[ale] [OT] Fwd: HP drops Microsoft for rival Corel

[aaron]

My 'pal' at HP forwarded this short Financial Times piece that showed up 
on the hp.forum news group. Thought the piece and a couple of our 
observations and references might be of interest to the group.

> --quote--
> HP drops Microsoft for rival Corel
> By Scott Morrison and Paul Abrahams in San Francisco
> Published: August 27 2002 0:56
>
> Microsoft, the world's biggest software group, on Monday suffered a
> blow to its most important business, when Hewlett-Packard, the world's
> largest personal computer company, selected a rival software package
> for its consumer PCs.
>
> The move follows a decision last week by Dell Computer, the number two
> PC maker, to replace Microsoft software. Both companies said they
> would offer WordPerfect productivity software from Corel of Canada
> instead of Microsoft's Works, a scaled-down version of its top-selling
> Office software.
>
> Microsoft last financial year generated $9.6bn of its total $28bn of
> revenues from desktop software. Microsoft currently has more than 90
> per cent of the office productivity software market.
>
> During the recent anti-trust hearings in Washington, PC makers said
> that Microsoft had been abusing its monopoly in operating systems and
> productivity tools, and in particular the way it licensed its products
> to PC makers. Gateway alleged that Microsoft favoured certain PC
> manufacturers both in financial and other means.
>
> HP and Microsoft were not immediately available for comment.
> --end quote--

Original article page is here (may need to set bowser ID to Mozilla):
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/
StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1028186043520&p=1012571727304

-- comments --
> Score 2 small points for the anti-M$ crowd; HP & Dell have opted to
> switch from MS desktop software to Corel for their shipping PC's.
> Maybe we should switch from Office to something else internally too.
> Hope to see more big companies chip away at the M$ borg.
> -- michelle (hp)

Interesting, and generally great news, but a little weird because,
TTBOMK, M$ will *still* stand to profit from the choice of Corel, since
M$ bought up a major percentage of Corel (~25%) about 2 years ago:

October 3, 2000 article about M$ buy-ting into Corel:
   http://news.com.com/2100-1001-246545.html?legacy=cnet

Quote from an article a yer later:
   http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0829corel.html
     "Microsoft has also aided in Corel's effort to rebuild, investing
$135 million in Corel in October 2000. The two companies are
working on Microsoft's Internet initiative, .Net."
----------
Don't you just LOVE the wording? "Aided" ... I guess that means 
Micro$haft gave Corel AIDS in addition to screwing them over, because
immediately after M$ stabbed their tentacles into the Corel the company's 
Linux distros, along with sales, distribution and further development 
work on their Linux/Unix product offerings, disappeared:
   http://linux.corel.com/custserv.htm

At least some remnant of Corel's Linux distro efforts is still alive. 
Another Canadian company called Xandros bought license to a lot of it and 
hired much of the Linux team. They're now announcing a Sept. 30th release 
of their Linux Desktop  distro and server products:
   http://www.xandros.net/news.html

Sadly, the existing (circa 2000) Linux office and graphics products from 
Corel don't appear to be included and continue to be discontinued, at 
least for the time being:
    http://www.xandros.net/faq.html

peace
aaron


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