[GTALUG] Off-topic nostalgia: CorelDraw and WordPerect on sale

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, May 02, 2024 at 07:35:42PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> From the and-you-thought-they-were-dead department:
> 
> I've come across an offer at a site I watch that piqued my interest: A
> bundle of
> 
>    - The 2021 version of CorelDraw Essentials
>    - A bunch of add-on brush patterns
>    - Corel Painter 8
>    - Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 25
>    - WordPerfect Standard 2021
> 
> is going for CAD $41.23, with some proceeds going towards the Children's
> Miracle Network Hospitals. Windows only, unfortunately, digital download.
> 
> https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-creativity-essentials-software
> 
> The relevance to GTALUG is weak but exists. Once upon a time, Corel was a
> great Canadian software success story, and for what seems like a very short
> period of time was a massive supporter of Linux that actually produced its
> own distribution. Its only hardware offering was a Linux box called the
> Netwinder. At one time I thought the company was ready to offer a real
> across-the-board challenge to Microsoft, then had a change of management
> and lost all interest in that.
> 
> Anyway, much time has passed since those days when I learned that working
> in vector graphics was more satisfying than pixels. I've long since moved
> from CorelDraw to Inkscape (which happily reads .cdr files). And
> WordPerfect? I'm just amazed that it still exists. I've kept all of the
> vector clipart that shipped with early CorelDraw versions and sometimes
> they come in handy..
> 
> Anyway... anyone who has an investment in Corel-specific skills that they
> want to maintain may find this a good deal. For some of the rest of us that
> can remember,
> https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-creativity-essentials-software,
> perhaps, a flash of nostalgia.

My recollection of corel's linux was the pile of license violations they
were doing.

https://slashdot.org/story/99/09/20/1051226/corel-linux-beta-license-violates-gpl

Invalid terms for the end user that violated the GPL, making wrapper
binaries around apt so they could call it from their proprietary package
manager without linking to it, etc.

So yeah I have no good memories about Corel's attempt at linux.

-- 
Len Sorensen