Microsoft says it gets a great new .Net partner.

Corel says it gets badly needed financial backing. No one utters the word "Linux." Microsoft Corp. has purchased $135 million worth of stock in struggling Canadian software maker Corel Corp., in a move characterized as a strategic alliance targeting Microsoft's .Net software development platform. The announcement after the market closed Monday sent ripples through the open-source community, but neither company was talking about what the deal could mean in terms of Linux. Corel has a version of Linux optimized for the desktop. Corel's WordPerfect desktop suite runs on a variety of operating systems, including Linux. A number of industry watchers have been speculating for more than a year that Microsoft was interested in porting its own Office desktop suite, although Microsoft has said it currently has no such plans. Corel, which was best known for its WordPerfect and CorelDraw graphics software until last year's leap into the Linux market, has been grappling with a cash crunch and stalled sales for its older product lines. In a joint conference call, executives from the two companies did not once mention the word "Linux." In response to a reporter's question about whether the deal meant that, at some point, there could be "Linux on .Net," interim Corel (Nasdaq: CORL) CEO Derek Burney said it "just might."