Upside: Corel-Inprise a ‘Royal Flush’

“Derek Burney, chief technology officer for Corel, saw the lack
of technology overlap between the two companies as the crucial
factor behind the merger.

‘The way I see it, one of the companies has the ten and the
king. The other has the jack, queen and ace,’ Burney said.
‘Individually, they’re OK, but together they’re a royal
flush.’

Such a metaphor might prove more than apt. Given both companies’
recent troubles as a direct result of Bill Gates & Co., putting
the two together is a sizable gamble. Corel, which has failed twice
in its efforts to unseat Microsoft as the dominant desktop
application provider, watched its shares fall as low as $2 last
spring. Inprise, meanwhile, has had its own troubled history,
including a much-publicized 1997 lawsuit accusing Microsoft Corp.
of poaching its top developers and executives.

Not surprisingly, both companies have turned out to be sudden
and strong supporters of Linux. Last September Corel launched its
very own Linux distribution. Inprise, meanwhile, has launched
Kylix, a project to make its top software tools compatible for the
Linux platform.”

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