🚀 go-pugleaf

<ARTICLE FROM=http://slashdot.org/slashdot.cgi?mode=article&artnum=910>

Contributed by CmdrTaco on Tue Mar 10 10:10:50 1998 EST

>From the damn-fools-idealistic-crusade dept Corel is Cutting Costs on
software these days. Garrett sent us this note. Ready for a crazy idea?
Corel is the best company to try GPLing (or NPLing) their office suite.
Think about it: WP already has a unix port, so it has appeal to typical FSF
junkies. The primary issue here is how Corel can make money- Netscape has
revenue from Servers, but WordPerfect is a major cash cow. Hit the link
below to read about the latest concept in my damn foolish idealistic
crusade.

The way I see it, Corel is losing market share fast, and they need a boost.
GPLing their suite aligns them with the same audience that made Linux. This
audience is growing into positions of purchasing power in many corporations.
They need to release their suite- source code and all, but with a plug-in
API and missing features (Thesaurus, Statistics Module, WordArt?) so that it
was similiar in power to MS Works. The commercial version would essentially
sell these modules to provide the remaining (less needed, but still
important to business) features.

Maybe instead of a plug-in API Corelcould only charges businesses. There has
got to be a reasonable way to make a profit at this. Free or heavily
discounted software for home and educational use should be a cornerstone of
any company anyway. Autodesk did this with Autocad, Apple did it with the
Mac, even MS does it. This gets your foot in the door with the students and
computer geeks who go to work and buy software.

I know there are other suites for Linux, but none of them are free, have
available source, and have the ease of use and power that allows Corel a
position similiar in the eyes of business to Microsoft Office. This would
provide new users a good reason to use Linux, as well as promoting Corel.
They would move tons of software- both on Unix (which needs a good word
processor I need beer) and Windows (A GPLd office suite is perfect for all
those companies riding the anti microsoft wave that has recently become so
publicized).

So what do you guys think? I've seen plenty of Corel machines in my logs so
somebody out there must have a connection.

</ARTICLE>

kloczek
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
*Ludzie nie mają problemów, tylko sobie sami je stwarzają*
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tomasz Kłoczko, sys adm @zie.pg.gda.pl|*e-mail: kloczek@rudy.mif.pg.gda.pl*