“UpsideToday: …how much of this deal was motivated by
the quality of Inprise’s technology and how much was motivated by
the simple desire to keep up with the competition?
Derek Burney: It’s mostly the technology. Linux is appearing
everywhere. We see it happening in embedded devices, on networked
appliances in the enterprise. At Corel, we feel that we are the
ones putting it on the desktop. Because it’s everywhere, though,
the requirements of our customers are getting blurred. We really
need a comprehensive lineup of technology. Inprise/Borland gives us
that.”
“UT: You mentioned middleware. The Linux community
already has two notable projects, Gnome and KDE, working to enhance
Linux desktop functionality through middleware. Both have initiated
separate efforts to fold in Object Request Broker. By acquiring
Inprise/Borland, is Corel preparing to offer a third middleware
alternative?
DB: It would be more enhancing [Gnome and KDE]. At Corel, we
really want to work with the open-source developers as much as
possible. Last week, we launched opensource.corel.com, a site
dedicated to open-source development. Borland had their own
efforts when they threw Interbase out there. You throw in the ORB
stuff and the app-server technology, suddenly you have a very
powerful technology offering that is completely open source.
…”