On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 08:35:45AM -0400, Norbert Cartagena wrote:
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/04/10/1522253
>
> Should IBM buy Corel? It certainly would be interesting (I'd be happy
> with it).
>
The scenario would definitely be poetic justice. Some problems, though.
Microsoft managed to netscape Netscape by bundling IE with Windows. IBM
can't pull off a similar trick, because they don't have an OS (beside
Linux) to do it with. Vendors often bundle MSOffice with PCs (perceived
no cost), so making Word Perfect free doesn't gain much there. And if
all your people are trained on Word, are you going to spend $100-$250
per seat to upgrade and no training cost, or get Word Perfect for free
and have to retrain everyone?
Second, I'm not sure this actually cut off Netscape's air supply per se.
According to Netscape's figures when they made Communicator free, that
software accounted for only about 4.7% of their revenue, hardly enough
to "cut off their air supply." Something's not right there. Either that
4.7% figure is incorrect, or Netscape had other problems. Most software
companies run at a higher margin than 4.7%, so the worst that should
have happened was that they tightened their belts and stayed in
business.
Third, Corel's suite products aren't Linux-based, any of them. IBM could
buy Corel and release them to the open source community, but would you
want to hack at Windows-based code? Corel obviously thinks it's a
daunting port, since they've hacked Wine instead of their own code.
But yeah, it would by poetic.
Paul
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