“Within minutes of Microsoft announcing on Monday that it was
investing $135 million in Canadian software vendor Corel, the
Redmond paranoia — which the open-source community has turned into
an extreme sporting event — began running rampant….”
“Nipping another potential legal action in the bud was worth
$150 million to Microsoft, no doubt. But I also believe Microsoft
made the investment as a way to hedge its bets in the desktop-suite
space. Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice suite is set to go open-source
on Friday the 13th of this month. Sun already has given away lots
of free copies of StarOffice.”
“Microsoft doesn’t want to be forced to give away one of its
biggest cash cows, Microsoft Office, in any way, shape or form. But
giving away Corel WordPerfect Office wouldn’t hurt Microsoft one
bit. I can envision a world where Office, either stand-alone
or hosted, is Microsoft’s desktop suite for paying customers and
WordPerfect Office is the free, downloadable desktop suite for the
rest of us.”