• To: Frank Richards <frank@t...>
• Subject: Re: Arbortext bought
• From: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>
• Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 15:22:30 -0700
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
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• Reply-to: Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>

On 7/6/05, Frank Richards <frank@t...> wrote:


> By itself it doesn't sound like a big deal. But it says a lot about the
> SGML/xml-doc world. A niche market company nobody ever heard of is
> buying Arbortext to fill a gap in a kludged up product line that might
> let them play Corel to AutoCAD's Microsoft. What makes it sting even
> more is that XMetal was picked up by a web advertising company because
> it was cheaper to buy XMetal than migrate to OpenOffice.

$190M cash for a company with $40M in revenue and not particularly
spectacular long-term growth sounds like a high valuation to me.  I
was under the impression that a reasonable price for software
companies was on the order of 1-2 times sales.

Where is the sting here for the XML industry?

• References:
  • Re: XML and XPATH: How do they work?
    • From: Alexander Johannesen <alexander.johannesen@g...>
  • Re: XML and XPATH: How do they work?
    • From: Joe Schaffner <schaffner.joe@g...>
  • Arbortext bought
    • From: Frank Richards <frank@t...>

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