Sorry, I forgot about the new mail server and sent this directly to
Jeremy instead of the list:
Jeremy White wrote:
>
> "Paul E. Merrell" wrote:
>
> > http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/2439/1/
> > --
>
> I wanted to briefly 'adjust' an impression that this may have left about
>
> something I said to Kevin.
>
x---snip---x
For what it's worth, my take as a long-time Corel watcher on the
Corel/Microsoft deal is at
http://wpwin.com/ubbforum/Forum27/HTML/000027.html> in a long post that
begins about a third of a way down the thread, plus a reply to some good
hard criticism from Paula Ford, toward the bottom of the thread (as of
this writing).
In summary, I see the "deal" as primarily a ".NET smokescreen" for
settlement of legal claims that has little meaning for Corel development
strategy, beyond an infusion of cash. Corel had very strong legal claims
against Microsoft for anti-trust violations, and for unfair competition
through deliberate distribution of Visual Studio 6.0 runtimes even after
Microsoft became aware they were crashing all of the major WordPerfect
applications.
Microsoft obviously didn't want to publicize that it was willing to
settle those kinds of claims at this juncture in its regulatory problems,
hence the .NET hype accompanying the settlement. Corel has been clear
from the first announcement, however, that a settlement of legal claims
was involved and that the money is not earmarked for .NET development
work.
With Corel's announcement in its latest CEO message that it intends to
.NET enable its Linux applications, the bigger issue for this list is, in
my opinion, when and how Corel will be adding .NET technology to the Wine
code base. See "A message from the CEO" linked from Corel's home page at
<http://www.corel.com>. I doubt if Corel has the answers yet, as the
settlement obviously took even Corel by surprise. On the other hand, so
much of what happened isn't being discussed that it's impossible for an
outsider to know what really happened, so I could easily be wrong.
But I've got some 20 years of litigation experience telling my nose that
the "strategic alliance" is a settlement of legal claims, pure and
simple. Corel gets $135 million and early access to .NET technology;
Microsoft gets nothing but .NET publicity. It's that kind of deal,
reminiscent of Microsoft's settlements with Apple and Borland/Inprise,
which were also painted in the press as Microsoft "investments." Yeah,
right. Non-voting, non-convertible, non-participating stock. Some
"investment."
--
Paul E. Merrell, E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WordPerfect Links: http://www.wpwin.com/links.html
WordPerfect Linux Links: http://www.qwkscreen.com/WPLinuxLinks.html
WP8 FAQ: http://w3.one.net/~kgibson/wp8faq.htm
WP7 Help: http://home.earthlink.net/~tlhuffman/wp7/wp7help.htm
Search WP web sites:
http://www.wpwriter.com/You_Find_the_Answer/you_find_the_answer.html
