I was there when Micro Focus bought Intersolv and DataDirect to become Merant. Intersolv ate Micro Focus alive from the inside with their own money, after which the merger came undone. Micro Focus basically started over with the help of venture captital and did a great job of getting from nearly nothing to IPO in about five years.

Looks like they're off to the next round. I'm glad I'm not there any more.

NetManage bought EccoPro (aka Ecco), the best PIM ever, and then proceeded not to market it. Nor would they sell it. Nor would they release it to the open source community. (They did, at least, allow free downloads of the program. But that didn't allow it to keep up with changes, although it is so well programmed that it runs great still on XP and Win2k -- Vista? I don't know -- even though development stopped in either 1995 or 1997.)

When it was still actively developed it consistently won every significant award for best PIM. I, and other die-hards, still use it as our primary Personal Information Manager.

Here's hoping the new owner will either further develop EccoPro itself or, better yet, release it to the open-source community. It's a beautiful and never-duplicated piece of programming.