In the November ZDNet article, CEO Derek Burney claimed Corel was refocusing, not relinquishing, its Linux business. Linux now is one of Corel's four business operations - the others are graphics software, business applications and new ventures. This is hardly the sort of income necessary to maintain the development staff necessary for expanded Linux support and still meet the needs of existing Windows customers. They required software sales to be their primary form of revenue for Linux products, while all other Linux software companies are mixing software sales with support and other services. They relied too heavily on WINE and didn't consider how that one library could be such a limiting factor to overall product viability.
Native ports are less prone to such limitations across an extended product line.
They focused on a non-existent desktop market for Linux. Essentially, they jumped the gun in the desktop race - and they ran in high heels. They looked nice, but it was a painful run. Corel wasn't completely dead just yet, though. In theory, at least, this would mean that a client accessing .Net back-end services wouldn't have to run Windows, Burney said.