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Mandrakesoft To IPO

Posted by Hemos on from the twist-and-turns-of-the-financial-wind dept.

Cpyder writes "LinuxFrench reports that Mandrakesoft (home of Mandrake Linux) are going public. Good luck to them!" The article is in French - use the fish for an...interesting...translation. Or try out GPLTrans.

6 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. IPO update by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    I've learned that Mandrakesoft is working to enable the entire community of users and contributors to take part in the IPO. As of now, MandrakeSoft is only able include European contributors for the "special" offering due to regulations -- US contributors aren't allowed to participate in the special 10% part of the IPO because the SEC forbids solicitation; however, US citizens can buy shares in the 30% open part. So it seems that people who are located outside of the ECC can participate in the "open" offering, or wait until after the IPO.

  2. Different Markets by gengee · · Score: 3

    Mandrake and RedHat target different markets. As much has been said by RedHat. RedHat is not concerned w/ the desktop market. They want to keep their desktop users happy - but they're not going to go out of their way to attract the masses.

    RedHat wants the server market. Low-end to mid-end right now, but perhaps the high-end as well in the future. Their decision w/ RedHat DB illustrates that point.

    Mandrake on the other hand is widely considered the best choice for the desktop. They have other offerings too (Mandrake Firewall, etc) but their main market remains the desktop.
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  3. Re:My Personal Experience... by babs2 · · Score: 3

    Mandrakesoft have problems with the first month of e-commerce because of two much order. Now it should be ok. So if you didn't not received it, it's not normal. please drop an email to service@mandrakestore.com.

  4. Mandrake is a company that understands desktop by Ukab+the+Great · · Score: 4

    Red Hat simply isn't. I know people at Red Hat (many of them are in my LUG). They are absolutely stupid and clueless about anything relating to making anything usable. Mandrake makes many useful utilities that make linux easier for newcomers. The UI for the mandrake installer is far more competantly designed than Anaconda. If Mandrake IPO's, redhat's position on anything other than a server is pretty much annihilated.

    Of course, given the track records of companies trying to put linux on desktop (as opposed to just to doing server closet support), Mandrake will have a long and difficult fight ahead of them.

  5. Decisions, decisions... by Guppy06 · · Score: 4
    So, if we want to give money to Mandrake (beyond just forking over cash for their distro), should we take the selfless route and donate through Paypal, or do we take the mildly selfish route and buy a few shares of it?

    At any rate, I love Mandrake. I never thought I could ever love a bunch of Frogs this much. Personally, I think that if any distro is going to successfully conquer the laptop, it will be Mandrake.

  6. Leaked info under NDA? by Max+von+H. · · Score: 5
    It seems this info wasn't really supposed to be public for a while, according to a poster on the site who noted the first paragraph of the announcement was missing:

    "This letter is sent to all Mandrakesoft shareholders and employees. It gives more details about MandrakeSoft IPO plans. Please keep this letter private - you can say that we do an IPO, but you cannot give any detail until we get the COB agreement."

    Can anyone from Mandrake confirm this? For those who don't know, the COB is the French equivalent to the SEC. I'd hate to see the guys at Mandrake get into trouble for that...

    /max
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