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Mandrake Shakeup
An AC submitted this sad news: "NewsForge has a couple of articles on a management shakeup and more at French Linux distribution Mandrake. The CEO, CIO, CTO and others, including most of the IS team, have been let go. Others have taken voluntary pay cuts or cuts in their work hours. Ouch!" Several of the slashdot staff are big Mandrake fans; I hope they can keep going in the face of adversity.
Is it the way some of these companies market themselves, which is close to zero when it comes to mainstream magazines
I think that is close to the mark. Potential users just don't know what Linux has to offer them. If they will listen, I find that a few minutes of education and evaluation of their current usage is enough to get them to try Linux.
Personally, I like Debian, but I recommend Mandrake to beginners. It is easier to install than windows, and comes with decent defaults for a workstation. The GUI config tools are pretty good as GUI config tools go.
Brett,
:-). Rhetoric is all well and good, but working code speaks louder....
Explain the business success of Samba please ? I can and will dog your efforts to paint the GPL as anti-business until you can explain our success and all the companies who co-operate and donate code to us.
You know, little companies like IBM, Sun, HP.....
I'm still waiting.....
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
Hey Brett, I'm still here, and I'd still like to point out that Veritas, Sun, IBM, HP, SGI and other businesses willing to face the "overwhelming" hurdle of the GPL are *still* helping us develop Samba......
:-) :-).
Got an answer to our business success yet ?
Thought not... (after all, you've only been repeating this troll for as long as I can remember, from your infoworld days).
Readers who want a laugh can look up the old infoworld forums where Brett, a "journalist" at the time, had neglected to do his research and discover that Novell had in fact shipped a GPL version of Samba several years previously before Brett was claiming that the GPL was preventing them from doing so....
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
I'm just another zealot, but...
How many proprietary companies went down in the past year? How many closed-source/non-[F|f]ree companies slashed their staff, killed off the management team, and "refocused"?
Does it even enter the realm of remote possiblity that perhaps many of these companies weren't focusing on a business model that generates income?
Yes, Mandrake can be had for free. I tend to buy the boxed set - because waiting to download a few ISOs is a pain in the ass, and because it is indeed the point of this whole thing.
It is probably more that they don't offer much of anything else beyond a nice distro: and that's where they're screwed. It has nothing to do with the GPL.
RH has certification, consultants, and a varied business (with Cygnus, etc). They've got partnerships. They've got industry recognition. If you were to ask Ballmer which Linux company they fear (or are concerned with), I'd bet dollars to donuts his answer would be Red Hat.
Mandrake made a great product - I'm using Mandrake 7.2 right now, and intend to buy 8 RSN - but they didn't have the varied model RH has. They aren't getting preinstalled on Dell or IBM. They aren't the 'gold standard' of compatibility.
I'll be sad to see them go, if they do. OTOH, I can always use Debian, Red Hat, or Slackware.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I have friends who worked for Mandrake up til the middle part of last month. They told me all about this when they got laid off. Apparently Mandrake is getting rid of their entire North American staff, including their support staff.
There is talk of Mandrake hiring a lot of their support staff back on a contract basis, to provide tech support here in the NA.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Check the slackware-current changelog. It's BETA time!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
but it is a simply matter of a simple budget.
When executives are let go in groups, it is very, very rarely an issue of budget cuts.
For example, when you hear companies taking hits, and they need to drop staff, who do they drop first? The visionaries? The guys at the top? Why would they can themselves? If they knew of severe budget problems, they'd stand up in front of the press, talk about it, and either quit or find other jobs to get into. People who know about really tough budgets usually find a graceful way out, or else they start canning the low-level staff.
On the other hand, when there's personal disputes, the low-level staff keep their jobs. For example, if there was a battle between the Yanks and the French, with major disagreements, that's when you see the kind of executive bloodbath that Roblimo talks about in the article. You see people get sacked en masse without a chance to talk to the press first, or to spin it their way. Executives never get sacked en masse as a result of budget problems, because they're the ones making the budget. The only way that happens is if you have dissatisfied funders or shareholders - which of course, could still be the case here.
What's your damage, Heather?
At work I've been able to get some of our MCSE Gates clones to switch to Linux and Gnome using Mandrake.
I rarely make book recommendations, but when you said that, you caught my eye. I'm an MCSE in the process of switching over to Mandrake, and I've got the perfect tool for your conversions: "Linux for Windows NT/2000 Administrators, The Secret Decoder Ring" by Mark Minasi with Dan York and Craig Hunt. It's put out by Sybex, and you can find it at your local big bookstores on the shelves. The book is outstanding. I tried to make the leap several times, but I couldn't do it until I got this book.
It explains everything in terms Windows admins can understand, and it's even honest about the advantages of both platforms. It's the first book I've seen that really makes the transformation easy.
What's your damage, Heather?
It'd not just the free FTP access, it's the cheapbytes sales too, from which Mandrake get nothing.
You never see people complaining about not being able to download SuSE ISO's, or about SuSE being $29.95 (official version) rather than Mandrake's $3.49 at cheapbytes.
Linux many be free software, and none of us need a distribution, but we all recognise the value of them and use them. It's a pretty odd business model for Mandrake to create a product that people clearly want and then give it away! Sure if they stop providing free downloads or allowing ISO distribution people will whine, but as long as they provide a product we want and do so at a reasonable price (they do - it's 29.95 same as SuSE), then we'll buy it.
When executives are let go in groups, it is very, very rarely an issue of budget cuts.
Well, this depends how much they are paid... There was a rumor that they were paid a LOOOOOOOOOOOT... Not sure how it went exactly but the following scenario makes sense:
Not even a nicely GUI-filled, easy to use distribution as Mandrake made a difference to people who love the ease of MS based products. I've never used Mandrake, but have seen co-workers use it, and claim it to be the easiest to use of all the Linux distributions.
If this is the case, then why haven't many MS users switched over to something so easy. Is it the way some of these companies market themselves, which is close to zero when it comes to mainstream magazines, or is it that too many distributions add to the confusion or something.
So far so good for Redhat however who is managing to keep in the game, and for all the Linux users, just hope this is the last distribution to go under, else your going to have some massive "Linux is dying" trolls. Not to mention (which is most important) a sad showing of the possible overall outcome for Linux, should they not hurry and capture a large portion of the home pc segment.
Want Root?
(I work for Red Hat as a developer)
--Brett Glass
Oddly, the founder of a wildly successful free company doesn't agree. "I saw [in the GNU Manifesto] a business plan in disguise." Michael Tiemann, Future of Cygnus Solutions: An Entrepreneur's Account.
Why tools and solutions companies like Cygnus (and Ars Digita, and Ada Core Technologies, and CodeSourcery) have had more success with free software than retail and support companies is an interesting question. Perhaps you should look into it instead of making wild and inflammatory claims.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
*yes I know he meant the Mandrake team, but I wasn't able to resist.
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Sadly, Mandrake did what many Free Software companies have done (free distribution), and it contributed to problems. The thing is, Free Software allows for making money off the venture, but in specific ways: distribution and service. Mandrake was making strides in distribution (I even saw a copy of Mandrake 7.2 in Wal-Mart) but it always seemed easier to just download a copy.
An interesting point - the GPL does not require providing FTP access to the distribution free of charge, particularly before a boxed version of the product is available. I was no huge fan of what Libranet did by charging for the download, but in a moment of rare clarity I realized if the choice is to have a fee based download or boxed purchase versus losing a distribution, I would gladly pay. I have purchased 2 versions of RedHat (5.2 and 7.1) solely because I believe in supporting companies that have empowered me. not everyone can create a Debian - it is a special group of people that make things like Debian happen.
I don't think I am alone when I say I don't mind paying for Free Software. As oxymoronic as that sounds, developers need to eat. Companies need to make money. Hopefully Mandrake will rebound and solve their issues. In the interim - for those of us with the means - we should consider buying a single copy of our favorite distro, or donate to Free Software projects we value. Download a copy, try it, and if it is worth it, support the people that made it happen. Code, money, whatever. Communities are a two-way street and if we don't support developers how can they support us?
Slashdot readers stated that there are 7000 nearly identical posts of your anti-BSD spam. How many people actually believe it? Let's see. The number of intelligent Slashdot posts versus your anti-BSD spam is roughly in ratio of 500 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000*500 = 3,500,000 Slashdot users who are annoyed by your idiotic spam. A recent article put your spam at about 80 percent on the nonsense scale. Therefore there are many thousands of Slashdot readers who know that you are full of crap. This is consistent with the number of Slashdot posts stating so.
Due to the trouble you have thinking, abysmal IQ test scores and so on, you will be lucky to go out into the business world and land a job at McDonalds.
All major surveys show that your anti-BSD spam has steadily gotten more annoying. You are very sick and your long term survival prospects are very dim -- especially if your identity becomes known. If you are to survive at all it will be among other idiots, trolls, and the mentally ill. Interest in your anti-BSD spam continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could revive it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, you are completely brain dead.
This is the same cut & paste troll that he (and his little friends?) post every time the name BSD appears in a posting. I have to wonder if he is some pissed-off janitor that got let go from Walnut Creek or BSDi. Why else would he be that interested in bad-mouthing an OS? I mean, either you use *BSD or you don't, but if you don't, why would you get your panties that twisted every time it is mentioned? I just hope that he gets moderated down like usual.
I'm not "anti-Linux" and, in fact, I run Mandrake 8.0. Having a humorous signature line that pokes fun at one of Linux's weak points hardly makes me "anti-Linux". Nice try.
I have been watching this conversation go on for a day now and while tempted to reply have not done so until now.
I am an ex-Mandrakesoft employee. I did not leave the company as a part of the layoffs, but a few months prior to all of this going on. The writing was on the wall. I was seeing to much of Corporate America starting to grow within a company that wasn't a part of Corporate America. For those of you whom work in large corporations you can understand that.
It is my sincere beleif that what is going on is a good thing. Mandrakesoft has been through a turmendous amount of termoil over the last year primarily brought on by an American CEO and CIO that attempted to take a small, but very effective, Paris based company and jumpstart them into a .com IPO. There was a culture class.
I think that if people investigated a little further several of the people mentioned in the article left on their own accord, and not part of a layoff or a mass firing. I do not know all the details, but I will share mine. Please understand there may be some holes in my story as I do not want to do ANYTHING to hurt the company that I still believe in.
About a year and 3 months ago I left a very good job with Aetna Healthcare (Insurance) to go to work for Mandrake. I was hired because of my work on the KDE project, I had been doing packaging on my own and one day I got an email asking me if I would like to get paid for what I did. It was my dream job, however, never before hearing of a "hire by email" oppurtunity I thought long and hard before making the move. Close to 10 years with another company and moving to a small Paris based company was a really tough decision to make. When I made the move I took a $5,000.00 per year pay cut and a cut in bennefits as well. But it was worth it.
For the next 6 months I worked out of my home, relying on email and IRC and infrequent conference calls to communicate with my collegues. Then changes started happening. First, I started doing a lot of Linux training classes and some of these where for MandrakeSoft. Others for a small startup company in North Haven, CT named Innovation Software Group, LLC (http://www.innovationsw.com/training). These classes where soon picked up on by Mandrake management in Los Angeles (US office). I was asked by the US manager to put together a plan for starting training in the US. I was also given a change of job title to North American Training Coordinator.
Around this same time the new CEO started changing peoples job descriptions and brining a lot of outside people into the company. Most of these people had never worked outside of the Corporate world before. And had never even seen Linux before. Things suddenly became very political, and most of us found ourselves first out of the communication chain, and second unable to get any answers to questions we had. I do not know how it was for the people in the Paris office, but for me working remotly it was hell. Once of the few things a remote employee has to rely on is proper communication.
As a part of this communication gap came along the announcement of the purchase of a "training company" named CourseMetrics, out of Berkly, CA. This company was supposed to be an expert in training. Late in January I visited this company and came away with a very different opinion. It was a company in failure. It was a strugling .com company that for some unknown reason was being purchased. The people in that company did not even have an idea of what Linux was and all they had ever done in training was to write surveys. There was no bennefit to Mandrakesoft.
But this visit also showed me something else. I had the oppurtunity to observe our new mgmt in action. For a week I was around and watching all the US based managers that had taken a firm grip on all parts of Mandrakesoft. All of a sudden all IT functions where being directed by a US managers, sales by a US manager, and so on. The biggest concern for me was I was seeing the start of a corporate "you kiss my ass and I'll kiss yours" power play that I had seen before in my prior life at Aetna. I had no wish to go back to that life.
So I gave 60 days notice and gave them a few options to retain me. This didn't happen so I left.
I found out afterwards that the US managers whom I reported to never even informed the Paris managers of my reasons for leaving. I was a little surprised and dissapointed. They all thought that I was mad at Mandrakesoft and in truth I was worried and dissapointed. I will probably be forced to go back to work for a coproration, at 35 years old I do not have many options as I need to start thinking about retiring sometime in the next 30 years. I had really hoped that Mandrakesoft would take me there as I am still one of those people who believes in employee employer loalty and long term commitments.
The reason for me making this know is to make you aware that the changes that have happened are good things. I believe that with the management team led by Henri Poole out of the way only good things will happen. The prior management team (the founders) who have now regained control of the company have been able to do the job very well before and I think given the oppurtunity will do so again. The technical staff and the general support staff that remain in both the US, Canada, and in Paris are some of the most dedicated people I have ever met. We have seen the comments on newsforge about accepting pay cuts to help the company survive. I will almost put money that most of them have accepted this in some way or another unless it was totally an imposibility. There is a lot of pride behind their product and rightfully so.
Please give them the benifit of the doubt, do not start rumors to hurt them, and please go to your nearest store and buy a boxed set. If you do not run Mandrake yourself, hey, give a copy to a friend who is still stuck in the Windows world.
I am currently working as an independent Linux instructor and the only build I feel comfortable teaching linux to newbies on is Mandrake. I do not want to see it go away or become less than a quality product.
Chris Molnar
molnarc@nebsllc.com