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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.
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).
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".
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 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!
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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 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
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.
This is +4 interesting? I've rarely read more blatant Flamebait.
As others have pointed out, Mandrake makes significant contributions to the Linux world. Mandrakes DiskDrake partitioning utility (for example) is better then some commercial I've seen. And unlike most other distributions, everything Mandrake does is GPL'd (politely correct me if this is wrong. At the very least, most of what they do is GPL'd).
As for all of the other distributions, while some may be less relavent then others, they all contribute in one way or another. At the least, they come up with new ideas, some of which may eventually find there way into the big distros.
Don't support them if you don't want to, but if they die, all Linux users will directly or indirectly suffer as a result.
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.
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
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!
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.