U.S. Justice Dept. Chooses Corel over Microsoft

peg0cjs writes "The Justice Department, which challenged Microsoft Corp. in courtrooms for nearly a decade over antitrust violations, will pay more than $2 million each year to buy business software from Corel Corp, according to this article from CANOE. 'The Justice Department will make WordPerfect software available to more than 20 organizations inside the agency, but not the FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration, which use Microsoft's Office business software exclusively, said Mary Aileen O'Donovan, a program manager in the Justice Management Division.' According to the article, the deal is worth up to $13.2 million over five years for Ontario-based Corel. Has sanity finally set in, or is this just a blip in Microsoft's dominance in controlling government software decisions?"

The Reason: Corel's "Microsoft" Modes

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only does the new WordPerfect 12 edition allow you to go back in time to the old "blue screen" days, with one easy radio button selection, you can alter WordPerfect's interface to match Microsoft's.

For instance, I installed Quattro Pro and Presentations today after a client's files required them. I almost told the client to go to hell, but as you already know, it's the PROFIT!!?! step that keeps my mouth shut ;).

Both Quattro Pro and Presentations, upon launching, ask if they should be run in "Microsoft Excel" mode and "Microsoft PowerPoint" mode respectively. Not that this does anything to make the programs any better looking, but it does allow for a pre-configured key mapping that most Microsoft Office users will feel comfortable with.

Re:Hrm.

[YrWrstNtmr]

1. Because when this eval and bid process was started, OOo was not really a viable alternative.
2. Support contract.
3. Being able to pay a single source for training materials.

Reference...

[Animaether]

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?c ourt=7th&navby=case&no=991754A [findlaw.com]

Re:Hahaha - incorrect

[Andre060]

You have not been keeping up with the news. Microsoft sold all their Corel shares a few years ago (which, by the way, were a special non-voting kind so they had no say in how Corel ran their business). Now Corel is 100% private, owned by San Francisco venture capitalists Vector Capital.

Re:Doesn't MS own Corel?

[Andre060]

Nope, MS sold their shares a few years ago. Corel is private now, owned by Vector Capital of san francisco.

Note MS's Corel shares were a special non-voting kind, which means they had no say in Corel's decision to exit the linux business.

Don't look for sanity...

[javaxman]

If you look at TFA, it mentions near the end that not only do they also buy MS Office anyway ( your tax dollars at work! ), but the Justice department is also trying to get people to use IE.

No sanity there...

Hahaha on you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you've forgotten that Microsoft sold [pcworld.com] its share in Corel to a venture capitalist. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Doesn't MS own Corel?

[Suppafly]

I can't find the reference right away, but I remember reading last year that MS bought a rather large part of Corel, which subsequently dropped their Linux distro a few months later...

If it is so, isn't this ruling a win-win for MS?

MS owned some non-voting stock in Corel back when it was a public company. Not any longer.

Nothing nefarious here

[hal9000(jr)]

What is means is that legal documents need to in specific formats to be considered valid. Word Perfect gives you complete control over the format of the document and the elements. Word does not.

By the way, the format issue is so important it is one of the reasons why faxing legal documents is OK, but sending them electronically is not (the local printer may reformat the document while in electronic format).

Re:Updates - already has happened

[bayerwerke]

XP SP2 already does harmfully affect WordPerfect Suite. You can read more about it at microsoft.com.

standard

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=standard [reference.com]

While the "excellence" is debatable, the fact that .doc is a standard isn't.

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[Paradise Pete]

Or, rather, it actually does mean what I think it means.

No, it doesn't. There is a distinct difference between something being standard, which is what you looked up, and The Standard, which is what you said.

Courts require filings in PDF, not WPD

[guanxi]

From the article:

U.S. courts require all electronic filings to be submitted as WordPerfect documents

That's not true: Federal Courts I know of require PDF.

My wife works for a Federal Appeals court; they use WordPerfect internally but require PDF filings.

Some clients are law firms; all their court filings are in PDF.

could you be any MORE pedantic?

[Stu Charlton]

The poster he responded to said:

You keep using the term "standard", but I do not think it means what you think it means.

So he proceeded to define it. "STANDARD" doesn't mean "standards group".

In any case, MS word is THE STANDARD word processing format across the world. De facto. There is no de jure standard. So it is The Standard. It sucks, you can hate it, but it's reality. Perhaps some day enough people will want to change that. Apparently not today.

Re:Alt-F3 Tells All

[hwyguy2]

Alt-F3 brings up reveal codes in WordPerfect, something that Word doesn't have.