VNUnet: Corel's desperate gamble on Linux Feb 21, 2000, 16 :17 UTC (13 Talkback[s]) (5031 reads) (Other stories by Stuart Lauchlan)
"Part of the problem is clearly that the deal smacks of
desperation. Corel has fought a desperate uphill competitive
struggle for years against Microsoft, while Inprise has suffered
from the same slowdown in the tools market that has afflicted
most of the vendors in that space since the emergence of
Java."
"Then there's the added problem of other suppliers getting the
open source bug and starting to flood the market with free
software. Most notably, there is a real danger from Sun
Microsystems. Corel clearly hopes that Linux will provide a
boost to the prospects of its Wordperfect suite, which has
lost out to Microsoft Office almost from day one.
But Sun is already giving away personal productivity suite
Staroffice on Linux for free. The product is generally regarded
as functionally comparable to Microsoft Office, and has been
available on Linux for a few years, unlike the relatively untried
Linux-flavoured Wordperfect. If a potential customer is
actively looking for an alternative office application suite,
then which is likely to appear the safer bet?"
