| Sumario: | In a $1.4 billion stock-and-options deal announced on March 21, WordPerfect is to be taken over by its bigger Utah neighbor, Novell, a leading supplier of networking programs. With sales of $1.8 billion, the new Novell will become the third-largest software company in the world. Sad to say, WordPerfect deserved this fate: The word-processing company grew by word of mouth during the 1980s until it dominated word-processing software, but although it made versions of its software for practically every type of personal computer, WordPerfect owed its franchise strictly to Microsoft's omnipresent operating software, DOS. When Microsoft's Windows arrived in 1990, WordPerfect clung stubbornly to DOS, even as competitors that developed Windows products won countless converts.
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