“…Ridding itself of the Linux operation makes some sense for
Corel. It’s money in the bank, and it doesn’t preclude the company
selling its applications – Corel’s real strength – into the Linux
market; it doesn’t need its own distro to do that.”
“Corel’s acquisitions over the last year – picking up, for
instance, MetaCreations’ graphics tools – suggests a strategy of
focusing on applications in areas that its main competitors don’t
themselves target. If that is the plan. Corel’s Linux distro sits
rather uncomfortably within it, and a sale is always preferable to
just killing the software.”
“Of course, there’s one other option here. Corel might be buying
a company off LGP. A long shot, it’s true, but as Burney said in
his interview: “To be successful in the Linux market, you need a
wider product offering. There’s got to be some kind of
acquisition”. LGP owns stakes in a number of Linux companies –
including, incidentally, CodeWeavers, the company behind the WINE
Windows-on-Linux emulator that drives all of Corel’s Linux apps –
and it’s entirely possible that the rumours of a deal are correct,
just the wrong way round.“