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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."
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.
Well they're claiming that it's a short-term cash crunch. Often this sort of thing happens because businesses sign up for large contracts paid in installments. i.e $1m paid quarterly over 15 years. If they've got some big cash due in soon then this could all be temporary.
But, this sort of situation is why companies go public (like mandrake did) and I'd wonder where their capital has gone. Perhaps they haven't been as frugal as required to survive in these recessionary times.
They could well be able to survive (and thrive!) after this short hurdle. But given how close all this is to their IPO...... Maybe they won't
Cheers Koz
And here I was thinking they named it the narcotic. :
Merriam-Webster:"the root of a mandrake formerly used especially to promote conception, as a cathartic, or as a narcotic and soporific"
I thought that one could not own the rights to something that is an actual word, other than as they have trademarked it within their industry?
But then again, I never did spend much time studying legalese beyond understanding that in the courts being "right" often does not matter.
-S
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.
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
Regarding boxed distros: if you want to buy Mandrake, don't go to a store and do it. Buy from http://www.mandrakestore.com. Mandrake gets approximately double the money from that venue (or you could buy two copies at another store and help make Linux more prominent at that store...)
Just for your information, MandrakeSoft has already
laid off employees (around 10, I was one of them),
and asked (on a *volontary* basis) others to accept
salary cuts (being less paid for some time).
So it seems they can't do more this way. There were already to much to do.