Mandrake Policy Change Angers Users

phalse phace writes "Yahoo! News is carrying a ZDNet News article which reveals that Mandrake has decided to change its policy regarding its Mandrake Club. Previously, Mandrake stated that all membership levels would enjoy the same benefits. But since Mandrake Linux 8.2 will include StarOffice 6.0 and Sun is charging for it, they decided to only allow the download of SO 6.0 to Silver members and higher."

Comments

OpenOffice?

[zapfie]

Instead of bothering with licencing fees related to StarOffice, why not just include OpenOffice? They're the same codebase, right?

Re:OpenOffice?

[goldid]

Indeed. The question is important to ask: why support StarOffice? If you're an open source firm, and your revenue base is fragile, why would you start including other people's software which costs? If peple want StarOffice, let them go get it. Mandrake can include OpenOffice, KOffice, or many different individual products/projects such as AbiWord. There is no reason to have StarOffice in the distro.

Re:OpenOffice?

[blkros]

Exactly. Plus, I feel, if you pay more, you should get more, anyways. So you can still download open office no matter what level you are, and if you gave the company more money, you can get Star office, personally I feel this is quite fair, and will probably cost less than buying Star from Sun.

Re:OpenOffice?

[bero-rh]

People who want a GUI.
While PostgreSQL and MySQL may be technically superior, none of them
provides an easy to use database editor yet, especially not if
you don't have a privileged account in the db ("create database").
(Think of M$ converts looking for a replacement to M$ Access).
There are some projects to provide an easier frontend for PostgreSQL and/or MySQL,
but none of them are really ready for prime time yet.

Seems Logical

[Rushuru]

I heard SO 6.0 will be sold for approximately 100 (like $112), so Mandrake can't give it to the $5 a month / $60 a year members.

The people who subscibed to Mandrake club did it because they want to support the distro, so I guess they'll do the math and understand that it just isn't possible to give them StarOffice.

Anyway, OpenOffice is not very different from StarOffice, and it's available for free, so what's the big deal?

Re:Seems Logical

[HanzoSan]

Silver and Gold members subscribe for incentives, people who want to just support mandrake can pay 60 bucks a year

Thats a logical business plan, make people pay more money by offering incentives.

Businesses want open office.

Fair Enough

[ackthpt]

The only thing I'd question is the short notice. They should take better care to avoid such a gaffe in the future. If they had announced, before 8.2 was released, that Star Office 6.0 would be at a premium due to Sun's charging, members would have less to gripe about.

Dirty Marketing Trick was Long-Planned

[heretic108]

I strongly suspect that early in the development cycle, Sun planned to charge for StarOffice. All they needed to do was get a few stable releases out the door, win some acceptance for the product and, above all, get users accustomed to it and reluctant to learn yet another office suite.

I wonder how many people would have downloaded and invested the time to learn Star Office if they had known from the outset that Sun was planning to charge for it.

Sun, you are a pretty good company in most respects, but I don't think this tactic will benefit your reputation. It would have been better if you kept the basic Star Office suite free, and offered some corporate-targeted optional add-ons (that private users and small companies don't need) at a price. Similar to your Forte Java IDE suite (Free 'Community Edition' through to pricey 'Enterprise Edition'). That would have kept people's trust in your company.

Hopefully, you'll write this off as a mistake, and offer 'Community Editions' of SO 6 and beyond.

Re:Given the choices

[ackthpt]

I suppose that they could just go and suck it up, and absorb all of the costs of the license fees and distribute it free.

Perhaps you're congusing Mandrake with Microsoft, GE, IBM or some other company with lots of liquid assets they can absorb losses. In case you haven't noticed, Mandrake is suffering from low revenues, hence the membership drive.

Free doesnt make money

[HanzoSan]

Of course Mandrake isnt going to be free. People have to pay for the development. The clubs are just the way mandrake is going to make their money

Yes! Reality Check People!

[BitMan]

I'm not a Mandrake fan, nor do I use it. But I've gotta side with Mandrake in this one, because it's obvious some of you are taking their goodwill too far. I pay RedHat the similar $60/year, the lowest level, for priority downloads and other services. I don't expect anything more, nor should you Mandrake $60/yearers after reading their agreement.

Reality check people! $60/year does NOT entitle you to a product that is almost $100 on the retail shelf. I don't care about OEM licensing, Mandrake has got to make money! Furthermore, that $60 probably barely covers all the other services and benefits provided. Lastly, the statement of "receive the same benefits" would most likely extend to only Mandrake products and services, and NOT 3rd party products and/or services. Otherwise, Mandrake would go "belly up" (actually all distros seem to have a constant loss after all expense considerations, even RedHat).

Frankly, Mandrake should be commended on allowing StarOffice to be downloaded as an .iso thanx to membership, and Sun for licensing it to Linux distributors so they can do so. Man, I'm really getting sick of this "whining" crap. Some of you "whiney" Linux users need to go! At least before most of the good, GPL-focused commercial organizations cannot sustain your selfishness!

To be or not to be - a level platform that is

[Anonymous Bullard]

I gave Mandrake my $60 in return for a club membership after their recent and rather desperate appeal for funds (to build the free Linux platform) so I feel that I'm entitled to an opinion, whether you agree with me or not.

There are two reasons why I don't like this StarOffice license deal:

1) People who in essense donated money to Mandrake in order to promote the development of the free platform now find some of that money going into Sun's coffers, regardless whether they wished to buy a license for the proprietary StarOffice or not.

I welcome any kind of Linux software support by independent developers and commercial ISVs but how does this kind of deal encourage choice? Should the vendors of WordPerfect Office, SmartSuite or god forbid MS-Office, or any other commercial applications, begin to sell pre-paid licenses to users/supporters of particular platforms? If you had effectively paid for one (as part of your platform support) would you still be interested in paying for the one that might really interest you? How is Mandrake's paying for StarOffice really different from hardware OEM's paying for Windows + MS-Office "on your behalf" when you go out and buy that new beige box? Shouldn't both the OEM's and Mandrake let the customer decide if they want the extras? Just negotiate the bulk discounts for your customers and let them decide.

2)"All members are entitled to same benefits"

I simply can't see how any vendor should be allowed to change such terms unilaterally and without due warning, let alone a Linux vendor who had just appealed to people's goodwill and financial help.

I've supported Linux (various flavours, bought boxes, converted and helped Windows converts etc.) for many years and one of the main attractions of Linux for me personally was the moral high ground it offered. I still like Mandrake's distro and appreciate their efforts at promoting Linux use on the desktop but I'm not happy with the way they handled this issue. Did something happen to Mandrake's soul when they became a publically-traded company?

It will be interesting to see whether the Mandrake Club staff will ever answer my email or not...

Now go ahead and burn me at stake for not approving with everything that some free software company does. I'm strong enough to take (actually deflect) any crap without the urge to join some militaristic boot camps. So there.