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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."
Well, make that 7,999 members more, I guess, though I didn't see where they mentioned how many members they've got.
I don't even run Mandrake, but I have been giving it serious consideration.
It seems quite reasonable for a Linux company to operate like PBS and Public Radio do, to me.. free product? Used by millions? Sure, I'll chip in for that. They've even got premiums!
Seriously, though, this shit can't go on forever, can it?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
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.
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
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.