Corel Ousted From Public Life? 214
gagy writes "Ottawa's Corel Corp. has been showing signs of weakness in the past few years, and looks very likely to be bought out by Vector Corp, at which point it will become a privately held company. A Toronto Star story spells out the details of the deal, and takes a brief look at the history of Corel." We mentioned Corel's deal with Vector last month.
article text (Score:0, Informative)
On August 20, Corel will hold a special shareholders meeting in Toronto to consider an offer on the table from U.S. tech buyout firm Vector Corp. for $1.05 (U.S.) a share -- a far cry from the $14.75 the company went public at on the Nasdaq in 1992 and nowhere close to its peak of $57.59 a share reached in December, 1999. Corel split its stock twice -- two for one in November, 1993, and three for two in October, 1994.
Vector already holds 22.89 million shares of Corel -- about 20 per cent of the company -- which it took off Microsoft's hands earlier this year. Corel's board has agreed to accept any Vector offer for the rest of its outstanding shares at anything higher than $1.10 a share. In exchange, Vector has agreed that it won't oppose another outside bid that values Corel shares at anything above $1.25 a share, though few expect another bidder.
If no one else steps up to the plate and the deal goes through, it will mark the end of the independent existence of one of the PC industry's longest-lived companies. It will also mark a nondescript end to a chapter of a company that has been anything but.
"Corel was certainly known and still is, but not always for the best of reasons," said one Wall Street analyst who used to cover the company.
From its boastful claim as a thorn in Microsoft Corp.'s side to its flashy founder being accused of insider trading and resigning from the company he built from scratch, few in notoriously conservative Ottawa will likely fret witnessing the company's slow retreat away from its self-orchestrated circus.
Indeed, Corel has had its share of moments and misgivings. There was the time the company announced its quarterly earnings, but failed to mention it had switched its reporting currency to U.S. dollars from Canadian. Several analysts, including Morgan Stanley star analyst Mary Meeker, dropped coverage in disgust that very day.
There were also more than a few grandiose products that failed to deliver, including forays into video-conferencing systems using specialized operating systems, a special kind of business-orientated Web cam and even a personal digital assistant, or PDA, to name just a few of the many products that never made it out of Corel's inner sanctum and onto the production line.
And there was all the personal gossip about founder and owner Michael Cowpland and his less-than-demure wife's lavish lifestyle, including their oversized home in the upscale Ottawa neighbourhood Rockcliffe Park, their luxury cars, their lavish parties and Marlen Cowpland's notoriously outrageous outfits, including one million-dollar-plus number worn to a Corel reception made of leather and gold.
Yet in its 18-plus years, Corel's products became a must-have in the retail and business graphics software market and a household name -- at least for anyone who watches the Ottawa Senators play on their home turf. Cowpland made millions of dollars, generated thousands of jobs in Ottawa and around the world and put Corel on Silicon Valley North's map, if not always in terms of revenues, then certainly in terms of profile. Indeed, despite its reputation for being more talk than action, Corel contributed to the development of more than a few pieces of software that made producing professional-looking graphics better and easier and lit a firecracker under the competition that ultimately carved out a niche in an otherwise cutthroat and product-heavy industry.
"If you look at the resume of almost any graphic artist today, it will likely say two things: PageMaker from Adobe and CorelDraw," said David Wright, a software analyst with BMO Nesbitt Burns who has covered Corel's financials for more than 11 years. "The graphics tool industry was fuelled by the creation of the suite market and the bundling
Re:What a fall. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Corel (Score:4, Informative)
However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project, Open Office, that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle and profit from our hard earned IP.
Do we have another SCO in the making? For the record, OpenOffice code is based on StarOffice (bought from some company by SUN, and later donated).
S
Re:Corel (Score:3, Informative)
Care to elaborate? AFAIK Corel for Linux has been Closed Source and OpenOffice comes from StarOffice (bought by Sun to StarDivision) which has no relation whatsoever to Corel or WordPerfect.
These are really serious claims, and the least anybody need right now (from OSS shops to closed source and proprietary ones) is another SCO spewing bull around.
If you have proof of your claims please elaborate.
Re:Corel (Score:3, Informative)
and
Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project...our hard earned IP"
1) As a mid-level manager you never coded anything.
2)*Your* IP amounted to bringing home a paycheck every week.
3) The IP you claim was stolen never belonged to you, it belonged to the shareholders.
4) The IP you claim was stolen never made it into the OSS project, unless you can prove your claim with documentation (not SCO-FUD).
5) You are a whiney little wanker who will soon join the millions of un(der)-employed IT workers.
Re:What a fall. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What a fall. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not MS (Score:3, Informative)
Visio isn't even the same kind of product as Corel Draw. You can use Corel Draw to do Visio kinds of things, and if you do then I agree that Visio would be better, but that's not what it's designed to do.
Corel Draw is like AdobeIllustrator. Or, to take a product that I like better, like Deneba Canvas. Comparing it with Visio is like saying that a backhoe isn't good for working on your garden. Well, OK. You're right. But that's not what it was designed to do.
Additional complaining about Corel... (Score:4, Informative)
When Corel released WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux and Corel Draw/PhotoPaint 9 for Linux, there was an incredible marketing push. I got samples. I also got Tux plush toys, balloons, beach balls, "Corel Linux" stress cubes, posters and other branding-oriented products sent to me.
I was one of the individuals to decide to pony up $$$ for some trial installations of WordPerfect Office 2000 Deluxe for Linux and Corel Draw 9 for Linux, thinking that these were bigtime apps. The initial release was somewhat (incredibly, you found as time wore on,) buggy, but with service packs already available for the Windows version and assurances that the Linux product line represented a major long-term investment by Corel, I was reasonably confident that the product was viable.
Well... As the weeks turned into months and still no service packs at all, the Corel Office for Linux newsgroup filled up with more and more dissatisfied people wondering about the crashing, the incompatibilities with LPR, and a million other little bugs that had yet to be addressed.
Fast-forward to 2003... The products are orphaned. They have been removed from the Corel Web site without a trace. There has never been so much as a peep out of corel about them since the initial product launch and marketing push. To get anyone at Corel on the phone who even admits that such products ever existed is damn near impossible. The open-source linux.corel.com site that contained Corel's WINE tree is gone.
And no service packs for the Linux versions of these programs ever got released!
In Red Hat 8, they're still unstable, they still sometimes simply error out when you try to save a file you've been working on (can you say "lost work"?), more obscure parts of the programs still tend to crash them or display broken dialogs, and you still have to run a second font server and hand-massage your
In Red Hat 9, the programs don't install at all. There's a fundamental incompatibility with NTPL. If you grab the Red Hat 8 libraries and use them with an LD_LIBRARY_PATH, you can get the apps to install and run, but they don't save or spool print jobs at all no matter what you do, and they have a tendency to simply turn into runaway processes at the slightest irritation.
And to add final insult to injury, we've recently discovered that about 75% of the files created by the Linux versions of WordPerfect Office 2000 can't be opened by the Windows versions of Corel's products. Old files created with these apps are very orphaned.
I'll never buy Corel again for any reason! And I've heard from other people using Linux in varied environments that who also spent $$$ on the Corel licenses that feel much the same way. They could have ruled the Linux world if they'd stuck with it. Instead, they screwed many thousands of decision-makers who won't ever want to smell them again.
Re:Caldera? (Score:2, Informative)
Tell me about it (Score:3, Informative)
It is probably a good thing OpenOffice.org has abandoned that integrated desktop UI that the original StarOffice had. If they felt like improving it they could have run afoul of this patent held by Corel: US Patent No. 20030090519 [uspto.gov]
This patent might be something those KParts and Bonobo-UI guys would want to look at, in case this Vector company or someone that buys them goes the profit-by-IP-lawsuit route.
Hint: read the claims and description. The abstract is rather useless.
Re:I won't miss them... (Score:2, Informative)
WP for Windows - a disaster from the first release; I went through 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, and 7.0
I have also used WP since the DOS days. I actually hated WP 5.1 for DOS because of the crappy interface... but tech support, printer support, and features were great. I have since gone through the many WP for Windows versions with varying degrees of likes/dislikes.
WP for Windows 9 (with the latest service packs applied) running on Win2K is quite stable and I am very pleased with it for what I use it for... WP 10 on WinXp pro is also quite good. I havent tried WP 11 though. However, if truth be told, it's lack of success has nothing to do with its feature comparison with MS Word. I much prefer the feature set in WP compared to Word.
WordPerfect Corporation (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say that pretty much all the real functionality was in it by version 6 (I'm hard pressed to find anything important missing from WP6 that is in the latest verison, save automatic underlining on misspelled words) and that Corel merely added a few features to give them an excuse to release new versions.
Anyway, the writing has been on the wall for years now..
Re:Sad to see it finally go (Score:2, Informative)
4. Downloadable WP 8
4.1. Where can I find a copy of WP 8.0 DPE for Linux? What filenames should I
look for?
Most locations that formerly offered the download (for example, CNET's
download.com, ftp.calderasystems.com, and linux.tucows.com) ceased doing so
about the time Corel itself did. It's possible (but pure speculation) that
Corel asked or required that the files be pulled.
However, the download is still available at:
* [ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/wp8/download.htm] ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/wp8/
download.htm (includes all localisation files except French),
* [ftp://ftp.uni-halle.de/pub/Linux/software/wordpe
ftp.uni-halle.de/pub/Linux/software/wordperfect8/ (includes all
localisation files)
* [http://sunsite.ui.ac.id/pub/linux/nonfree/] http://sunsite.ui.ac.id/pub/
linux/nonfree/
* [http://ftp.urc.ac.ru/pub/OS/Linux/print/] http://ftp.urc.ac.ru/pub/OS/
Linux/print/
* [ftp://ftp.ufscar.br/pub/linux/editortexto/] ftp://ftp.ufscar.br/pub/
linux/editortexto/
* [http://ftp.dreamtime.org/pub/linux/wp8/] http://ftp.dreamtime.org/pub/
linux/wp8/
* [http://alge.anart.no/ftp/pub/Office/WordPerfect/
ftp/pub/Office/WordPerfect/
* [ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/corel/wordperfect
ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/corel/wordperfect/linux/
* [http://www.asker.net/pub/linux/corel/] http://www.asker.net/pub/linux/
corel/
* [http://content.443.ch/pub/linfiles/Gnusoft/wordp
content.443.ch/pub/linfiles/Gnusoft/wordperfect8/ (includes all
localisation files)
* [http://www.invivo.net/pub/SOFTS/telechargement/L
www.invivo.net/pub/SOFTS/telechargement/Linux/WOR
localisation files), and
* [http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/apps/] http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/
apps/ (WP 8.0 DPE, all localisation files, the Filtrix fix, and copies of
WP 8.x licences, knowledgebase/FAQs/docs).