Ottawa, Canada- April 21, 1999- Corel Corporation (NASDAQ:
COSFF, TSE: COS) today announced an alliance with two major Open
Source developer communities to advance the development of its
proposed Linux® distribution; a user-friendly Linux
installation and graphical user interface (GUI) for the desktop
PC.
Corel and the K Desktop Environment (KDE) Project will be
working together to enhance the KDE GUI for inclusion in the
upcoming Corel version of Linux, aimed for the desktop user.
Corel has chosen to work with KDE as our preferred desktop
interface because we believe its development is further ahead than
other offerings at this time, said Derek Burney, Corel’s executive
vice president of engineering. KDE can easily be configured to
offer a strong Windows-like look and feel, which we see as being
very important to our strategy of making all aspects of work in a
Linux environment compatible with present-day Windows
offerings.
Corel will also be releasing all its improvements and
development on open source software to the Open Source community,
said Mr. Burney. The developers in that community are the strength
of Linux, and with our recent work and contributions to the WINE
project, Corel strongly supports their efforts.
Our project s continuous dedication to create an attractive,
stable and functional desktop environmentand Corel s experience in
building state-of-the-art graphical interfaces will help offer
users an even better experience with the award-winning KDE, said
Cristian Tibirna, KDE s representative in Canada. We re all very
excited about the new prospects.
Corel will also build its desktop Linux offering around the
Debian GNU/Linux distribution, which already has one of the largest
installed bases in the Linux community, and is known for its
stability and security.
Debian has already made significant strides toward Linux on the
desktop, so this is a natural partnership, said Erich Forler, Corel
s Linux product manager. The Linux community has also recognized
that Debian s Linux distribution is built around extremely clean
code, and their commitment to documentation within their code, and
for the applications, makes Open Source development more efficient
and organized.
I am very happy to see Corel taking this step into the Open
Source world and cooperating with non- commercial organizations
such as Debian and KDE, said Wichert Akkerman, Debian s project
leader. By combining Debian s strengths, which include having a
large number of developers, a very open development model and a
public bug tracking system, with the experience Corel has with
making office and desktop products, I think we will be able to
produce an outstanding system with the best of both worlds.
With a recent strategic alliance with Cygnus, which will provide
Cygnus GNUPro software technology to enable Corel to move its
market-leading productivity applications to Linux, Corel is firmly
on track to deliver its proposed Linux distribution to the market
by the fall. This will be in advance of its WordPerfect® Office
2000 for Linux productivity suite and CorelDRAW® 9 for Linux
graphics application in the fourth quarter and beginning of 2000
respectively.
The strength and popularity of Linux is growing steadily,
everyday. International Data Corporation (IDC) recently announced
that through 2003, total Linux commercial shipments will grow
faster than the total shipments of all other IDC covered client or
server operating environments. IDC estimates that Linux commercial
shipments will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
25% from 1999 through 2003, compared with a 10% CAGR for all other
client operating environments combined and a 12% CAGR for all other
server operating environments combined.
Corel Corporation
Corel Corporation is an internationally recognized developer of
award-winning graphics and business productivity applications.
Development of market-leading products such as the CorelDRAW®
line of graphics applications and the Corel® WordPerfect®
Suite of business tools is continually evolving to meet the demands
of the corporate, retail and academic markets. Committed to
performance, compatibility, value and open standards, Corel
develops products for the Windows®, Macintosh®, UNIX®,
Linux® and Java platforms. Corel s common stock trades on The
NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol COSFF and on the Toronto Stock
Exchange under the symbol COS. Formore information visit Corel s
Web site at www.corel.com.
KDE Information
The K Desktop Environment is a non-commercial, international,
Internet-based project which developsthe freely-available graphical
desktop environment for the UNIX® and Linux® platforms. The
completely new Internet-enabled desktop, incorporating a large
suite of applications for UNIX workstations, currently supports
more than 30 languages. The strength of this exceptional
environment lies in the interoperability of its components and the
functionality of its applications. For more information about KDE
and its technology, please visit the web site at [www.kde.org], or contactpress@kde.org.
Debian GNU/Linux
Debian GNU/Linux is a free, or Open Source, operating system (OS)
for your computer. Debian is aproject of Software in the Public
Interest Inc. (SPI). SPI is a non-profit organization which was
founded to help organizations develop and distribute open hardware
and software. SPI encourages programmers to use the GNU General
Public License or other licenses that allow free redistribution of
software, and hardware developers to distribute documentation that
will allow device drivers to be written for their product. Open
Source is a trademark of SPI. Open Source is managed by the Open
Source Initiative, which manages the [www.opensource.org] resources, to
develop branding programs attractive to software customers and
producers, and to advance the cause of Open Source software. For
more information about Debian and its technology, please contact
press@debian.org, or visit its website at http://www.debian.org
Corel, Corel Print House and the Go Further logo are trademarks
or registered trademarks of Corel Corporationor Corel Corporation
Limited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is
a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other product and
company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective companies.
Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public
Interest.