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Mandrake Asks for Support
Many people wrote in with this news: "Mandrake Linux today reports having a short-term money crunch. They call for users to become members to help float them through the short-term viability issue. Membership dues are the preferred method over budget/project cuts."
The plex86 guy was already hit by this (got laid off):/ hopefully mandrakesoft can get out of this
Just stop paying your employees for about a year. I heard it worked for Loki... oh wait.
duh... duh... duh... another one bites the dust.
Giving away software that costs skilled programmers' time and energy sounds like long term cash flow problems to me. But what do I know?
I will support them as long as they don't fall like a .com. Anyone know ehre I can find a more detailed financial report of the company?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
They call for users to become members to help float them through the short-term viability issue
When your business model revolves around giving your products away for free (with source code), you can not say it's a short-term issue.
...that the next Mandrake release will be codenamed "Spare Change?"
There are currently 2,000 Mandrake Club members. If they can get 8,000 more, they're fine.
/. that use LM enough to fork over 60 bucks.
There are multiple subscription options, all with the same priveledges. It's 5 bucks a month for the cheapest option (which I had to choose currently because of my financial situation).
It's totally worth it to me. 8.2 is showing how mature Mandrake can make a desktop distro, and I'm impressed with not only their attention to detail, but their attention to security, as well as decreasing the learning curve. They warn you during install about what packages may be insecure and what might be seen by the world. They packaged the Bastille firewall into the distro. And their draktools now have an option to display what the GUI tools are doing to which log files.
And to top it all off, 8.2 has had 4 betas and now 1 Release Candidate (which has some critical bugs, so expect a second RC). 60 bucks? Deal of the century. I run it on every machine I own, and install a copy on any Doze Machine that I build for friends.
Surely there are 8,000 more people here on
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Mandrake is a great product. It is easy to use and has been free so far. This time I will help out. I am still fairly new to Linux but love what I see so far. Mandrake is by far the easiest to use and it would be a real losse to the Linux world if Mandrake went away.
Great people don't need people to complete them, great people complete other people. -- Matthew Pawlikowski.
From the page:
Window$? Very unprofessional.
Trademarks are copyrighted? What does that mean??
Well, anyway, I hope they don't go under, as I was thinking of switching from Red Hat to Mandrake on a new P4 (I always buy my Linux distros to support the companies, and so should you).
What has this got to do with Mandrake? Or is it just a spam?
What is most sad is how most people on this forum go out and "pillage" any site with free software -- gripe about how is bad, but yet complain that Microsoft is even worse. Why do you comdemn everyone. 2 choices here -- pick Microsoft a.k.a "Take up the ass" or support linux some flavor other than Red hat. Red Hat will not be a good product with just Mircocrap as a competitor. They need other linux companies to compete wit it.
I love all the trolling the AC cocksuckers are doing with this one. Let's see..I wonder what IP block (Redmond) they are originating from? IF you read it, you will see that they are on track to actually make money this year. I for one have indeed contributed the paltry $60 USD for what I consider a great Linux distro. Compare that to the $299 that Uncle Billy will be taking out on your sorry asses, you M$ apologist. Oh wait, you guys can d/l that for free from the warez groups. Nevermind.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
By all means, if you think Mandrake is the best thing since sliced bread, support them. However, I think given that they want to be a company that wants to derive profit from making a Linux distribution people will buy, one may well ask the question: why? There is nothing wrong with being for-profit, but if they can't make a good business out of it now, why should they be able to in the future?
I mean, it's only $5 and it was the first distribution I thought got it right for intermediate/beginner Linux users. Folks like me who, at the time, knew quite a bit about computers and programming, but knew nothing about Linux. Plus it was the easiest to install early on for folks (again, like me) who had grown used to the relative ease of install and use of Windows and the Mac.
FWIW, I first installed an early 5.x of Red Hat but got ticked when it didn't work with my sound card. It took me about a month to learn everything I needed to get sound working. After that, I muddled along with Red Hat for a while, but Mandrake came along and really added some value to what Red Hat had done, IMHO. The install recognized everything and even got X working properly. It also helped that the distro included more up-to-date packages (esp. of GNOME and KDE) and the -- probably worthless to me in the grand scheme of things, but still a factor -- pentium optimizations.
Best of all, I think they've kept up their end of the bargain. They consistently provide a really good distro with up-to-date packages. They've done a lot of work on getting Linux to recognize hardware more seemlessly.
Yep, all things considered I think they're worth $5.
--- but I don't want a "sig".
When you can pay for software after you've evaluated that you like it and that it's worth paying for. The only other way is to 'borrow' the warez and then decide whether to pay for it.
I like this system better. C'mon everyone, give them some money. They really have earned it!
I have been buying Redhat and Mandrake box products for a while now. Is this better support? Or should I keep buying the box products and forget this method?
AtTo
Mandrake Asks for Support
Posted by michael on Monday March 11, @11:23PM
Ya know, if you just give a product away for free, I hear that you might not be able to generate much in the way of revenues.... I mean what kind of friggin business model are you people perpetuating here anyways? Start charging licensing fee's and you might be able to get off unemployment.
------------
Alow, the off-topic troll
If you have ever used Mandrake, I'd recommend sending them a donation/voluntary contribution.It even lets you specify what project your money goes too.
:-)
The don't make money from you downloading their iso's, so if you don't buy their CD's at least throw them a couple bucks.
From the site:
This way of donating is much easier for us than receiving checks or cash via postal mail
Isn't there a paypal account they also had were you could donate them money? Maybe if it was more visible more people would donate a buck or two
The whole business model is suspect! While companies like Red Hat scramble to create a viable services based model around their product (Red Hat network), Mandrake continues to try flogging off a free OS which comprises some 80% of their total revenues, then is late to the game tacking on a subscription service which some club which offers... wait for it...
* Club-only download of commercial applications normally only available in retail products (even before the commercial packages are available in the shops!).
* Discounts on products and special offers (would you like us to negotiate a discount on Sharp PDA or Win4Lin ?).
* A place in MandrakeSoft's "Hall of Fame".
* Direct trading of MandrakeSoft shares.
* Possibility to ask questions (and receive answers) in "Ask Mandrake" series. The first one was with Gael Duval - the creator of Mandrake Linux
* Special Internet services that will be created by the suggestions of members (such as voting rights, special chat sessions with Mandrake team members, etc.)
So in other words, you pay for the privelidge of having them buy some commercial software for you and chuck it on cd, discounts on niche products which you're most likely not to want, direct trading of shares in a company which relies on BEGGING people for money to stay afloat, and the chance to hang around with our heroes in a chat forum! Well, hold me back, and let me slam my 5 bucks a month on the table right now!
Come on. I LOVE the distro, and have used it since 7.1. But to think that they're trying to run a business based on begging people, and floating shares in the company just to raise some cash to stay afloat - then have the nerve to put the onus on the users to keep them going with some 60 dollar a year subscription which gives you next to nothing is laughable.
Mandrake is great and all (I use it), but how short term is this money crunch going to be?
Could it be that they don't have any viable business strategy, and too much competition?
I love linux and open source dearly, but when it comes to my money, I am cold and calculating. I'll send a check to Microsoft because they force me to. That's a business transaction. I'll use Mandrake's products that they give away for free, that's another business transaction (dumb on their part).
But when they start asking for handouts, that's when I ask "Why don't you guys get real jobs?" I like your products and all, but I am not grateful, any more than I am grateful for any consumer product. I am not grateful for my TV set or my DVD player. Some engineer probably enjoyed designing them. Designing the specs may have even been like masturbating for him. I don't care. I bought a product. If a company was running itself into the ground giving me those things for nothing or next to nothing, I still wouldn't be grateful. I'd be happy, but my feelings toward the company would be those of pity.
I mean it, start a viable company that actually benefits the capitalist system. Pay some taxes and fund a war or two in the Middle East, why don't you?
the first generation of Linux companies is going by the way side. next dsistros for the desktop will be Xandros and Lycoris.....sure, others will still exist, but distros that put out crap that is not well integrated will not make it.....mandrake I thinkwill be gone in a few years.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Get real.
I have used Slackware, Redhat Suse, and Mandrake. Mandrake is without doubt the easiest to install and configure. The team at Mandrake have done an outstanding job in creating a distro that configures itself with little or no user intervention. (Windows users can even set it up!)
The one "flaw" that I have found is that they are sometimes so far ahead of other distros as to be incompatible with main stream Linux. For example Kylix 2 has a real problem working under Mandrake 8.1 partially because Mandrake uses some of the newest libraries and Kylix is lagging behind a bit.
Giving it's customer's the latest greatest is Mandrakes style. It would be a real blow to the Linux community if they don't make it.
I plan on supporting them and I hope you do too.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
This seems to be a losing proposition, in the end. Begging users for handouts? Will Mandrake move to the public radio-method of fundraising? "Hi, your boot is interrupted this week to ask, 'User, do you enjoy Mandrake enough to pay $10 a month, or $20 a month? Become a member now, and we'll throw in a Signature Logo t-shirt, signed by RMS'"
This is where normal businesses say "what we're doing isn't working--let's try something else". Mandrake (or any Free Software-based business) doesn't have to show massive profits, but it does have to keep the doors open.
Selling the CDs don't work. Too easy to download ISOs, too easy to simply compile new apps. Selling services works, but only to a select few. RedHat may be able to get away with it, but isn't Mandrake a French company? Too far away, conceptually if not literally.
What is Mandrake's raison d'etre? A desktop-friendly Linux, if I'm not mistaken. Mandrake used to be a rip-off of RedHat, before it matured.
If Mandrake can cut costs by returning to that model--a "wrapper" around a RedHat install that caters to the needs of a desktop user. It can leech off RedHat for the hard stuff, and focus it's energies (and money) on keeping the doors open.
I hate to see them die, but duplicating effort can kill a small company. Unless Mandrake decides to finance the nerds with MandrakePorn. That, I understand, is doing okay.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Why the heck would I want to subsidise a for-profit company? If they want money, they should issue more stock. This is a for PROFIT company. They seem to be trying to get money from people without having to dilute their stock... They are a publicly traded company (on some french micro-market). RedHat issued stock twice in a very succesful IPO and post-IPO offering. Why can't they do the same? If I give them money, I want to share the profits if there ever are any.
This is not a charity! If you want to help Free Software, give to the FSF or SPI (www.spi-inc.org aka the debian foundation).. They will even give you tax deduction.
Giving Mandrake Inc. money is just throwing it out of the window! If they can't make money as a for-profit company, well they should and they deserve to go bankrupt. At least, its all free software and someone else can maybe pick it up and make a business with a serious business model.
Please stop that non-sense! If you want to give, give to a charity!
I use Mandrake 8.1. It's great. But it's not surprising me that they are having budget problems. It's just hard to make money when you give your software away for free. It aint a good business model. This is a company who recoups the time and money of making a wonderful OS by trying to get people to be members of their club and getting them to buy Linux t-shirts and coffee mugs. I love linux, but I sure as hell wouldn't go into the software business giving my product away for free.
But don't get me wrong. I am very, very, very thankful for what the folks at Mandrake are doing. I just don't think they are going to make the big bucks off of it, though.
Anyway, just do little things for Mandrake to help them along. Join that Mandrake club. Or buy the 8.2 CD pack instead of d/ling the ISO.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I always hear people making noise about supporting your favorite distro. Personally, I could care less if 90% of the Linux distros disappeared. Let Mandrake die... It's just a bastard distro of a bastard distro.
Would anybody really be upset if we were only left with SuSE, Slackware, Debian (& RedHat I suppose). You can always make your own, and/or customize one of the existing distros to fit your needs.
Save the money would would normally spend to bail out a distro company, and instead spend it on Linux apps. (Have you forgotten about Loki already?)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare gethead() in /var/www/html/80pre/functions.php on line 46
Breaking even in the .com world means that you are actually MAKING money, assmunch. Nobody ever said anything about buyin stock in this company. Paying for a distribution that is actually worth it benefits everyone. Including your sorry ass, trollboy.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
You know this publicly-traded company is screwed when stoops to begging for donations to stay afloat! It's not like these guys are a bunch of hackers banging out code in their spare time, this is a corporation that should have the financial smarts to keep a few months of cash in reserve. Hey, I like Mandrake as much as the next guy, but it's obvious that their programmers are FAR more talent than their accounting and PR staff.
I wonder what their few remaining stockholders think of this obvious mis-management of funding? I'd bail out now, before this company becomes nothing more than a headline on fuckedcompany.com.
I see Mandrake as a fantastic Linux distro. I commonly recommend it above Red Hat and even above the otherwise really great (but more effortful to install) Debian. Definitely, it's what I suggest to my Windows colleagues for a taste of Linux.
Anyways, that's what's kind of ironic about their plea for a subscription-based Member Club. Their perfect niche is Linux newbies, but those newbies probably won't grok the concept of why they should subscribe monthly for their OS. (In fact, it tends to be the Linux crowd shouting at them to NOT buy into evil subscription models that are coming down the pipe by Microsoft.) And those of us that "get" it and recognize how important Mandrake could be are likely "move on" to other distros like Debian (for their social contract)), or maybe even dip into something like OpenBSD (for its priorities on security and robustness). Anyways, as I'm skipping around installing different distros for different purposes, it's hard for me to buy into a Membership for just one. Sigh.
Mandrake, your excellent installer has probably got you unfairly pigeonholed!
Mandrake makes a very good product. It's easy to isntall, update, and use. It is the distro of choice (for the most part) for those Windows refuges. I urge users of Mandrake that do not purchase the boxed sets to support Mandrake for at least a few months.
I've noticed a few people posting saying that it is a bad idea to 'come crying to the users for money.' I see it a diffrent way all together. It seems that they are asking the community in which they have dedicated time and development to for some support to continue their work.
The $5 a month isn't paying for something you already 'own', it's supporting open source development. Think about it. Mandrake releases their code under the GPL. However, if they must lay off their coders, then how will they continue to contribute to the body of GPL software? The answer is easy. They won't.
You're not paying for the code. You're paying for the developer's time, the machine, and the building in which he/she works. While the result is free, the development is not.
For years, the Open Source community has been releasing free code to the masses, many of whom do not, or can not contribute. Well, this is your chance. If you've never submitted code, artwork, documumentation or even a bug report, THIS is your chance to help support the community which has given you so much.
Mr. Anderson, this is your wake up call.
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
How about for maintained improvements of the project?
You're not paying for what you have -now-, you're paying towards the future. Infact, in this case to help make the future as brght as possible. If they have to cut costs down (which they will without donations) they'll have to reduce the people working on projects... which slows innovation(money is anice incentive for change)... which means the average linux user could possibly loose out.
I use Mandrake, but I for one do not plan to send them anything. And I plan to continue using Mandrake, for free, because that is exactly what their business model calls for. If open-source is a viable business model, as is so often argued here, then it deserves to be judged by hard, cold, business metrics - namely, whether companies based on this model can survive on their merits alone. Contrary and au-courant opinions aside, it appears that most companies based on this model CAN'T survive, and Mandrake appears to be just one in what is a growing list of failures. Consumers AND the capital markets appear to have spoken somewhat decisively on Mandrake.
And if Mandrake ultimately ends up surviving, by measure of donations/contributions, I'll judge it as a feasible example of a charity case. Because it seems clear that Mandrake is not going to survive on the merit of the saleability of its products and can only survive by appeals to the goodwill of the open-source community. But the long-term problem is (and it IS a long-term problem, not a short-term one as the source post claims), the community only has so much pocket change to give to so many panhandlers. There is no reason to suspect that a bit of cash here and now is going to somehow change the fundamental, underlying economic reality that there aren't many people willing to pay for software which by rights they don't have to pay for.
I think anyone who's had a Mandrake system on their computer for more than two point-releases without paying for a box should join their Club or buy their boxed 8.2 when it's released.
...") give back to Mandrake for turning their distro into something very distinctive.
It's as simple as that. Try it out free? Absolutely. Test-drives are good. But if you're not moving to anything else (even though you swear that "some day I'm going to try
It would be a crying shame for this company to fall down at this point in their growth, especially when so many of it's users never spend a cent to support them.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Why would anyone want to support a company that uses a flawed business model of "selling" free software and for some reason expects to turn a profit?
Me: Why would anyone support a company that will continue charging them hundreds of dollars for a virus-prone mass of spyware?
I use mandrake, I like it. I won't buy another windows product again, as far as i can see - 98 is good enough for me, and Mandrake, the distro, is good to me. It fills my needs. it's worth money.
Sure, I could spend the million hours to put together a distribution, iron out the bugs, and develop even more software and support OSS authors as mandrake does. But then, that would be retarded, a waste of my time, and I sure don't have the money to do it. Mandrakesoft does good things, they fill a need - and I am probably going to pay for 8.2, in some way. Go annoy someone else, alowiches.
-Yes, I know he's a troll. I just felt the need to say a peice.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
bias: I'm not a linux guru, but I've had other CS students ask me a thing or two about linux.
/dev/whatever seemed so stupid when I could just do C: before...) Eventually I got my system accepting modem calls from two modems, but it was painful.
Back in my early teens, I thought I was *the* power user. I wrote help files telling people how they could put "C:\BATCH" in their path and start up wordperfect, games, anything at all by just typing "wp" or "wolf3d".
Thinking about starting my own ISP, I had heard about this thing called Unix and BSD being really, really good for running servers. Having lots of time on my hands, I got a copy of FreeBSD and threw myself at it, sans manuals or knowledge of "man" (at first) for 48 hours. I made SOME progress and can still remember how weird it was to have a hard drive as a file! (mount
My ego smashed, I didn't touch anything resembling Unix for a while.
I started playing around with Linux a few months before I started my CS program - not knowing that it'd end up being my developement OS for a few years - and I picked up SuSe, RedHat and Mandrake.
Suse had hardware issues and I just didn't get like their config utilities. Redhat was a step up, but I tried Mandrake and found my distro of choice. Things weren't easy at first but with a minimum of effort, I got things going.
After finding out "Mandrake = stupid user linux" and "Debian = if you are smart enough, THEN you can use this one", I started feeling I need to prove myself. Which put me back to my teen years and reminded me *way* too much of high school. This time, I didn't bend and I stuck with Mandrake - I could get things done, the company seemed to be going in a direction I liked and the software seemed to be fairly new and easily updatable (when MandrakeUpdate worked).
Mandrake might not be the best linux for everyone. But I wanted to get something done, without learning EVERYTHING. I had time for that when I was younger.
The $60US I just sent (direct credit card payment, SSL and took less than 30 seconds) might not save the company, but for the effort they saved me, it's not nearly enough.
I hope Mandrake has a long and successful future, and if you are using Mandrake now - how much time has it saved you? Can you afford to eat if you give them $60 per year? Likely, yes.
That's a good point. Why should I give money to PBS when I can watch their shows for free? It's not like they'll block my access. Why do religeous wackos give money to their churches? It's not like they'll get thrown out if they don't pay.
There is no possible sane reason for giving them money.
...oh wait... unless I want them to survive.
Goddam, you think there just might be a strategic objective behind giving them money? An ulterior motive that goes beyond merely getting this month's edition on CD?
It's like, spending money in order to make the world more like the way you want it to be. It's like getting something for something. What an alien concenpt!
they could start putting ads in all the programs and require you to subscribe to remove 1/100th of the ads.
And a few reasons why users of said company's products might have an interest in seeing that company survive.
Especially when said users have probably been using said product for free.
Personally, I've been downloading new Mandrake ISOs for 3 years now, and I'd much rather donate than buy a boxed version of the distro. More of my $$ go to fund development that way.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Too bad. I just switch from Mandrake to Slackware a week ago.
You're on your own, Mandrake.
This space left intentionally blank.
Could you be any more whiny and obtuse?
"We all own it" sounds a lot like "I'm a spoiled leech, waaaa!"
I'm pretty sure the spirit of GNU was supposed to be "let's help each other out", not "gimme gimme gimme and don't let the free market hit you in the ass on the way out". In this case, many people are working FULL TIME to make Mandrake a high quality product that many people have enjoyed for free. They've supported themselves by selling box sets and support, but times are a little tough now and they're asking for some additional help.
If you don't think it's worth money or you're too cash-strapped to contribute, then don't. But it's childish to say "well I already own it, so if they can't give me updates for free in perpetuity then fuck them."
I hope the Mandrake employees read this Slashdot news an don't float the company any personal loans or hang on too long without pay like Loki employees did.
I don't know, it seems odd to me for a publicly traded company to post a notice like that asking for financial support in the form of donations. That seems like it would panic the shareholders and hurt them even more in the long run. The sensible thing would be to lay off those emplyees not contributing to the core of Mandrake's business and save some money in those non revenue generating areas.
'Same speed C but faster'
See the subject. reply if you want.
Mandrake pays programmers to develop this GNU you are talking about. so unless you want to code your GNU/Linux apps, and update them, and patch them, yourself, by hand - don't talk about what a waste paying money to Mandrake is. You are paying for the future.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
I don't think so. This is JMHO, but...
First off, I think all these posts about how stupid it is to give away your product are ridiculous. This is a lot of the OSS way...if you're convinced it can't work, go work for Microsoft.
I don't think we should rally behind Mandrake for a few reasons. Although they make a great distro. especially for newbies, I have never been able to run it for more than a few days without deciding it needed to go for one reason or another. So maybe I'm a bit biased because I don't like the distro. THAT much.
However, Mandrake has been around for a while, competing in a market that is pretty difficult. Not only are they giving away their product, but similar products can be downloaded from a lot of other people, so they don't hold a monopoly on service.
Linus isn't going away just because Mandrake is in trouble! In the end, even if it's OSS, it's survival of the fittest. Mandrake hasn't made themselves distinctive enough, apparently. There's something to be said for RedHat, since they seem to be moving slowly but surely toward better financial ground.
I hate to see Mandrake flounder, but that's tough. There ARE other distros out there.
This is their business. They offer a service, no diffrent than AOL or your local cable company. Its more similar to a very good magazine.
You subscribe to them, they offer you a community, and plenty of benifits, also you help with the development of Linux Mandrake.
Basically they are offering us the choice. We can subscribe from our own free will, or with Mandrake 9.0 they will just force you to subscribe to download it like Lindows and Suse and others.
They are giving us the choice to tell them how we want them to run their business, if you dont subscribe then you want them to run their business more like a Redhat or Suse, and sell to corperations and OEMs and not offer any free services, because a company in the red doesnt have the money to offer a free forum, mandrake expert, mandrake community pages, and so on.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I will support Mandrake but my reasons are entirely selfish: I happen to like their distribution and wish to continue benefiting from it.
In fact, I now support both Redhat and Mandrake for such similar reasons. Interestingly, the cost of of my support for the two is still a fraction of what Windows costs me.
..
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Why should we, the people, who have just enough money to live an acceptable life, donate money for Linux, while Hollywood studios, big .COM's and huge corporations use Linux for free and save money?
Does anyone have the numbers on how much Amazon.com, Google.com, etc. and hollywood studios give to Linux?
Now where is all that free beer?
I hate to see an outfit like Mandrake go, but we have too many distributions of Linux. They're all using the Linux kernel, but the differences between them make third-party product support nearly impossible. Each distribution is dividing finite developer resources. To what effect? The value of choice is hopelessly overstated if, by "choice," we refer solely to choosing among the decisions of capricious developers (where files go in the file system, what desktop to use, etc.). There is no "value add" in such things.
Yes, I think Mandrake suffers from the "it's pretty, but doesn't really take us anywhere" problem. In my experience, both RedHat and SuSE make products that are as usable as Mandrake, but with real reasons to use them. RedHat has nearly universal support from third-party vendors. SuSE is doing a nice job on enterprise functions. (In contrast, Mandrake's "upgrade" from 7.0 to 7.1 left me with a completely unusable system.) Perhaps it's time for Mandrake's efforts to get rolled into one of these other distributions.
I have been using Mandrake for a couple of years now and just made my first donation ( besides buying the McMillian boxed copy).
The Mandrake crew ( like many others) are turning out terrific software and asking those that appreciate the work to compensate the makers so they can continue working on their distribution. If you don't want to donate, then just close your hole and stop trying to convince others to ignore the request for help.
If people are intelligent enough to earn enough to support themselves and have some left over that they have to decide how to spend, then they just may also be intelligent enough to spend it wisely.
I'm not so tight that I begrudge these people a bit of support for their work. I also bought RedHat and Caldera boxed Linux when I was running them, it dosen't bother me to pay for quality software, how about you?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I've been using linux for over 2 years and I still think mandrake is one of the best distros out there.
/. readers) bitch about windows, mandrake is the only one with an installer you'd even think about letting your mother use.
Redhat has almost certainly stated that it believes linux is not destined for the desktop market. Loki went out of bussiness. Mandrake still claims to be very much interested in the desktop market, and IMHO, is the best for the job, and the only one I know of still interested in it.
As much as linux users (especially
If Mandrake goes under, it will be because people do not support it. And if it does, I don't want to hear anyone complain about windows desktop dominance, because we let it happen.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
When that one company decided to cut the slackware dev team, a friend of mine started the "Save slackware!" fund to help them out. I thought I would help out by carrying around the jar and asking for donations. The problem was, no one had any freaking clue what slackware was. They thought we were making some joke because of the name "slackware". I tried to explain to them it was just a linux distribution that they had their dev team cut. "What is linux? What is a dev team? Get a job!" We made like ... $50 though. That was after a few months, people starting using the jar to make change and things. I wonder if my friend ever turned it in.
I'm surprised this got modded up.. seems rather trollish (and I guess I bit). It's fine if you don't want to support a distro. It's not fair to suggest that no one should without some reasons backing you ip.
The company must emit more shares (proportionally to the amount of money they want to borrow) and offer those shares to everyone, *including* free software people. We would buy those shares and become co-owners of the company. But Mandrake would lose some of share value due to this emission, and this is fair as well because more shares are printed.
As it stands, Mandrake just wants free gifts. Instead, it should offer a deal: "you give me $100, I give you a piece of a company." That would be much more appropriate, IMO. I would *very much* prefer to own a piece of a free software company rather than a "membership" somewhere.
I just subscribed for $10 a month ($120 yearly). I use mainly Red Hat on my servers and I currently pay them $15 a month, but I really appreciate the cutting edge stuff that Mandrake continues to do with every release. I've been playing with Mandrake Cooker and 8.2 test releases on my laptop computer and I am truly amazed by the improvements from only 6 months ago.
I encourage everyone who appreciates Mandrake's good work to contribute. For only $5 a month, you get the membership to Mandrake Club where you have special downloading and voting priveledges. Well, that stuff doesn't matter to me, what matters most is that Mandrake gets the thanks that they deserve.
that the /. effect can actually be a force used for GOOD. :)
Come on people--put your money where your mouth has always been. We talk and talk about supporting open source and free software--that support can't merely be verbal. as the saying goes, "Freedom isn't free." If you really want to see free software succeed, especially on the desktop, then this is definitely a worthwhile cause.
If you don't support mandrake now, you may not get the chance to later. and if you don't care for mandrake, then for the love of Linus support SOME distribution, be it Debian, Suse, RH, or even BSD. Penguins of the world, unite! take a stand!
/end_pithy_rhetoric
I've noticed that the mandrake community is most like he macintosh community than any other distro. If the problem can be solved in the GUI they will tell you how to do it that way first, which is a lot easier for newbies to gulp down than a first time CLI 4 hour hacking session to get something working where they all get trapped in VI and have to turn off their computer because they don't know ::q. Raise your hands if you got trapped in vi!!!!
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
...despite producing an award-winning Linux distribution that is a solid competitor to both UNIX and Window$, the Mandrake Linux distribution's short-term future is in jeopardy due to a simple factor: money.
Ok.. I'll take for granted that most linux users absolutely abhor Microsoft, and their flagship product Windows. But, putting the tongue-in-cheek $ at the end of Windows just shows how much even the most user friendly of Linux companies have to grow up.
I also found it mildly amusing that they use a dollar sign, and later on in the same sentence, they say their problem is money.
Don't get me wrong, I'm using Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta 4 on my desktop right now.. it has a few bugs to iron out, but for the most part it's a rock solid distro, and I've greatly enjoyed my experience with it, and previous Mandrake releases in the past. But, if Linux is too ever be taken seriously in the business world, we need to act like adults here.. not teenagers with a silly grudge.
arcane for life
Why not wait for them to die off then pick up pieces for nothing? :)
Hard to use means poorly engineered.
Thats why millions of people, including scientists, lawyers, doctors, programmers, engineers, chemists etc use MACINTOSH computers.
Ease of use means logic and reason.
No need to regurgitate when you can "indicate"
no syntax errors, no security risks, no hassles and nearly every Mac commercial app worthy of the cost.
That is why according to web log statistic on the top internet sites (excluding slashdot) 10 times more people use Macintosh than linux.
instead of mandrake, try Mac
Mandrake is a for-profit company. Why, oh why, would I donate money to a company? Maybe I'll buy shares, but donation makes no sense in this context.
If you like their product, buy it.
Let 'em lay off managers and preserve people who wrok in development, tech. support, sales, HR, education. Let 'em lay off all those blood socking bastards that suppose to make right decissions and instead don't. This issue is not just with Mandrake alone but with most of Linux business world, including Turbolinux, SuSE, RedHat, VALinux, Caldera. They pay high salaries to management while prospects for revenues are small and so called expandable positions are cut over and over again until there's no way to go but to fold it up. Well, ofcourse, they want to survive themselves, don't they? That proves that Linux business model, GPL ideals, etc., are good on paper and in public speaches but actually mean little when it comes to preserving their way of life.
Since Linux idea of software is a bit different from the rest of corporate capitalist profit driven values, let those managers take 1/3 salary cut before laying people off in lower managment and support. Or, don't listen to someone like me and just do your blood sucking mistakes until you destroy it all - and that's what they'll do most likely.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
- RedHat
- Suse
- Mandrake
- Debian
- Slackware
... the phrase TANSTAAFL. Puzzled? Try the Acronym Finder or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Mr. Heinlein.
It wouldn't shock me if Mandrake as well as a few other distros don't make it through the current economic crunch. There are companies out there with rock-solid business plans that can't make money right now... is it any surprise that a company with limited IP can't make ends meet?
Sorry to be so anti-warm-and-fuzzy,
--Mid
I kinda like the philosopy behind Mastodon Linux. A nice small, clean distro without a lot of croft. Check it out.
When most employees travel, they pay for things themselves, keep the receipts, and get reimbursed later. ALMOST EVERY COMPANY DOES THIS.
Yes, Loki failed to reimburse their employees. Yes, that is really horrible of them. But don't take one phrase in a frontpage blurb and turn it into a vision of Loki executives saying, "Say Jimmy, mind if we put some new servers on your Platinum Visa?"
The mob mentality on this site gets worse every day.
grep -ri 'should work'
If what Mandrake has to offer is so great and they've done such great things that people find valuable then I would expect the freemarket to take care of things. I would like to make a living carving soap but if there isn't a demand for carved soap I'm not going to go out and tell people to pay me anyway. If soap carving was so valuable, people would be using/buying and contributing to the supply and demand and that would support it.
Lets see who the real supporters are of mandrake. All the trolls, redhat haters, the FreeBullShitDicks (FreeBSD zealots) etc.
Lets walk the talk, guys.
There is a price for everything. Either your time, or your money.
I feel sorry for poor Mandrake, but I am not about to join, and don't want or need another version of Linux.
Maybe if they would accept PayPal donations I'd send them a fiver, but thats it man.
Clickety Click
How many lines of code did you contribute to 8.2? That's what I thought.
If you aren't comfortable with the $60 yearly subscription (or you can't spare $60 right now) please consider one-time donations at this page:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/donations/
You can even choose an individual open source project that you want your financial contribution will go toward development. Choices include KDE, Gnome, Kernel, PowerPC port, Sparc port, Alpha port among many others.
scientology is a pay as you go religion. if you dont pay you get no services. i have to admit that they do use some pretty hot chicks to recruit in SF on market street.
AOL and my local cable company don't ask for donations; they have business models that has them provide a product, and people pay in order to get the product.
if you dont subscribe then you want them to run their business more like a Redhat or Suse
Well, there are several collaborative free operating system projects that do not have a commercial tie-in, so it isn't necessary. I just think it would be better if Mandrake declared what they actually want to be: a money-making commercial enterprise, or a community-supported system. I think it's not right to try to be both, because any company that tries to be both is basically just turning volunteer labor into profits.
Natural selection at its finest... Crappy, bloated, and stupid distributions die, and real distros that aren't profit-driven continue to flourish...
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
I realized Mandrake's problem when I started paying attention to the other members on the NLUG list. Most linux people will not use mandrake and consider people who use it beneath contempt. The very thing which would make Mandrake successful in the mainstream, user friendlyness, makes it a pariah of linux land where a distro isn't good unless it physically hurts the user.
...
Personally, I use Mandrake. Mandrake was my first distro (I tried Red Hat and SuSe and went back). That said, I won't join although I will continue to buy the new version (8.2) as I have 7.1,7.2,8.0, and 8.1
White Hat Research Network - Under Destruction.
Window$? Can we possibly sink any lower?
Jesus. That'd be the day I let egos equivalent to those of third-graders hack together the distribution that runs on my box.
OpenBSD http://www.openbsd.com worked this out a looong time ago. Don't offer official ISOs for downloads. Allow people to access the CVS tree to do a floppy-based install, but don't make ISOs freely available. This will encourage regular users to go down to their local Wal-mart and spend $25.00 for the boxed set. More advanced users can do net installs and life will be pretty similar to the way it is now. Or they can join the club and still be able to get ISOs. It is harsh medicine but I don't really see how else they are going to make it. BTW, how much does Mandrake make on a regular boxed set? I've gotten the vibe the majority of the money goes to Macmillian.
I would prefer to prepay $70 *.2 distro rather than paying in small chunks $60 a year. There are ten other distros, that deserve same support.
One habbit that I learned in dealing with Europian companies is insist on having to confirm each payment with your own signature.
Sort of socialist inclination in most Western Europian nations tend to guarantee small and stable income to employees on one side, and on the other side no rights for customers to paid service except the right to pay. And once on automatic payments, this 'right' is hard to cancel or revert.
I might try to buy Mandrake 8.1 Pwer Pack, instead, that will give them 50% more.
Petrus
The most ironic thing is that Macs now ship with vi factory loaded! vi has to be the program rated most antithetical to the entire "Mac Way".
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Rather than saying "Hey, our name is expensive, help us play blood money", it's a 'short term cash crunch'.
Mandrake and other Linux-based products won't get far if we start treating the companies that produce them like charities. Why not show the software industry that the product has worth and buy one?
Think of it. You're a potential investor. Which company are you going to invest in? One that survives off product sales, or one that survives off subscriptions? From our point of view, one can rationalize either way which is truly better, but in the end, let's face it, sales are a pretty tangible indicator of success.
Plus, it keeps the company honest. If Mandrake is forced to continually push a product out the door, they have to be proactive to continue earning money. This is good for everybody in the long run.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Yes, you can really judge character at times like these. I too was first lured to Linux as the "free" alternative, with naive thoughts of getting something for nothing. I learned, however, that in order for Linux to be truly free, it's gonna cost. I know that everyone wants the most bang for their buck, but come on! How cheap is it to get free software? What do you boy geniuses do? I know, you set up your free P4 RAMmed out box with it's free mouse and keyboard and scanner and printer, you plug it into free electricity from the wall socket, dial up ye olde FREE broadband ISP (remember those?)and surf to a freely-maintained server where you download free software to your free blank CD-RWs and sip your free caffeinated beverage while your free software flickers by on the free flatscreen monitor. Have a few minutes to kill? Fire up the free PS2 and play a little free SSX Tricky. Did you spot the little gag? Only one of these commodities didn't take your money with a good, firm yank. It was the "free" software. Get real, we know you can code on a piece of scrap paper and make it fold itself into origami shaped like a Cadillac Cien. Now, do it 400,000 times, for free. There comes a point where someone is going to have to spend money to scale the battlements that Microsoft has built for itself. We can count on IBM and SUN to pony up quite a bit, but it's the greedy fish like Red Hat and Mandrake who actually attempt to forward the cause of the next phase of Linux growth by having the audacity to make Linux distros that can actually look like a serious try when they sit on a corporate or home desktop. Mandrake skinned me for 24 dollars at Wal-Mart (thank goodness Wal-Mart doesn't take a cut of that). I took it home, and wowzers, it worked. The road's been far from glassy since then, but it's the first distro that I haven't uninstalled completely in abject disgust. I use it, every day. If I was to pay today for Microsoft's latest innovations, I'd be out around a cool two hundred give or take hardware upgrades and the earplugs to block out penguin-heads screaming "SELLOUT!" at me. Granted, I'm not going to keep throwing money at Mandrake, no one should. However, they admitted they needed money, they asked if we'd support them, and they promised to at least try to make this the last time they came begging. I've wasted more money in a day piddling around than Mandrake asks for in a year. I weighed it, found it worthy, and sent in the dough. I am sure that if I was brill enough, I could download software all day and eventually cook up a good distro, but I'd heap rather see if a few dollars and the focused labor of a few smart people can get it done more easily for me. In the meantime, you can support your favorite distro by eating their bandwidth, criticizing their betas, and occasionally buying a t-shirt with their name on it. If I've convinced anyone to help out the fine folks at Mandrake, maybe you could see you way clear to mail me ten bucks. Typing takes calories, my friends!
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
I'm pretty sure the spirit of GNU was supposed to be "let's help each other out", not "gimme gimme gimme and don't let the free market hit you in the ass on the way out".
Wow. That sounds like that Coca-Cola ad from the 70's. Maybe if we all hold hands, sing, and give away free software, then the world will be a happy place.
But it's childish to say "well I already own it, so if they can't give me updates for free in perpetuity then fuck them."
Actually, I'd say that it's pretty childish to say, "We give our product away for free. For some odd reason, we don't have any money left. Please, please give us some more money, so we can continue to make a product that we give away for free".
This is free software. Perhaps somebody should tell madrake that it's wrong to pay money for software.
I would personally be more inclined to buy the linux mandrake distro if they added some kind of incentive to purchasing the retail box. As is, the boxed versions come with the cds and the manuals, and most of what is in the manuals can be grabbed off the numerous linux websites. What they need to start doing is adding cool stickers, key chains, bonus games, t-shirts, etc etc to the store bought versions. Hell, I'd buy a version of mandrake if i knew it had some cool sht in it! But as is, you get cds and a manual. BORING.
"Maxis wanted too much money. No great mystery here, folks. Not every deal is a good one."
-- Scott Draeker, regarding licensing The Sims.
"Of course it will pay off!"
-- Mandrake, regarding licensing The Sims.
I feel no pity for Mandrake, and will not be sending them money.
I alternate between RedHat and Debian on my boxes. RedHat is a commercial entity, much like Mandrake. I don't recall them coming to me and begging for money. Debian's non profit, I don't mind donating to them.
People will cry 'open source business model' and such over this, but the fact is, Mandrake is not following any sort of business model that makes sense. As I said, RedHat doesn't come begging for money - neither should Mandrake. If they want money, they should do what every other company does - raise it through the sales of tangible products and/or stock.
People will also compare this to Loki. Loki failed for entirely different reasons than what's behind the troubles at Mandrake. A company based on porting games is a lot different than a company who produces a distribution. You can't compare their business models.
In the end, Mandrake may fall, but no one will notice. RedHat's quite easy to install, despite the trolling of Mandrake zealots. I've had friends and family install it, and the only thing they needed help with was the partitioning of their drives. The time it took to help them was equivalent to what it takes to walk them through an installation of any given Microsoft operating system. At any rate, Mandrake != Linux. Mandrake's failure will not send shockwaves through the community.
If you want to give money to someone, consider giving it to the developers of actual software suites and such, not those producing distributions. A check that will keep someone who's working on an office suite in Ramen for another three weeks will help out Linux's desktop acceptance a lot more than yet another distribution.
i think what you need is to be raped by three very cute monoloid munchkin horseback riders from 12th century central asia. A little ass-rapin' never hurt nobody!
Well it's that time of year again, our annual membership drive. Only a small percentage of our users actually pay for the service, the rest of you are just freeloaders. Don't you want to end that guilty feeling you have? So get on the phone and call one of our volunteers now.
If you pledge at 20 Euro per month level you'll receive an RMS mug, featuring a picture of that zany and lovable guy that got this all started in the first place.
Pledge at the 100 Euro per month level and you become part of our Kernel Club. Not only will we send you the RMS mug, but you'll also receive the "Shove it up your *ss, Bill!" T-Shirt. A collectable that you'll surely enjoy, while being the envy of your cube farm. You'll also receive our monthly news letter, and discounts tickets to the next BierWanderung.
So don't wake CALL NOW!
I can't believe this has even gone on this long. Can't you people see that alowiches is RIGHT?
Let's look at this logically. The facts please:
1.) You are giving your customers the choice of whether to pay for your product or not. You are telling me that I can buy one CDROM and install it on every one of my 2,000 computers for no extra cost.
2.) The biggest consumers of computer and computer related products are businesses.
3.) Corporations and Business owners are notorious for finding ANY way to save a buck no matter how far in the black they are. We all know this. Look at the RIAA.
4.) Businesses have people like you and I working for them, people who can setup and maintain systems (and read). We don't need to call tech support too often, we are nerds. I work with Microsoft Windows in my professional career, I've never called Microsoft once...ONCE! I don't need tech support and probably neither do you if you're reading this.
5.) Businesses like Microsoft better because that's what the rest of the kids are playing with, it's got more and better business software on it, and it's easier to find people to run the software.
Can you dispute these facts? Am I a troll because I have an OPINION!? Sorry, I'll try not to speak unless spoken to I guess. (NOT!)
1) Free software will change the world!
2) Hey, brother, can you spare a dime?
3) We would have changed the world! (except nobody was willing to pay for their free software)
Cheers
-b
Its about freedom. Listen to richard stallman the founder of the GPL/GNU, If you support the movement, you also understand that its NOT supposed to be free, its supposed to change software and information into a service.
When you buy cable TV, you are buying a service to access the information, while paying for that information to be produced.
When you subscribe to a magazine, you are doing the same thing.
Computer users dont mind paying AOL 20 dollars a month, I really dont think a user is going to mind paying $5 more a month for all the software they will ever need.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I can't believe this has even gone on this long.
Let's look at this logically. The facts please:
1.) You are giving your customers the choice of whether to pay for your product or not. You are telling me that I can buy one CDROM and install it on every one of my 2,000 computers for no extra cost.
2.) The biggest consumers of computer and computer related products are businesses.
3.) Corporations and Business owners are notorious for finding ANY way to save a buck no matter how far in the black they are. We all know this. Look at the RIAA.
4.) Businesses have people like you and I working for them, people who can setup and maintain systems (and read). We don't need to call tech support too often, we are nerds. I work with Microsoft Windows in my professional career, I've never called Microsoft once...ONCE! I don't need tech support and probably neither do you if you're reading this.
5.) Businesses like Microsoft better because that's what the rest of the kids are playing with, it's got more and better business software on it, and it's easier to find people to run the software.
Can you dispute these facts? Am I a troll because I have an OPINION!? Sorry, I'll try not to speak unless spoken to I guess. (NOT!)
This touches on an important point which most of the people posting in this article need to realize: The fact that Mandrake being a company that supports and sells Open Source software is completely irrelevant to the real issue here, which is Economics 101.
There's a market for Linux distros. That's obvious. RedHat's making a profit, Mandrake's on track to. However, that doesn't mean there's a market for all the distros out there that want to make money on packaging, services, and support.
If the market isn't large enough to support all the distros that are in business today, some of them have to go, plain and simple. Either through closing the doors or consolidating with another distro to lower costs. Once that happens (perhaps a few times over), the market will have itself a few distros who can actually operate profitably. And this is a good thing, even if it means we lose some distros!
Sure, Mandrake wouldn't be my first choice to prune from the list, but that's not up to me, or to any of us as individuals, it's up to the market as a whole.
I don't know why anyone feels commercial Linux distros should be treated as though they're special. They're selling a product. They're a business. Yes, they love Open Source, we do to, and we're glad they're here. None of that matters when it comes down to keeping the doors open, because if they can't keep the doors open on their own, the sure as hell aren't going to by panhandling before their userbase. And frankly, I'd rather see just a handful of Linux companies succeed than a whole lot of them scrape by.
What product do you buy from AOL? does AOL send you a package in the mail each month when you pay your $20 a month? what product? You pay for the service which pays for Mozilla, AIM, ICQ, and all of their software.
Its exactly like Mandrake, a business model of donations is not a subscription.
Mandake has a legit business Model which is exactly like AOLs, Transgamings and all of the other service companies.
You can consider it a donation because you arent being forced to pay, but if you dont pay by free will, they'll stop making your software and force you to pay, so its not really a donation, its a business model, you pay and you keep getting free software, you stop paying and you dont get shit.
Its that simple.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The fact is this points out the dichotomy in the 'free'and open source movement - the fact is that giving away things for free is not a good business plan when you have to develop those things. The flaw i see in the GPL is that it encourages people to use other peoples code and incorporate it into their own, this is a wonderfull idea except in the fact that you are trying to make money or stay alive on it alone, then youre in trouble.
I see so many people on here commenting that they dont use mandrake so they wont join, or that they downloaded the software and its free so they wont pay, or even some claiming that corporations they have encouraged to use Open Source should pay.
What sort of hypocrisy do you function under?
Your money goes to helping a company survive, its $5 dollars for christs sake! If you think that the company is in trouble and that doesnt affect you then youre dreaming, what about Loki and the many other open source companies that have gone under, did they affect you ? what will ?
The attack on corporates is even more laughable as im pretty sure in 99% of cases they are the ones who actually purchase boxed software and DONT download it, thus they have already contributed more than you have.
The fact is this should scare all of you - open source is not at this moment in time a viable business plan and that means its dying and the pace is accelerating. Invariably it means that Open source will once again retreat to the dedicated coders and the academic arena and that will mean the death of Linux in corporates and home user environments.
Donating to mandrake is supporting the movement you are part of. I have just joined even though i now use exclusively MS OS'es (issues with some things OSS and Linux wont do NOT a philosphical anti linux position) becuase i think this is something worth saving - there has to be an alternative and its time you all draw a line in the sand.
Support Open Source or find another crusade - anything else makes you a hypocrite of the worst type as you wont put your money where your mouth is (and your heart is supposed to be).
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Some people don't like the idea of "donating" to a publically traded company. I tend to think of it not so much a "donation" but rather
1. My thanks to the great work done by the Mandrake developers.
2. My investment in the future. Mandrake developers contribute heavily to Open Source. By giving them money, I invest in the future of Open Source Software. No matter what occurs in the future, their work will always exist for free and open usage. 5 years from now, I wont have to buy it again from a proprietary vendor.
This morning (in the Loki thread) I asked if anybody still believed that one could build a viable business around selling linux software. My comment was moderated down as a troll. Only a few hours later, *another* linux company reports being in financial problems. The trend should be obvious, but the hypocrisy of the moderators will once again mark this down as a troll, no doubt...
Provide a service to us, or provide a service to other businesses.
Mandrake is giving us the choice, do we want them to be like Redhat? OR do we want them working for us.
If they provide services for us, we have to be their business model, their source of income, if we refuse to do so, they will provide services to people like IBM and other big companies.
Its $5 a month, thats the price of a mc donalds meal which i bet you all eat every day. $5 a month people, I'm supporting transgaming, i'm pretty much broke, but i will support mandrake as soon as i get the money to do so.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
See, now, there's a huge difference between using Windows on a desktop, and Windows on a server. I was offtopic (admittedly) because I was ridiculing Zico for (apparently) using Windows on a server, which I think we can all agree is pretty retarded these days. I still haven't seen the outcome of Microsoft's "full month of focus" on security, have you?
.NET, or join us on the Linux side. The thing is, Microsoft's options just don't make much sense anymore.
As for your "facts" - I still don't quite see exactly what your point is. I understand that Windows is the dominant corporate desktop. It sure didn't get there because it's superior.
It's hard to dispute "facts" when they aren't backing a single coherent point. My point remains that for a server, Windows is ridiculous. For a desktop machine, you should probably buy a Mac, because Apple's offering is actually superior to a new PC with Windows XP. If you're a developer, stick with MS and follow them to
Oh man another Linux "company" bites the dust. Yeah I know they expect to be in the black real soon now and "the future looks bright". have heard it all before. Just read the full article. How much more pathetic can you get? Lets see they need 10000*$5 a month to survive in the short term. They must be rewally broke if $50K a month is waht separates them from bankruptsy. I for one will be pretty happy if they gow down. With only Redhta suse and lovely debian left there be a greater chance for standartisation in the linux land.
USA-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Its called a service. They beg users for handouts because they are actually trying to help the USER. They are giving us the option that Redhat didnt give us.
Would you prefer they offer services only to businesses like Redhat? Please. The begging is for OUR benifit, if you ran the company you would become another Redhat like company and in order to do that, Mandrake cannot be the same Mandrake.
No more forums, no more mandrake expert, in fact no free services at all.
Mandrake would instead force you to pay $60 before you can even access member services, you wouldnt have free services.
So you see, they are giving you the choice right now, if we the users offer them enough money to earn a profit, they'll base a business model around us, if not, they'll deal with businesses, and forget we exsist.
Also Mandrake is no longer based on Redhat, that was 6.1, try using mandrake before you actually talk about how it works.
Mandrake die? They arent in position to die, in fact they are going to profit either way, they are simple giving us the choice, do we want them to profit off of us, or off of businesses.
I mean why should any consumer oriented businesses ever do anything for us if we prove ourselves to be greedy leeches, thats why they are focusing on PDAs and the server market and not the Desktop, or Gaming markets, because we havent PROVEN to them that we will pay.
Well if you want these companies to work for us, then put your money up and force them to work for us.
Its that simple, and just like with transgaming, if you want games in linux you'll subscribe, if you want a good Desktop Linux thats built based on what we want and not so much what businesses want, then you'll pay up.
You have the choice, make your decision.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
But also- there just seems to be something not right with asking directly for support like that, money crunch or no. I mean, support over and above what they produce... even though they do certainly work hard...
As it happens, I DO have a money crunch, and I too have been working my butt off. If you go to ampcast and poke around, you'll find loads of newly remastered stuff all of which is going to have proper CDs available. I understand you can stream stuff just at random- if you register w. the site (I know, but hear me out) you can download it all free and I get a nickel for each DL without you having to pay for it, and if you _rate_ the tunes I can appear on the 'charts' they have- I ask for bad ratings too if that's your honest opinion, it's all feedback and there's somebody to like everything.
Plus (and this is where the money crunch comes from) I've been placing orders for electronic parts. I'm the guy who puts out the GPLed mastering app Mastering Tools (which I use on all my stuff for Ampcast), and I've been building stompboxes and mixers and stuff for over a decade- and I'm onto a design that promises to be a _really_ slick mini-guitar DI that comes in three gain levels. Just a teeny box with two jacks on it, and you control volume from the guitar- the Anti-Line-6-POD- so I'm rationing food because buying 10 project enclosures, 50 .1 polypropylene capacitors, 100 battery clips etc was of course WAY more important. (any true geek would understand this without having to be told ;) )
So yeah- I'm in a money crunch too. But here's the difference: _I_ saved enough money that I can buy cat food, some boring human food, etc. I paid all my bills at the beginning of the month and I completely paid a debt that had to do with a retroactive rent hike.
So I'm not in a threatening money crunch- and I can afford to mouth off and make fun of my own foolish situation because I PLANNED IT and I'll get by even if everyone goes "God, not HIM again!" and scrolls on with an elegant shudder of geeky distaste ;)
But there's a deeper level which I'm not sure if I can express. For starters- I've worked to the brink of RSI on my GPLed Mastering Tools program- but THAT is not for sale. That's free. I've got 7 finished Red Book CDs next to me, which are going to Ampcast to be duplicated on demand, and THOSE are for sale. My business is making them so good, making the packaging and the art and everything so nice that it's _worth_ having a proper one instead of some cloned thing with magic-marker label. I'm trying to make these guitar stompboxes- THAT is tangible, and my efforts of designing them are 'sunk costs' like the coding on Mastering Tools- it's what I can produce that people CAN'T just clone effortlessly, or the ways in which I can at least reward someone's good will (like in buying a CD). I'm OK with people having that good will but nothing I've done or ever will do will entitle me to it, and I refuse to ask for it without also wising off and de-hard-selling it ;)
That said- it is not THAT unreasonable to encourage people to buy Mandrake dists. I'm Mac-based, and I bought the LinuxPPC dist, and kept it even though it didn't work on my main machine. Now I have another old Mac and this one will run it, so it's now installed on one of my machines. But if you asked me to donate money to LinuxPPC- well, I don't know. I'm not sure I like that as a motivation. I sure don't do my OSS work so I can ask for DONATIONS. I do it to make other stuff that I do, better. Then I share that part of the work.
Coincidentally, when I loaded this comment page, the first thing that I saw was a ThinkGeek ad. It's the one about tiny radio-controlled desktop tanks for $58.99 that can play laser tag with each other. I know, because I went STRAIGHT to ThinkGeek to look at them. And if I wasn't in a serious money crunch, that would be terribly compelling- an argument to give money to ThinkGeek because they'd come up with something to sell me that was SO COOL that I just couldn't resist it.
I don't know when or if I'll be on that level- to out-cool tiny robot tanks is quite an order, though my tiny two-jack guitar-amp effect box sounds some of the same notes (miniatureness, elegance, effectiveness, more miniatureness etc), but to me THAT is the area to emulate. That's where Mandrake should be heading... if it is even possible, with a Linux dist. It's just that 'toss a few bucks my way because _I_ am worthy' is a hell of a lot more nebulous than 'toss a few bucks my way and you can have one of THESE'... with the latter, it's a simple question of whether the thing is really cool or not, where with the former it gets into your evaluation of WHY the person is supposed to deserve support when there's a million people out there who deserve to pursue their work without money headaches...
I for one have been a Mandrake user for a year or so now and have been very happy with the product. Mandrake provided a much easier transition from Windows to Linux for myself and others like me. I understand everyone's preferred distro choice normally isn't Mandrake or RedHat, but these two are definately on the right track to getting more people to use Linux. For those of us who some would classify as "n00bs", there are alot of concerns people have with switching over. Besides making the install fairly straight forward and understandable, Mandrake especially makes it much easier to "plug and play" if you will. From the first time I installed it, all of my stuff worked without a hitch. I can't say the same about other distros I tried. Mandrake was the first one that actually made me say, "Wow, this is pretty cool". So let's not celebrate that Mandrake may go down in flames, but instead try and help out a company that is making it easier for people like me to try and become familiar with Linux. Hell, they made me a loyal user of Linux.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Either way they are telling the truth. Either they are in for the long haul or they are going under. Either way the viability issue will be short term.
If Mandrake reworded their sentence, it would be a typical AOL style service subscription.
Instead of telling you that you have a choice, simply say "You cannot download the new mandrake 8.2 until you subscribe" Effectively making it capitalism instead of a donation.
Face it, its capitalism either way, however right now its capitalism with a choice, we can choose. Would you rather be forced to pay?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
AOL does the same fucking thing and i dont see you or anyone else complaining.
You see, AOL provides a service, AOL uses marketing and brainwashing to trick people into paying them. Mandrake is straight forward with people, and being honest about the situation, and everyones saying its begging?!
Ok so mandrake should have DEMANDED $5 a month from you saying "You cannot download Mandrake 8.2 unless you subscribe"
Would you prefer this business model to the current one?
Fucked company? You dont understand the open source business model, its not about selling products, its about providing a service, they write the code for us, we pay them for the service.
Its no diffrent than subscribing to a magazine which you could easily read for free.
All magazines of course are begging for charity and begging people to pay them, however they lie to people and use tricks instead of just asking you to support them.
Capitalism isnt about lying, and using tricks, its about getting people to pay you for your hard work, period.
Whats wrong with us paying Mandrake for their hard work?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Service based, If thousands of us are willing to subscribe they wont need to sell anything.
Cant you see whats going on? If 10,000-20,000 people subscribe they wont need to sell any CDs at all, they'll be set, we will be their busineess model.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The point is that many Windows people will turn to Linux to find out how good "free" can be. They don't understand RMS yet. They don't understand the distinction between different "free" definitions. Can't blame them. It takes a little while for that kind of paradigm shift. Anyways, a typical Windows user has been lulled into such comfort that he doesn't have a hope of installing any Linux distro except maybe Mandrake. And now it seems to be going commercial like they perceive the Open/Free/Linux crowd says is so evil. I'm not saying this pereception is correct, but I believe it will happen and may be hard for a newbie to understand. Anyways, so perhaps they'll turn to something truly non-commercial like Debian, say, and have a really rough time at it and then just give up on Linux. Perhaps. I truly hope not. Just throwing out a prediction here and some reasoning behind it.
Very simple.
We'd prefer to bring in more revenue. We'd hate to have to change our business model to waste less money.
Oh, its not waste? Then why are we not profitable?
Oh, its R&D? This will pay off later? Is the CEO and other officers taking a significant paycut to help through these rough times?
This is just a MONEY CRUNCH.... nothing more. just buy more of our games and we're SURE to recover..... oh wait... my bad.. this is Mandrake, not Loki.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
After all, shareware like Opera has asked for a payment from anyone who uses the program and finds it useful. Many of us have pulled out our credit cards or checkbooks (or even written the odd postcard) and helped support a worthwhile program. Some of it is crap, some is exceptionally good. Mandrake, unlike shareware, passes along the open source code as well. There is nothing wrong with asking for a donation if you use the product. There are a lot of people out there with broadband connections who don't buy the boxed verions. Yeah the source code is free, but you can always express your appreciation for their effort and send in a little to help support the programers work, if you appreciate the product. PBS does this all the time, and by and large I get less use out of PBS. This "it's bidness" attitude is simple minded not to mention ultimately self defeating, there many other quasi-economic models that are viable that don't include socialism or communism. Obligations and honour for instance. They did the work, they give it to you. What is your moral obligation to them and society as an honourable person? The world simply is not as simple as either capitalist or marxist theory would like it to be, so why should we be that way?
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
They are paying redhat, so yes they are going to use linux for free.
If you pay for Mandrake you'll be able to decide what mandrake has, mandrake wont develop software for hollywood, and hollywood will go to redhat.
Or you can not pay a dime and let mandrake taylor their OS for hollywood and others who will pay
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"Even though all of us here at MandrakeSoft are excited about the upcoming release, we've also been distracted by financial concerns. Despite continuous good reviews in the press; despite having millions of users throughout the world; despite producing an award-winning Linux distribution that is a solid competitor to both UNIX and Window$, the Mandrake Linux distribution's short-term future is in jeopardy due to a simple factor: money."
A PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANY is asking its users to pitch in and donate (sure, it's a "club", right, ok..) money. And while doing so, they are making fun of a competing project by mis spelling their name on purpose (Window$). I don't know about you, but with an attitude and lack of professionalism like that, I sure as hell wouldn't invest in it or buy their products.
is that they are awesome when it comes to providing RPMS. If you are into rpm based distros, mandrake rpm packages a lot of stuff, and they are really on the ball with security updates, etc.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
AOL is making a fortune, so is redhat. Its not because people buy copies of AOL software, or people buy Redhat, its because of the services they provide.
Open Source is about services, not selling information.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Why you say? This is possibly Red Hats fault but they stopped using inetd.conf and started using xinetd.conf . This annoyed me to no end when I found out about it. Was wondering why killing inetd and sending a SIGHUP wasn't working. Why change de-facto naming conventions? Just because you have a nice graphical interface for it?
Laugh all you want but linux, GNU, *BSD and most of the other cool free software out there only exists because of the singing hand-holding hippies who gave their work away, only asking for credit and *voluntary* financial support.
Retail open-source is a relatively recent phenomenon. It's trickiest when most of the code is GPL'd, because then you *have to* give it away (or just stick your head in the sand and pretend your first paying customer won't redistribute). It may turn out not to be sustainable. If that is the case, would you prefer just losing the products entirely or PBS-style begging that keeps them available to the public?
If Mandrake can't afford to continue to pay developers to maintain free software, then someone else will maintain that free software - if the community cares enough about that software, that is.
It's survival of the fittest, in more ways than one.
Anyways, I don't believe in corporate welfare. Let them eat cake.
Fortunately most people in the community are not dead inside like yourself. It would indeed be despiriting if that was the case. When I go to a party I may not help with the cooking, I tend to avoid doing the clearing up, but at least I pitch in a generous amount of drinks. That's my contribution. Someone else who can't afford to buy drinks but is a great cook can make just as valuable contribution. It wouldn't be much of a party if everyone just turned up empty handed, tried to raid the house owners private wine collection, and then made off with the furniture.
Contrary to current belief, a company does not just have to be about making as much profit as possible. If an Open Source company can stay afloat then it's a success. The employees get to do something they really enjoy and believe in, and the user base gets far more time put into the software they want to use. And don't suggest that by just staying afloat it's not going anywhere. A great legacy of code being built up. I hope plenty of users contribute to keep Mandrake's run going. It's by far the best distro imho.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Why buy a "subscription" versus going to the store and buying the actual product off the shelf?
:)
One very good reason.
Direct Marketing.
You are in essence buying the same distrobution as the Power Pack but the money goes directly to Mandrake and not to the retail outlets. Mandrake doesn't recieve as much as you think for selling thorugh retail outlets (the same as with any product that is sold directly through retail). Look on companies websites and its cheaper to get the product online than through retail due to the price markups of the "middle man". CompUSA sells the 8.1 Power Pack for US$69.99 and yet you can get the same product from Mandrake by subscription for $60. Yes you have to download it, and for some that is not an option, but for me with a cable modem it is.
Bottom line, if you like the distro and feel its useful and can download it, buy the subscription. If you like the distro and don't really have the available bandwidth (or want the manuals) then buy it in the store. If you don't like the distro, then don't buy it. This is the beauty of "Consumer Choice" and that is the basic foundation of this economy.
Mandrake is also one of the few distrobutions that give you a full-featured product to try and then asks that if you like it, buy it. Suse doesn't follow this model. Very few do. Its kind of like shareware without the nag screens
To all Slashdotters, support something, keep the community healthy.
Lots of people here complaining that a commercial company shouldn't ask for donations to survive. It is true that you CAN donate money (although they moved that page to a out of view place because it scares investors somehow). Could be, but THIS IS NOT ABOUT DONATING !!! They ask you to subscribe to a service, namely mandrake-club. When you subscribe you can (among other perks) download some software which usually is only available in the boxed sets. IT IS A SERVICE, so this is a completely normal commercial business asking to subscribe if you like their OS which can still be downloaded for free if you don't subscribe. Learn to find out what you are reading about before thrashing a great company.
I subscribed just now because I use their distro and like it very much and see the subscription fee as buying a boxed set for example. Maybe they could've phrased this request a little better and provided more information in this request regarding the perks you get when subscribing. And maybe paying per month in stead of a complete year would be an option for people who want to subscribe but can't afford the $60 all at once.
instead of enriching those who use the world for support.
I am no longer running Mandrake on any of my computers, but it was the best distro I've come across (only missing apt-get). The installer eased me into the world of linux, diskdrake is lightyears ahead of fdisk, and the command center is sorely missed in other distros. I never would have been able to learn linux without their help. An encrypted filesystem might be enough to convince me to upgrade to a supported video card and give Mandrake a fourth (lifetime... the other three have been given away) computer.
Mandrake, and community software, are like public television... They do philanthropic deeds for many people, but philanthropy is never profitable. They need money? I own a box set, and I haven't had an income in 5 months, but Mandrake is worth it to me. Count my Donation.
The ______ Agenda
Yes, this is exactly what it's all about: either we catter to community, and community pays, or we catter to big busines, and big busines pays.
RedHat and SUSE already catter to big corporations, and I would even say that Debian does that too (to a certain extent). Do you want to loose Mandrake as it is now, or do you want to see us continue cattering to your needs?
Deno (who is in Hanover now, and forgot the pass)
It's up to you..
The only reason why SuSE is still around is called IBM. IBM is in bed with them, and they would be happy to see Mandrake go away.
So, it's not as simple as it looks at a first sight...
(Deno again)
I really say that I will gladely pay for a membership. I have felt ashamed for a while. I mean, I've used Mandrake for two years now and it's a really good distro with loads of really useful tools that I use every day. This is the least I can do to keep Mandrake going.
This is not the first time I pay for free software efforts either. Transgaming and Codeweavers have well deserved my cash.
Ciryon
You said:
When you buy cable TV, you are buying a service to access the information, while paying for that information to be produced.
When you subscribe to a magazine, you are doing the same thing.
Computer users dont mind paying AOL 20 dollars a month, I really dont think a user is going to mind paying $5 more a month for all the software they will ever need.
I will agree with this. So how much of the revenues that AOL collects from its 33 million odd users flows back in any form to the people who are producing the information and services which the AOL subscribers are enjoying?
I swear those exact same Loki fanboys are now going "I support MANDRAKE. MANDRAKE is king. I swiped my credit card for MANDRAKE to make payroll!"
Once bitten, twice shy, folks.
Just joined ..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
ahahhahahahahahhahahhahahahahahhahaha
;)
thats the funniest thing ive seen this morning.
oh yeah, fuck mandrake.
I live on both sides of the fence. I run an open source site while running a business.
These are bad times. And people and companies are getting caught in unlucky positions financially. Business is about risks, yes. Mandrake is in a short-term cashflow crunch. This is a real bitch of a position to be in so don't discount it as poor management or a flawed business model so quickly! It happens. Period.
Now, these are hard times financially for everyone. I've seen it suggested here that they should issue stock. I'm not sure why they don't, but I'm not involved in a public company myself so I won't second guess them. Perhaps that is a Plan B. Afterall shouldn't we support them first?? My point is that you can get caught in a cashcrunch when you conduct business in the real world of running a business. And you can call it unlucky .
No, your personal financial situation is not a fair comparison. It is no where near the same thing. I hope anyway.
Since 9/11 and the 'recession' banks and other lender are not eager to lend money to cover cashflow. Mostly becuase they were also caught with their cashflow down or are exposed to more loss than would be normal.
Don't be so hard on Mandrake. If one of your friends needed $20 till payday would you cover it? Sure you would. I'd hope so. I hope that Mandrake's msg is upfront and that their future is bright. In the mean time if they need $20 till payday I'm there for them.
Let me put it straight: we shall never endorse other people's pet projects or stupid businesses. Mandrake is a for-profit company, yet it begs for donations.
Have they did *everything* in order to survive as a regular business? Certainly not.
A business entity like theirs have mainly three departments: marketing/sales, development, and support.
Marketing & Sales Dept. shall remain where is located (i.e., France). After all it is the core of the company. No comments to be made about them
But...
Support Dept. and also Development Dept. employs most of the 100-member crew of MandrakeSoft, while still being located in France. That's hardly a sound business decision, since moving out those operations in a lower-cost country will save them lots of badly-needed funds. I'm Romanian and I cand say having an excellent Linux dev here cost about 800 US Dollars all taxes included!!! We have high-speed Internet, we have PCs, we have everything an IT company might need. And the same conditions (costs may vary) can be found in Bulgaria, Russia or Ukraine. Same conditions but almost double the salaries can be found in Hungary, Czech Republic or Poland. Same conditions as in Romania/Bulgaria/Russia/Ukraine can be found in India but the travel costs will be rather big.
My point is any intelligent company shall try pro-actively find lower-cost resources, and MandrakeSoft do not run their business this way. Most of their running costs come from Development and also from Support, which can be confidently moved out in Eastern Europe (where English literacy is bigger than in Western Europe, BTW).
Siemens, Alcatel, Motorola, Microsoft are doing R&D, Development, Support in Romania (I'm insisting on Romania simply because living there I know it better). Why MandrakeSoft are not willing to behave like a responsible business?
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I will now go and buy the Transgaming edition
of Mandrake. I hope it is cool.... =)
I really HAD another userid
Shouldnt Mandrake, as a company, be making money, instead of asking it's users for it? It's going to rid all investors of confidence in the business.
I mean come on a company is asking it's users for money!
The Loki-way is Mandrake's solution. All these Linux hackers are nowadays working for Linux companies, i.e. the hack Linux for a living and that's what they'll be doing in the rest of their lives. So if all the major distros don't pay them, the FS-spirit losers will still be working for them. Or what? Do they have the capital to setup a new Redhat, a Mandrake or a Suse?
Mandrake was my first distro, and I still have the boxed CD's that came with 6.5. I have downloaded 7.2 (upgrades) and I am planning on buying 8.2. I am also planning on joining the club when I get my next paycheck. Mandrake has done so many good things and their product has allowed me to use Linux as both a newbie and a abuser user (power user). I like it so much I have even send in bugs reports (C and C++ I know not). SO even though the free money of the money is dead, LONG LIVE MANDRAKE!
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I used Mandrake (7.x) for a year or so, now I'm on a wimpy laptop and rolling my own to keep CPU/Memory usage down.
However, I feel that the year and a half that I used Mandrake was worth well more than 60$ [Heck, MS would charge me ~400$ for a full (non-upgrade) OS]
Even though they give it away for free, I'll give them what it's worth if it means that there will be a good OS avaliable when I get a bigger computer.
If they go out of business, what am I going to do? Install Debian on my workstation?
To me that sounds more like a bad attitude than anything... Caffiene in the morning usually helps.
Now on one level you are correct. Free software can and may be maintained and passed along to whom-ever. One person stops working on a project, another can and will take over if the project dictates it, and / or the project deserves it.
BUT,
A project as large as Linux Mandrake, to think that they can just shut their doors, and someone like yourself can just step in and pick up where it all was left off, the projects, the production, the distribution on a project of this size... you're dreaming.
And to not support a project that has given so much to the Linux community? We all like free "as in beer" software. I like to use the code and learn from it... But you need to think bigger. Think past your own dorm room... Or office in my case....
Don't we all want Linux to grow? Hasn't Mandrake done so much for the Linux Desktop community? Yes, and yes!
If we let a project such as this fail, because you can't scrounge in your cushions for $5, even for just one month of dues, then what exactly to we stand for?
I can make free software, you can make free software, but even together we could not make Linux Mandrake.
Free as in beer is great, but we all need to support what we love. Either in $$ in times of need, or bug reports to make it better, and if you're too cheap to do both, at least recommend it to your friends.
Until I get a call from another company asking if they can send me the document in kword.... I'm going to give support, and push others into supporting them.
Finished Ranting... Back to my Coffee....
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
I hope you proofread your code a little better. Or are you the greeter at the door in the lobby?
If anyone is a current or past club member, could you give us some comments on the benefits of joining the mandrake user club? They claim "Club-only download of commercial applications normally only available in retail products" Is there anything useful there?
I'm sorry to see them in a pinch like this-- I have purchased a couple of versions of their distro in the past, and had planned on buying 8.2 when it arrived. I don't want to just hand a commercial company money, though-- if they need the revenue, they need to make it worthwhile for people to subscribe.
Why? I download for free the distributions and love them. I gave up on Red Hat after the 5.1 screw ups and I really think that these distributions are better adapted to the average user and that this approach will win over the desktop and not Red Hat. I don't want to see Mandrake go away so I'm willing to pay a little to keep something I enjoy and benefit from.
I can just see Linux torvalds and the OPEN SOURCE TELETHON!
Pledge $400 and recieve this great Linux Penguin Doll!
Pledge $1,000 and get this great boxed set of RedHat 7.2!
I have been using Mandrake for the past three years and have watched thier distro evolve.I my opinion they make a top notch distro, with the latest software available. I have been impressed with the rate that they relese new disros. Not to mention the "freq" distros that come in between the "supported" distros. Mandrake makes it easy to keep an up to date system with thier update tool and have never charged for it like Red Hat. I do not have a problem giving them money to help devolope thier software, as the programers have to get paid somehow. Mandrake also pays programers that work on stuff that benifits all linux users, like KDE.I hate to say it but the days of free are slowly going away. Even slashdot has a subcription service to support this great site. I say put your money where your mouth is and support Linux even if it is not Mandrake.
A cashcrunch is not a direct bi-product of a poor business model. Perhap management can be blamed, but judging from the current economic climate I would bet this Mandrake's situation is nothing more than being unlucky. They got caught in a bad time with little financial stregth. This happens more than you'd think. I'm sure a recession and 9/11 weren't in their business plans either.
Mandrake should offer to sell share directly from the web page. DRIPS - Direct Reinvestment Plan. Basically they sell the shares to us (directly from their website) we buy them, they cut out the middle man, make it easier for us to buy, we benefit by not paying outrageous broker fees (especailly for overseas), and they benefit with capital. All of a sudden these new shareholders have a vested interest in the company, a vested interest in $$$$$!
Mandrake has a more vested interest in keep us happy, and will cut back if needed on high over-head. If that is not possible, then the share holders would be happy to give more.
And maybe, just maybe, we both could make a profit when Microsoft announces that it was Mandrake and the OpenSource community that put them into chaper 11
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
So Mandrake is askin for finacial aid, muahaha. ask your government and tell em to use baguette-linux. Abusing an open source project for a commercial product is bulls*it. I hope Mandrake is bankrupt by now and Linux is once more what it should be: a philosophy and no commercial BS. Debian forever
A cashcrunch is not a direct bi-product of a poor business model. Perhap management can be blamed, but judging from the current economic climate I would bet this Mandrake's situation is nothing more than being unlucky. They got caught in a bad time with little financial stregth. This happens more than you'd think. I'm sure a recession and 9/11 weren't in their business plans either.
I personally don't use Mandrake, but if I loved/used Mandrake half as much as I use Debian, I'd have a $100 money order sent to them faster than... hey it's already there.
Nothing worthwile in computers is free. Everyone has to give back in their own substantial way.
If you're a Linux Guru, donate your time and your wisdom to us newbies (like most of you do). If you're a newbie, or don't have the time or skills to code and assist others, open that wallet up and fork a little green over to your favorite open source cause.
It's the only way this Linux thing is going to work.
That's exactly why I just joined a few minutes ago. I'd rather buy their stock, but it's very hard and expensive to get in the US. I bought the $600/yr membership to help in tough times, then I'll probably drop it to $120/yr after this year. They make a great product and put full time developers onto open source projects. It's money well spent.
I think a few thousand dollars of their stock would be a better investment (long term) and would give them much more money. Plus I'd get a return on investment years later, besides all the free software. It's really too bad their stock is difficult to purchase in the US.
Developers: We can use your help.
Mandrake is not begging for money...they are requesting that users enroll in their membership service which (as I understand it) supplies tech support. This is a far cry from "I'm bleeding, give me money, please", which is how this request is being portrayed. It makes perfect sense for Mandrake to go to its user base and ask for help before turning to more draconian means of freeing capital.
The reason this makes perfect sense is because if they have to start killing projects or trimming the work-force, it is the user base that will suffer. Oops, no more diskdrake. "Hey what happened to drakconfig?"
Open source software is not about getting something for nothing. The "Free" refers to freedom, not $0. That doesn't mean its a crime to dl your distro for free, but why not reciprocate with patch submissions, ideas, or, giving $ where you can. I think that's what it's about.
If we as Open Source advocates don't pull together, we will be split apart. Heavy hitters with virtually unlimited resources are training their gun-sights on the community.
--
"I'm don't know exactly what an AS/400 is, but I'm pretty certain I wouldn't want one up my ass" --Lou
If they really just have a short term need for cash, why not offer to pay back the money with interest once they are profitable? It's still a long shot gamble for those who take the risk, but at least it's a business deal and not an unwarranted, totally stupid action.
Seems to me that a lot of Slashdot users don't value open source software. I find it troubling when statements such as its "its open for downloading... so I don't want to pay anything."
Mandrake has always survived (as has redhat and all the distros) on an army of volunteers. And GPL'd software will always be available for download. That is just the nature of the beast. So why should these leachers get the source code for free? This is why the GPL came about (vs a BSD style license)- essentially to combat leaching.
I am sure that if they don't contribute money, they certainly don't contribute code. If you don't believe in open source software - why not just switch over to the MSDN website and leave slashdot alone?
Anthony
This is a limited time offer so call now. Operators are standing by. Miss Chloe knows you want to call.
They are just surrendering to Suse.
But I bought a t-shirt as well!!!!!!
GodBrain http://www.godbrain.net http://www.alienfaktor.com http://www.tril0byte.com
"whos coming with me" Ok I think like many of us converts I started on RedHat and had a buddy show me Mandrake 7.2 over a year later. WOW! I've been a huge fan of what they've done and I talked the talk and walked the walk of one of those linux guys. Now its time to put up or shutup. Sure many of the "so what if it goes" or "it was a bad business idea anyways" people out there are right. Sure are. So what? Microsoft doesnt care if you're right --- they'll just be glad that another company that was taking their business away is gone. Strew that! I'll though in $60 here no problem. If nothing else just because I know it'll bite M$ ass that linux users arent just a bunch 15 year olds spouting off and maybe just maybe you dont HAVE to charge $300 for an OS and office package to stay in business... Just my 2 pennies. Mind you I dont use mandrake, but again thats not the point. Mandrake is doing a great job of converting folks over --- thats enough for me :)
SS
this is complete crap. i guess it's not illegal for them to ask for donations, it just displays how weak and un-inventive their company/business model is. i guess if you like mandrake that much, then 5 bucks is worth it. i personally wouldn't pay them, even if i was a mandrake advocate. mandrake is a newbie os (i doubt many would argue that) that is focused on usability, and not much more. i think that asking for something like this may almost "trick" newbies into using mandrake without trying the plethora of other distros out there. slack 4 was the first distro that i tried, and i was frustrated by my lack of knowing what to do. i tried mandrake 7.1, and learned enough to put slack back on and make it go.
putting slack back on was definately the best thing i did; mandrake basically took what i liked about red hat, dumbed it down, and broke it. in it's attempt to be compatible and more user friendly, it breaks many functions that i like about linux.
if mandrake isn't making money off of their current business model, they need to revise it or fail. there have been a multitude of projects that were a lot better than this that have failed
I just don't understand why all of these Linux companies have to give away their software? What's the harm in only offering your product on store shelves or from your online store, like every other money making company in the world??
If you make a good product, people will buy it.
Oh yeah, since you use Mandrake but don't want to give them a donation do the next best thing - BUY SOME STOCK. Funny thing that, take your $60 you aren't willing to donate and support them anyway. Maybe you'll make a nice return on that investment.. if you truly believe in what Mandrake and OSS in general are trying to accomplish.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
What if someone created a bank specially oriented towards open source? Of course there would be problems, but the general idea is greater financial support _and_ finance education for OS companies.
That would provide the breath they need to come back to surface.
Joined this morning after getting the email.
If you like/use/recommend Mandrake, get off your lazy asses for once in your lives and don't just post useless replies here. Go make some dollar votes for Mandrake.
m00.
Yes, Scientology is an advanced commercial religeon. So?
Some services are direct-pay (HBO, Microsoft Windows, Scientology, slashdot w/sub), some are ad-funded (most TV networks, Slashdot w/out sub, Opera), and some beg (PBS, old-fashioned religeons, Mandrake). If you partake of the services using the third model, then paying the beggar is the correct way to proceed.
This might seem silly, but why doesn't IBM sign up 8000 of their employees to the members group? $40k isn't much of a hit on someone 'dedicated to Linux's future' and they'd gain tons of loyalty for helping out the little guy when he needed it.
Homer: Hello, I'd like to pledge $10,000 to get them to shut up.
Oh, why did I sign up for InstaTrace?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
No more free services.
No Mandrake forum.
No support or help services that are free.
No free download of Linux Mandrake on their servers.
No extensive help files.
No programmers working on KDE or the Linux Kernel.
The reason they are in a cash crunch is because they are supporting us and the community.
By proving to them we arent proftiable (by not paying them) they will simple stop providing all these free services, and this would get them out of the cash crunch.
If you were running their company, there wouldnt have been free services to begin with, what you'd have is a typical caldara, turbo linux or suse.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
They make a good distro, but if they can't stay financially viable then there are other problems. More power to them
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The command line version of mandrakeupdate is urpmi...
Sometimes it's a lot easier to use the command line version instead of MandrakeUpdate.
Use the Z-modem protocol between Information Superhighway routers to compress the plaintext. ~LordOfYourPants
The subscriptions is a nice thought, but why not simply go out and buy a new Mandrake Linux distro. Hell you might just encourage a few others in the store who have looked into Linux but were afraid.
One of the upper management DID charge to his credit card at one point so that they could make payroll.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I use Mandrake and Debian. I think Mandrake's survival is important.
I signed up for their club. After using their OS for 3 years it's not that bad, I have found many mandrakisms to be quite convenient... so, I won't even bother readin what the weirdos here at slashdot have to say about this article... likely, most of their brains have a long term vibility issue.
Juln
I've found it quite interesting watching people on here spitting out their ignorant statements. If anyone had thought about going to the Mandrake web site before spouting off, they would have found some valuable information . For those that say they need a better business model, they apparently aren't doing much worse than RedHat or most other Linux or dot-com companies:
Furthermore, they explain that their current dilemma is a result of:
I've used Mandrake for quite some time now, and I do hope that they continue to grow and improve.
Slackware is an excellent distro, but I had to do some fiddling to get everything working right. It's great for me, but I know a great many people who wouldn't even consider anything they had to fiddle with, especially at the command line. If Mandrake can fix its quality control problems, it could be a great non-geek distro.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Somehow I get the impression that the same sort of plea for help would be derided pretty quickly if it came from a company like Apple or Compaq.
"We're working on the new version of Tru64, and it's got some really wonderful new feature, but we're really in sort of a crunch right now. If you join this club, you'll pay us 60 dollars and we'll email you naked pictures of Carly from the last merger meeting. And, uh, you'll get the satisfaction of helping a deserving for-profit corporation. Yeah."
--saint
Actually, I'd say that it's pretty childish to say, "We give our product away for free. For some odd reason, we don't have any money left. Please, please give us some more money, so we can continue to make a product that we give away for free".
It's more like:
"I do this because I love it. I'm a pinko commie who believes everything should be free. I can't figure it out, but the guy at Safeway won't trade me a banana for a driver patch. I sit here and code all day and play foosball. Ah, this is the life I dreamed of. I got my CS degree, but I just don't ever want to have to grow up. I want to "work" 12 hours a day to hide the fact that I am really just a slacker and this is my fun. Since you have a REAL job that pays you money and not worthless stock options, how about a handout?"
These people need to get jobs. How are they any different than the bums begging for change in traffic? They have made life choices that result in them earning no income. Fine, you want to take a vow of poverty so you can spend all of your time as a volunteer doing what you love. Great, but when you can't pay the bill on your Tivo subscription, don't expect me to care.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
I suggest that you take into consideration the importance of the so-called "distributions" to Linux's ultimate and hopeful success. Because the Linux system's development is primarily driven by a bunch of hackers doing it part time and for fun, it is very important to have some entity assembling all of these packages, in their various states of disorder, full time as a cohesive body into something that at least resembles an Operating System as thought of by most consumers.
Unfortunately, the community's overwhelming choice of the GPL license leaves little, if any, viable avenues for revenue for those that expend the kind of energy necessary to create the distributions. Furthermore, on the other end, the non-profits entities have shown a lack of ability to produce what the consumers demand. For instance, Debian may be good enough for those in the computing industry, but they're not the ones that really make things come together to the extent that the average consumer needs. As insufficient as these "charity" requests on Mandrake's part are, they may be quite reasonable as a temporary remedy in light of the facts, i.e., the imposition of the GPL on those that provide (some of) the necessary missing pieces, at least if you're a proponent of free software for its own sake.
Although I personally feel that all the distributions are all fundamentally weak and will ultimately prevent Linux from ever gaining substantial footing on the desktop, their importance is nonetheless critical to what little success Linux can hope to enjoy. In lieu of a truely viable alternative, the believers have no other choice. They may allow Mandrake to die, but what about when SuSe, Redhat, and all others that add value cave into these same kind of problems? At its core, they all have the same fundamental problem and it will ultimately catch up to all of them to varying degrees.
There was a way to take the money being donated to or VC'd to all of these different distributions and somehow take the value added features (easy install, hardware detection, control panel, etc... etc.. etc..) and merge these changes into Debian. This is not a plug for Debian from a usibility standpoint, but a plug from a reality and longevity standpoint. All of these distributions very existence other than Debian rely on the almighty $$$ to further their life. Each day is a tightrope -- will this company be able to distribute security patches, or even make payroll??? -- who knows, it's a crapshoot....The ironic thing is that the best examples of utter finacial failure have been distributions that were built upon debian. This is NOT rpm VS. apt --- this is community VS. commercial .... and it is proven that when the dust settles, the community remains, and the commercial is liquidating assets, missing payroll, and guest starring on fuc*&dcompany.... HOW MANY commercial distributions have to go under before the masses realize that the best way to market a free product is to keep it free. And for those of us that want to pay -- we will learn to send our money somewhere where it is building on the future of Linux -- and not to pay for another week of life for a choking commercial product...that may not be gone in a month -- but most likely will not be able to supply you a security patch in 6 months....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I read thru many of the responses - good comments, and some borderline.
...) ?
I joined ( standard level - $60 secure payment ), because I like what they've done, and I am benefitting from their work. period.
if you want more, consider the tradition of community supported artists or performers ( read about the Street Performer Protocol, SPP ).
or maybe think about why you give waitresses tips ( or don't - cheapskate! ).
It's easy to not join the Mandrake Users Club ( or become a public radio supporter - whoops, I'm a bit guilty there ), and say, "If they can't make it, they shouldn't be here."
Well, I know of one innovative (?) sofware company that is very good ( _very good_ ) at commercial enterprise & working the market with its current rules ( even if they do some illegal bits ) - do you like how it's worked for them, or do you think people should step in and support what they like using new methods (like Mandrake's Users Club, copyleft - GPL, insert-your-own-radical-idea,
the best part is, you're free (as in speech) to do whatever you want!
-m
I used Mandrake and I like it. My beef is with them. I had the pleasure in meeting some of their people here in Montreal. Let me just say that they have only a few good people there.
I mean good as in good people not skills.
Mandrake's problem is within Mandrake itself. I hope they wither away and DIE!
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
It would not surprise me for that release to never happen now :(
Open Source is not a business model. It is, rather, a style of software distribution and licensing intended to improve the lives of programmers. Given this assertion, companies intending to make money using Open Source software have a few choices. Develop a professional services business model, implementing solutions with Open Source, sell support for Open Source software, or depend on the the programmers whose lives, or livelihoods they've improved.
I think you can reasonably apply the label Shareware to the concept of asking those who appreciate the software for monetary expressions of that appreciation. While I'm not asserting that MandrakeSoft is going to become the id Software of the Linux world, I would suggest that you ought to follow the Shareware ethic and contribute, or, as the typical Shareware ideal would recommend, stop using the software.
Yes, I know there is no such license for Mandrake's Linux saying "you can try it but you must pay us to continue using it." But taking the attitude that "they're stupid for offering it for free in the first place... haha..." seems selfish to me. And given the three alternatives I mentioned for sustaining a business using Open Source, I would prefer depending upon community appreciation (a gratifying validation of one's work) even when it means less money.
-----
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect opinions or stances of my employer.
They are asking people to sign up for their service. You give them $5 a month, they give you benefits. How is this a "donation/contribution?"
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
It's a sad commentary for a company to beg you, the user for money just so you, the user, can enjoy the fruits of their work. I think Mandrake should stop allowing free downloads of Linux Mandrake and that they should charge more for the distro. I got my flame retardent suit on, so flame away!
Je m'en bat les couilles. Mandrake c'est fini. Allez Slackware, allez l'OM.
All this BS can easily be avoided if people just realised that its OK to charge for a software product! It's OK to pay developers to develop software! Stop convincing people that they can have everything for free. A modest charge of $30 for the base OS and $10-$30 for modest software $50 for larger and people would WANT to pay for it! It's the $300 for an OS and $500 for software that's the problem. Make it cheap and valuable! I for one would LOVE to pay quality software. And I'd love even more to keep my fucking job! (thank you very much)
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Oh yeah, since you use Mandrake but don't want to give them a donation do the next best thing - BUY SOME STOCK.
What Mandrake needs right now is a CASH INFUSION. Unless you purchase stock directly from the company you are not giving your cash to the company. I don't know if it is possible to directly purchase from the company; one of the benefits of membership was direct stock purchase, so I'm assuming that you can't make a direct purchase unless you buy a membership. If you buy shares on the open market, your cash is going to the person who sold you his shares, not to the company!
The Daily Build
Maybe because IBM is in talks with RedHat? I don't think they yet realize that they can help other distros other than RH, and that is a 'Good Thing'.
Or maybe RH is doing the same thing as M$ and is trying to block investment in other linux distros.
Signatures are supposed to be funny?
Bot only that, but what these people build is done to benefit us all. Free software is a good idea, but the companies that work hard on bringing it to us should get some recognition. $60 isn't too much to ask. It's cheaper than the Microsoft tax and all of the tools that you could need are provided in the box for free, or are available for download.
I can't code worth a squat (though I am learning). I've always wanted to give back to the Open Source community, and this is the way I can do it.
Redhat is a corperate distro, Mandrake is for Desktop users
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Your view is very naive and doesn't reflect how the technology business works. It would be extremely hard to bootstrap a technology company without running into the red for a little while. It takes investment to build a quality product. They are not building some simple software product like a game. Its a huge software project that requires a tremendous amount of integration work and testing to produce a decent product. Red hat required investment to be where they are as did SuSE, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple. Technology companies are not selling fruit or wooden boxes. What they do requries cash before they can sell. It takes R&D, it takes expensive engineering time.
Its simple. The investment community is largely a risk averse and technology illiterate bunch and they would not be sympathetic to a company like
Mandrake. They are trying to turn users into investors.
If you like their product, put down the Ayn Rand, and send them some cash.
I joined the Mandrake Club a couple of weeks ago after realizing that they had saved me from buying yet another version of Windoze and putting up with Redmond's hegemony. The fact that Mandrake installed and ran flawlessly also figured into the decision.
I figured that I would be spending lots of money not only for the windoze OS but for the antivirus products and other crap required to keep it running. At that point, joining and, for that matter, buying some stock is enlightened self interest. Someday I hope to contribute to open source but for now, I will contribute money for true value received and feel good about my investment and what it will give me in the future.
You sir, are a retard.
I promise you that nearly every OS developer who puts in more than 10 hours a week also has a dayjob. They do it for the same reason people do any other hobby. Because they love it. They also happen to have jobs and families.
A few people have made OS their business, but most can't. Mandrake can live or die. I hope they live, but if not, no biggie. Their contributions won't vanish and the thousands of faithful afternoon coders can continue on.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
woohoo!!
500th Post!!
Given enough hydrogen, just about anything is possible.
Please note, these are my personal experiences.
Mandrake-Linux IMO is overall a nice product.
On the other side, they smile a big smile (and pat their shoulders) when facing Open Source (free as in beer) people, spitting on their, oh so bad, money-paying customers (at least the private ones). Just check out their forums how they communicate with customers who actually payed for the packs. Then they do not offer any updates to the packs, except for an online order (I buy my PowerPacks locally since I dislike e-shopping), one has to buy the full-price stuff. Oh, and it was not possible to activate my support-account so far.
My conclusion: When you want to go with Mandrake, get it from their FTP. Join their Club in order to get "Commercial Apps", a big smile and make them a living (so you can continue leeching your fav' distro from ftp). Do NOT (!) buy the PowerPacks, do not expect them to handle you with care, when you payed their product. They feel so superior and holy (GPL is their bible) that they will think you stink when you are a "classic" customer type (maybe they think you work on proprietary products, where would your money come from else...!?)
You use the product but are incablable of reading the open easy to find fincacial statements that they post and e-mail out in their newsletters. This short trem finacial crisis is because of one thing and one thing only a mistake in hiring a US division CEO who had no idea what the company stood for. He took the US division down a very bad path and spent a ton of money trying to make the company into something it wasn't. He is gone but the company is suffering from the cash lost to his mistakes. The finacial statements say that they will be profitable by the end of 2001-2002 financial year. That seems pretty short term to me.
You spelled it wrong - it's Linux Torvaldez.
I have used and enjoyed most any linux distro you can think of. Mandrake is the first and only distro that I have seen absolutely die and not come back. Like, not even boot up again, ever. It was very enjoyable to use until it shat itself though. There was simply no recovery possible, this was on 8.0 with a journaling file system also...blew my mind that a box could be that dead. Installed Rh 7.2 and it is just lovely. Bye Mandrake, so long. Stop riding on someone elses (RH) back. Stop allowing people to DL your entire distro...stop being such a bunch of hippies...damn.
A potential customer can download ISO images from the Mandrake site for free. He can download ISO images of a different distribution for free. He can purchase a shrink-wrap distribution from Mandrake. Or he can purchase a shrink-wrap box of a different distribution. Only on of those provides revenue to Mandrake, and it is up to Mandrake to make that option more desirable. Doing so requires making that option easier.
Mandrake needs to start seriously thinking about advertising and pre-sales support. They need to make it as easy to find out what is in a Mandrake box as it is to find out what is in a RedHat box. They need to provide more information on their web site and they need to start answering their email.
If I can't find out whether a specific application is in a specific package, much less what release it is, then why should I spend the money on the shrink-wrap version? Come on, this isn't rocket science, this is marketting for dummies.
This is my first /. post ever. Normally I just lurk.
I just can't comprehend this "Mandrake is a newbie/for profit
outfit, so if they go under, they deserve to" attitude.
I have used Linux since kernel version 1.1. I owe my career to
it. I have ported it to a couple of research simulators. I think
I know enough about it to not be called a newbie.
There are machines on which I want to write/control everything,
starting from the first instruction in boot rom. And there are
machines on which I want things to just work and not have to
bother with the details. My main development machine runs
Mandrake, and it definitely falls in the latter category.
I also use a Solaris machine. Linux doesn't yet do very well when
it comes to VLSI design tools. And my "PC" if I may call it that
runs MacOS X. I don't see a conflict in that. Every one of these
OSs has its use.
Mandrake serves a useful function to me, as it does to several
thousands of others. It makes my life easier and more
productive. Whether it is for profit or newbieish is
irrelevant. Whether their business model is sound or not is none
of my business either. They serve me a useful purpose and I am
willing to shell out the cash -- though I am back in grad school
and don't have much of it.
Anything which makes life more pleasant deserves a chance.
Whether they did it for profit or not does not matter. Send in
the spare $$$. Have a nice tomorrow!
Like others I always keep a copy of a MDK Disk 1 CD handy for managing installations of almost any OS. The partitioning tool is often a life saver,
and MDK a fine distro.
$60 seems a minimal investment if it helps to maintain a vibrant Linux market. It would
be most unfortunate if Redhat, IBM and Sun ?
become the only "mainstream" Linux options.
I promise you that nearly every OS developer who puts in more than 10 hours a week also has a dayjob
Ad Hominem attacks aside, I really don't know what the hell you are talking about. Your statement implies that the more time a developer spends on OS development the more likely it is they have another job. Did you type what was in your head? The people we are talking about are those for whom this is their day job. Some of these people go to MS, SUN, or once upon a time RH, or some other company that can actually pay them to develop OSes. Some of them go to companies with insane business models that go tits up as soon as the VCs bail. You were aware that there are actually OS companies out there making money weren't you?
Some of use are tired of hearing the whining from the last vestiges of the VC boom of the late '90s. Your funding has dried up. Too bad. If you aren't on your feet by now you were never going to be anyway. And the folks who went to work for these albatrosses did so with dollar signs in their eyes, trading foosball and free pizza for long hours and the promise of a payoff....someday. Well folks, someday is today, and the payoff is a swift kick in the ass.
Hope you enjoyed your Kool-Aid.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Its short and sweet - take making money seriously. I love open source and I am a contributor to it. I also notice that I'm not stupid enough to make a company with Mandrake's sort of scheme. Redhat did and is doing 'ok' - thats great - they did something I probably would not have. But if they ever needed money I would have to refuse and tell them to get real jobs :) Am I happy that Linux is getting more mature all the time as a desktop OS? Nope. Seems like reinventing the wheel on the grand scheme of things. As a server platform? Sure! The kernel, emacs, DNS and a limited set of others are the only things worth a puke about opensource - the rest is garbage.
I cannot believe how many people are willing to send their money which they probably earned in _real life jobs_ to a company which is really built on a dream - to sit cozy and capitalize on something that is free. Ultimately all companies do this, so I ask you - what makes this company different?
I read the article, went to www.mandrake.com and signed up for a "Silver" level membership. I figure I've downloaded and used Mandrake Linux (along with others as well) since I got ADSL in October, 2000. Since then, I haven't purchased a single copy, so I think I can pony-up $120.00 to help out one of the companies that produces an outstanding Linux distro.
Now we only need 7,997 more people to "dig deep" and help them out.
No matter where you go... there you are.
I think Mandrake is the best linux distro out there, and I'm happy to support it.
Especially when directed at someone who is probably not a native English speaker (Mandrake are based in France)
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
So now it's Free as in Lunch software?
Problem with 8.1 was that our kernel team kept telling "yeah, supermount will be ready, don't worry", and we trusted them. So, supermount wasn't ready, and we had to get it out of the distro in the last minute, which resulted in the lack of the devices links under KDE and GNOME.
This time PPC version will be finished
shortly after the i686 version.
FYI, we decided to skip every second release
with PPC, in order to spare a bit on developement costs.
That's why there has been no 8.1 version, there will be 8.2 version, and we'll (probably) skip the next release again.
As a SuSE user, you aren't one of the people
this is directed to, and I really
don't think you should give any money to Mandrakesoft.
Not that I would mind it if you do, but what's the point in paying for something you don't use?
IBM doesn't give a s* about mandrakesoft.
They have their "favorites", and they take
good care of these companies: RH, SuSE, TurboLinux.
I think folks at IBM would be quite happy to see Mandrakesoft gone.
This is a valid question. Why *should* I pay for something I already own. Unfortunately with respect to theoretical properties it's hard to think of them in a concrete fashion. So I have decided to respond by answering in a different way.
Why should I pay for the car I already own? Why should I pay a mechanic, who is trained, licensed and certified to work on my brakes for me?
When my car makes a noise that I do not recognize what is the first thing I do? I seek to get assistance with the problem. I do not know how to repair a modern vehicle, but I figure I might be able to take the wheel assembly apart and fudge my way through it. Right? Maybe, but I'd probably be wrong. I'd forget an important nut or bolt or something.
The best thing I can do is to take the vehicle to a professional. Someone who makes it their life's work to make sure my car operates in the proper manner. They have tools specifically designed for one purpose and many boxes in which to hold them.
If I did do the work on my car myself, and if we all did the work ourselves, we all may become decent at keeping *our* car running. All of the professionals would be put out of business because we can keep one car running, we wouldn't need them anymore, right? So what happens when GM releases the new 2006 Chevy Youknowuwanit that everyone has to have? We all run out, get our new cars, and suddenly realize we don't know how to work on it. It's different than the old one, but now we also don't have any mechanics trained to work on it, we've put them all out of business. When the 2006 Youknowuwanit breaks down, we are S.O.L.
The exact same is true of any community. Especially Linux. I can muddle my way through some code, and probably even figure out how to fix it well enough to keep *my* box running correctly. By not helping the community in any way we are going to drive off all of our mechanics. And when the Linux SuperCool 7.9.0.1 kernel is released in 2044, we're all screwed because no one knows how to work it. No one has mastered it.
Why pay for something you already own, indeed. Nothing, no where, no how, no matter what is ever *ever* "free" my friend. Everything comes with a price, everything comes with a decision to be made. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Cheers.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
I've been running Windows XP since beta2, and it really kicks ass. I don't
have to recompile my kernel when I want to install an ethernet card, it
automatically detects it and installs the drivers no matter who the
manufacturer is. Dual monitors? No chore with windows, get two video cards,
two monitors and it's set up! I don't need to edit config files with editors
that are 20 years old, and show it. Intellimouse custom buttons? Piece of
cake, with my Intellimouse software.
You want to run games? Great! Choose from an array of tens of thousands of
games that run great under DirectX and the NT subsystem. Stability got you
down? Not in this version, I have had uptimes of over a month (and then the
damn power goes out). Good internet browser? No need for Kommunist shit,
you've got the great Internet Explorer 6 a click away.
Doing some development? Nothing but the best for Windows users, choose from a
suite of Visual Studio products that suits your needs, with one killer IDE.
Or, pick up a beta edition of Visual Studio.NET if you have 200 megs of RAM
to spare! You Linux faggots can keep rooting for your piece of shit operating
system that Windows 3.1 tops in terms of compatibility, all the while
hindering your experience for something else you could be doing, while I use
the operating system of choice (or by default) for over 200 million others in
the world.
Anti-Microsoft zealots piss and moan all you want, but your queer little OS
won't be the reigning desktop champion anytime soon.
I'm not talking about a payoff. What got Linux to the point that it was pre-VC interest? There was a good deal of time between 90 and 97, and a lot of work occurred. I'm not speaking about companies making a profit. I'm talking about the massive contribution of hobbyists.
Most paid OS developers, aside from the distros, are developing in certain areas that help their products. If SUN needs x functionality from their next big iron server to sell the hardware, and the easiest way of adding that functionality is to pay someone to hack GNU code, then that's what they'll do.
I was protesting the original post claiming that most OS hackers hope to get something in return for their efforts. Significant contributions of the big boys aside, I think the bulk of the reason for Linux' success lies with the little guys, who all work day-jobs.
I'm not a blind OpenSource devotee. For common home-officie tasks, I use Windows, because in all honesty there is no reason to type a paper or surf the web or play a game on Linux unless you're just interested in *doing it on Linux*
And I didn't get the implication of your last paragraph. They left the VC funded "foosball and pizza" companies with dollar signs in their eyes and got kicked in the ass? If you left a startup for the promise of an eventual payoff and got punished, wouldn't that be contrary to your argument?
Ahhh well... goodnight
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!