"Corel has a tremendous Linux push under way," Cowpland told about 300 attendees at the three-day event. "We expect to have over 18 Linux applications of our own ready by the end of the year."
Linux Expo 2000, Canada's first Linux exhibit, follows similar shows in New York and Paris and has attracted a modest crowd of about 100 companies.
More stable than Windows?
Linux is an open-source operating system that its supporters claim is more stable and flexible than Microsoft's market-dominating Windows, which is closed and proprietary.
As open-source software, Linux can be modified, changed and improved by software developers, with all those changes shared with other developers.
"In a world without borders, who needs Gates?" an organizer at the Linux Expo said, joking about last week's antitrust ruling against Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates.
Executives and Linux aficionados say a lull in stock-market support for companies that work with the technology is not a sign market adoption is slowing.
"We really can't complain," Cowpland told reporters. "A new technology really has to start somewhere."
Corel also claimed another feather for its Linux cap on Tuesday, announcing that the antitrust waiting period for its planned acquisition of Inprise/Borland Corp. had expired on Sunday.
Corel growing stronger in Linux
A vote on that deal, which some Inprise/Borland shareholders are protesting because of Corel's deflated stock price, will occur in about 90 days, Cowpland told Reuters. Corel expects the purchase to strengthen its position in the Linux sector.
Sagging stock valuations for Linux companies are a temporary setback, Red Hat President Robert Young told Reuters before his speech.
"Stock prices are being driven by the day traders," he said. "I can't speak to short-term fluctuations, and I don't care to."
Young said his priority is to end misconceptions about Linux, explaining, for example, that the software is simply a "kernel" of computer code around which many systems are constructed.
The main corporate challenge for Red Hat is to expand market demand for the technology, which he says will move from strength in the server sector to Internet appliances, or small consumer gadgets with Web access.
"Our goal has never been to be a big fish in a small pond," Young said. "My job in particular, as chairman of Red Hat, is no longer worrying about the size of the Red Hat fish at all. My job is exclusively focused on the size of the pond."
