In the past, reports of Corel Corp’s demise have been exaggerated. This time things are different. The looming specter of Microsoft Office 2000 has persuaded observers that the Redmond rival’s goose is finally cooked. TechWeb reports that many analysts have given up tracking the floundering Canadian altogether. Predictably, Corel says those analysts gave up too soon. President and CEO Michael Cowpland swears that the company’s fourth quarter will be profitable. What’s unusual about all this palaver is that Cowpland may not be talking through his hat. Though few pundits are taking it into account, Corel is still hard at work on its secret weapon. That anti-Microsoft Doomsday bomb is of course the usual suspect, open source operating system Linux. So positive was the response to Corel’s original commitment to port parts of its WordPerfect Suite to Linux that in May of this year, the company announced it was expanding its efforts on the platform. Corel has already shipped several hundred of its Linux- based NetWinder developer boxes (CI No 3,475). Then last Friday the company issued a heads-up on the availability of WordPerfect 8 Personal and Server Edition for Linux sometime in the next fortnight. If Corel really has invested heavily in this Linux port, the question becomes: can the company’s gamble possibly pay off? If this were any other flavor of Unix we were talking about (anyone for SCO?) the answer would most likely be an automatic negative. However we are not talking about any old flavor of Unix. This is an operating system that came from nowhere with no marketing and no support to establish an installed base maybe as high as seven million. It’s the fastest-growing non-Microsoft operating system on the planet, an unprecedented phenomenon which last week had Microsoft president Steve Ballmer admit that Redmond itself is running scared. Linux doesn’t obey any of the recognized laws of the industry. Given that that’s the case, who knows? Maybe, just maybe this time Corel can pull it off. รก
