses or attract the curious and adventurous Windows folks into the realm of Linux and its other software. Sad, but I hope someone else picks this idea up and markets an easy-to-use distribution just for Windows users.
Sales figures? (Score:2, Interesting)
Half assed (Score:3, Interesting)
They did however give out free CD's at Defcon and other interesting conferences (I've still got a few). So to say that they were entirely half assed is wrong, they did actively pursue support. Their distros were not all that though.
Corel Ventura would have been excellent for Linux, because it is a pretty neat DTP solution and Linux really needs some heavy duty DTP software that can be used in production environments.
No, you can't retire that icon just yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know you're kidding, but Corel is still doing interesting things in the Unix community that the Slashdot crowd will probably be very interested in, particularly the port of
DISCLAIMER: I work for Corel, but I do not speak on their behalf. My opinions are my own.
Re:Open Source Theory (Score:1, Interesting)
Another large source of funding for free software (Stallman doesn't like the term "open source") or open source is the US government. Many large scientific software projects are at least open source. The DOE funds programs like Globus.org, CDAT and Vis5d. Also, most large scientific modeling projects are open source.
No, it's all because of no sales. (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't. If you have called Corel to try to order any of ther Linux products, you will find that they are all "out of print" and are not available for purchase. If you ask why, you will be told that there was absolutely no demand -- not enough interest in the products even to justify keeping a few copies around for sale.
Linux users just don't by software (except me, who bought WordPerfect Office for Linux and Corel Draw for Linux during the brief moment when they were available, and use them every day).
Re:Sales figures? (Score:5, Interesting)
To make matters worse, tech support needs for Linux products were greater, apparently because the few users they did manage to sell their Linux products to were "newbies" rather than Linux veterans, who don't seem to buy software at all.
This info comes from my calling Corel's sales and tech support to inquire about the Linux products line in the process of writing an article.
Re:It'd be nice if... (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe the releases which followed used Wine, however.
Re:No, it's all because of no sales. (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree. Corel may tell you that there was "no demand". But, I think a better way to put it would be:
There was enough less demand for their Linux products that Corel would not have made $135 million on profit on them.
Risky projects like Corel's Linux initiatives are the first to go when lean times come. But saying that Microsoft's investment wasn't involved is silly -- if the investment came without strings attached, they would have been able to continue their Linux operations. Or, at least they would still have some support for those products! I used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS well after the release of Win95, and still got fantastic support for it. But just try and get support for one of their less-than 2 year old Linux products!
> Linux users just don't by(sic) software (except me ...
Actually, very few people buy all the software they use. I also bought WordPerfect for Linux, and would have bought Corel Draw! for Linux except that I didn't hear about it until it had already been discontinued. I know about 10 people who used Corel's Linux products, and at least 8 of them paid for legal licenses.
IIRC, a similar thing happend a few years back when Apple was still early in the process of incorporating the NeXT tree into what would become OS X. At that time, Apple was talking about the possibility of selling "Rhapsody" (sp?) for x86 hardware in addition to Macintoshes. Some money was transfered (I don't know the specifics) from Microsoft to Apple, and all talk of MacOS running on x86 PCs vanished.
Time to retire Corel's icon... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe you should have retired that logo last January when Corel announced [corel.com] their new and improved logo.
Not that I really like the new logo with that strange looking bald guy. But lets get with the times eh?
Re:Sales figures? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were a number of non-newbies who bought their software. But many advertised features were still broken. Many features of the Windows suite were not available in the Linux version because of WINE limitations, even something as simple as loading a document in a running instance of WP (ie, from a browser). It had varied problems with things like window management with different window managers, font difficulties caused by interactions between their font server and other font servers....
The only way to get a fairly stable WPO2k/Linux or Draw/Linux installation was beyond most users, as it required downloading an unsupported CVS version of corelwine and recompiling it (twice to work with both Draw and WPO2k). And when you did that, you broke the online help.
In other words, sales figures were poor because the software was not worth buying. I have both WPO2k and Draw for Linux, and don't have either installed, because they aren't worth using.
Corel Going the Way of the Dodo (Score:3, Interesting)
At any rate, Bill decided that MS Word should be the legal Word Processor Uber Alles and directed his minions to make it so. As of today, he still hasn't succeeded in his goal AFAIK. The MS investment in Corel might be directed toward continued progress in that regard. As soon as Microsoft can supplant WordPerfect as the word processor of choice on legal desktops everywhere (at least in the U.S.), WordPerfect's and Corel Suite or whatever's usefulness will have ended.
Lawyers and law firms may just be the biggest single user group of Corel's office suite left. They may be the only customers that keep it alive. There are certainly enough of them to keep WordPerfect (and possibly Corel itself) alive for some time to come. When they finally switch (resistance is futile), WordPerfect will probably die and Corel will finally execute it's final CFIT. That's aviation terminology for "Controlled Flight Into Terrain".
Imagine, Microsoft - the Evil Empire - at long last in bed with not only its own lawyers, but all lawyers everywhere - Satan's Spawn on Earth. The Horror.... the horror.....