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?

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.

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!