“Alarm bells first rang when it emerged last October that
Corel’s mystery investor was none other than Microsoft. They should
have rung louder. . Now it appears the United States Department of
Justice is taking a closer look at the antitrust implications of
that transaction.”
“To be brutally honest, I’m not going to shed any tears over the
death of Corel’s Linux distribution. … On the other hand the
passing of WordPerfect for Linux and WordPerfect Office for Linux
would be more of a worry. Officially these products have not yet
been dumped – but don’t hold your breath.”
“But there’s another reason to worry about the demise of Corel’s
Linux offering, the company has played a major role in the
development of Wine. In January Corel outlined its business plan in
a press release. Wine isn’t specifically mentioned, but the company
says it will continue to develop Linux applications and presumably
this means the Wine contribution will continue. This means that
a Microsoft controlled company is going to play a major role in
the development of Wine. Is anyone looking at the antitrust
implications of that?”