A
Canadian Software company based in
Ottawa. Corel was headed by the company's flamboyant founder and CEO,
Michael Cowpland, until he was replaced by
Derek Burney in August 2000.
Corel had their heyday in the early 1990s. The CorelDRAW and PhotoPaint suite ruled its graphical market niche for a while, before Adobe was big.
In the late nineties, they made a Corel Linux distro. Around this time they bought Wordperfect.
Other products that corel developed or bought include XMetaL, Bryce (bought from metacreations), the Quattro spreadsheet (from Borland via Novell) and Ventura Publisher (bought from Xerox).
Despite the impression that many people gained in the year 2000, Corel did not buy or merge with Inprise. Corel called the deal off at the last minute, and so Microsoft's 10% share in Inprise did not become a share in Corel.
This it would seem that Microsoft does not as yet have any share in Corel Linux, or any Linux distribution.
(
October 2000) OK, so now MS has bought a share in
Corel I
stand corrected by evolving circumstances and
gkAndy
After the year 2000, the company has been still alive but struggling somewhat.