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wordperfect

WordPerfect co-founder: $1 million for gay marriage ban

When I covered WordPerfect back in the day, the go-to guy for the press was a fellow named Pete Petersen. He was the one who would return your phone calls and answer questions about the company and its products. But Petersen owned only 1 percent of WordPerfect. The two majority shareholders were its co-founders, Bruce Bastian and Alan Ashton.

From time to time, you could corral Ashton for a quote, but that was the exception to the rule as he much preferred to stay out of the limelight. So it was with more than passing interest that I came across … Read more

Corel refreshes WinZip and WordPerfect

Safe and dependable software old-timers WordPerfect and WinZip have been bestowed with some upgrades. WordPerfect gets a major overhaul with Version X4, while WinZip's 11.2 adds some new features to the program, the first update in a year.

You can read the full CNET Reviews analysis of WordPerfect X4 here, but in short, it's a good, solid improvement on what has gone before in the suite even if it is cost-prohibitive and not quite as spiffy as one would hope. It's able to gracefully handle more than 60 document formats, including the nascent Open Document Format, … Read more

Microsoft +/vs. Novell: The rich irony of then and now

There is a tragic (but rich) irony in the news that Microsoft failed in its appeal to throw out Novell's decade-old antitrust lawsuit against it. On one hand, you have Novell arguing (rightly) in court that Microsoft unfairly bullies competitors:

"Microsoft specifically targeted WordPerfect and Novell's other office productivity applications because they threatened Microsoft's Windows monopoly," according to the Novell court filing quoted by the Bloomberg news service.

In its case, Novell also said that Microsoft withheld technical information to make WordPerfect work with Windows 95.

On the other hand, we see Novell supping at the feet of Microsoft to revive its Linux business, conveniently forgetting that what Microsoft giveth, Microsoft taketh away the minute a competitor becomes inconvenient. But the irony gets better as we dig into Novell's complaint with Groklaw:… Read more

The bizarre relationship that is Novell + Microsoft

Microsoft and Novell have a weird passive-aggressive relationship. In the latest bit of news from the Odd Couple, Microsoft is asking the Supreme Court to throw out Novell's multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Microsoft for anticompetitive practices. "Novell's case asserts that Microsoft maliciously withheld technical information about Windows 95 to give Microsoft Office an advantage over rival software," reports The Register.

And how! Here's just a taste:… Read more

Corel's Lightning word processor strikes

Aiming to build a bridge between its desktop productivity software and the Web, Corel released a free beta version of its new WordPerfect Lightning today. At less than 20MB, Lightning includes Navigator, Notes, and Viewer tools, which manage basic word processing and note taking. This download also offers a free trial of the solid Corel WordPerfect Office X3 suite. Lightning synchronizes content on your hard drive with online folders at Joyent, which offers a generous 200MB of storage in addition to e-mail, a calendar, bookmarking, and collaboration capabilities.

I've played with Lightning several times. Unfortunately, I've found it … Read more