Mandrake Clarifies its Future

fabiolrs writes "Mandrake Linux has an article in response to the message they sent on march 11th. They claim that because of user help they are "cash-flow positive"! That is great news since Linux community is now sure it will continue using one of the nicest distros available!"

Comments

Great project, great company!

[joestar]

I see Mandrake/MandrakeSoft as today's real innovators in the Free Sofware world. First they totally changed the approach of Linux distributions makers by giving more importance to ease of use for instance. Secondly, they have a business approach which is *very* innovative. I can feel something about Mandrake, I don't know exactly what, which looks like the best approach around here to conciliate business and Free Software while always keeping 100% compatibility with Free Software.

The Mandrake Club is a great way to monetize a user base as large as Mandrake users. It provides many advantages such as StarOffice 6.0 (final version!) which has not even been released just because Sun seemed to believe in this club and wanted to give it a boost... The Club is also a great "tool" for users to ensure that MandrakeSoft will keep on delivering great products such as the excellent Mandrake 8.2 (which I use mostly on servers, but which is so nice as well to replease Windows on my laptop!).

Great project, great company - you've got my support guys!! :-)

Re:Cashflow

[joestar]

I totally disagree with you! :-) In my IT environment I can see more and more companies using Mandrake. You know, Windows 2000 is very focused on the desktop, but companies use it as a server ;-) This is the advantage of Mandrake: it's solid and reliable, which is needed for servers use, and it's very friendly as well, which is needed for a large adoption. I think you should have a look at Mandrake Business Cases to see how much Mandrake is used in the industry.

Why the attitude of some users....

[linuxrunner]

Here's a quote from a prior post:

If Mandrake doesn't make it, another user-friendly GNU/Linux distro will take up the slack.

No offense to anyone, but is this the type of attitude we're supposed to have in the opensource community? Is this the best we can do? Just to have a revolving door, of when they don't make it, someone else will do it, until they fall too... repeat.

Are you that cheap?

The Open Source community should be about sharing code, sharing to make better, sharing to contribute, sharing to learn from... But not sharing to mooch off of.

I say go ahead and mooch at first. Learn about the product, etc... but if you like it, then support it. I know most MDK users are fanatics. I am one. I also know redhat users are fanatics, I am also one.
I support both buy purchasing future releases off of the web sites. I know the iso's are there... But I choose to support the distro's so they'll be there in the future with a BETTER product.

MDK needed help so they had to ask for money, yet people mock them for it.
MDK is not making star office 6.0 free since sun is not making it free, and people mock them.

Are you a linux user or not?

Are you going to support the cause? Or just talk about it?

How to use some of that money

[DrXym]

I wish a distro - ANY distro - would invest some money in usability. Linux is never going to be ready for the desktop until someone sits 100 volunteers in front of a computer and asks them to do stuff - copy text, format a disk, connect to the internet etc. and implements the findings. There is no distro or UI (KDE/GNOME) which comes even remotely close to being user friendly as OS X or XP define it. The prize for the first distro to pull it off will be huge.

While experts can find their way around existing distros, mere mortals will rightly conclude that XP or OS X is a better choice for them simply because it doesn't put up barriers at every stage. Even little things as more task orientation, hiding advanced settings in secondary dialogs and removal of needlessly jargon filled alerts can do much to simplify a UI.

Re:How to use some of that money

[Arandir]

I must respectfully disagree. I haven't used either OSX or WXP yet, but so far KDE blows the socks off of Win95/98/NT/2k in terms of user friendliness, usability and functionality.

I've used everything *but* Windows for the past twenty years. CPM, 44BSD, DOS, GeoWorks, OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD. But recently I've started using it. There were some games I wanted to use, and they're also making me use it at work now and then. Frankly, it sucks.

Most people who say Unix/Linux/BSD is too hard say so because they are used to Windows and not used to Unix. My situation is the opposite. I'm used to Unix but not to Windows. Windows is hard to use. It's inconsistant. It's clunky.

I can install most Linuces and every BSD with one single reboot at the end of the process. I can rebuild every piece of software except the kernel and never have to reboot. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4.4 to 4.5 with one reboot, and that included a fresh partitioning and format of the harddrive. Try that under Windows. I did a Windows install a couple of weeks ago and I had to reboot four times. Afterwards I had to reboot forevery driver and program I installed. This is ridiculous.

Under XFree86 I have to tell it what video card and monitor I have. That's easy. Under Windows it won't let you specify what your hardware is. It must guess instead. And it kept guessing wrong.

And configuration! Don't talk to me about ease of use until you've tried to configure a Windows system without knowing WindowsSpeak. Why do they hide all the necessary configuration stuff under layers and layers of badly designed dialogs? Why must it keep resetting all the values I type in by hand? Why can't they use plain English instead of their stupid euphemisms for god knows what? And what they hell's the difference between the hostname and the machine name, and is a group name the same as a domain name? Gah!

Finally, the desktop. Gnome and KDE win hands down. Frankly, the Windows desktop is a piece of shit. Windows under Windows won't snap to the edge or to other windows. You can't send them to the bottom of the window stack with a single mouse click. You don't have window rollups. You can't maximize vertically or horizontally. You don't have multiple desktops. Hell, it can't even display a JPG wallpaper without firing up an instance of Internet Explorer!

A few months ago my employer decided to standardize on Outlook. So our engineering department all got new PCs with Win2K installed next to their Solaris Sparc workstations. What a horrowshow! People who could write kernel drivers in their sleep couldn't figure this Windows thing out. The rest of the company looked at us like we were idiots because we didn't know what to do. IT was flabbergasted because we were asking questions they had never heard before.

"How do I ssh to stomper from Windows?"
"How do I enable plaintext in Outlook?"
"How do I turn on command completion in the DOS shell?"
"Where's vi, emacs, gcc, pine..."

"How do I get a static IP like I've got on my Sparc?" "You don't need one." "Then how to I log on remotely to my PC?" "Why would you want to?" "Because I might be in the lab." "Aargh! Why can't you guys be like everyone else and just do what you're told!"

I guess that's the big difference right there. Windows users are content with being told what to do. Unix users are only content if they are in charge of their system. Maybe Windows is user friendly to sheep, but it ain't user friendly to most other species.

Uhhhh, hang on...

[Rogerborg]

I'm puzzled... Mandrake are saying that it's an innovative idea to offer more stuff in return for more money.

Before you get the troll stick out, go and read their statement. That's exactly what they say. That people were buying the box set (instead of downloading) just to give them funds, and this is a better method than that "charity purchase" because it gives more benefits to the purchaser.

You ever see that Dilbert strip where Dogbert is explaining the basics of economics to a .com startup?

• Startup Guy: Wait... you're saying we need revenue to make profit?
• Startup Gal: Ouch. I have a headache on one side.

Sounds to me like Mandrake has just discovered the basics. Sell stuff. Offer more stuff the more money you pay. Tell your customers that they're partners, because that way they're more inclined to pay (in this case, it's actually true, but the point it that it's still standard marketing spin, and business types are comforted by familiar mantras).

Hurrah for Mandrake. I've been thinking for a while now that we could do with fewer commercial Linux distros, and better concentration of funds. I'm a SuSE user (and purchaser), but really, I don't mind who gets the money, as long as we get a few sustainable businesses out of it that we can all donate to/buy from - and get our employers to buy from - with a degree of confidence that they'll still be there next year to offer support.

Re:Its somewhat depressing...

[MCZapf]

... sound business plan.

A lot of people keep saying this, but what on Earth does that mean? It seems to me that people just want Mandrake to conjure up something (boxed sets, support, etc.) and slap a price tag on it. I don't think this is necessarily any better than getting "donations" from users, other than the fact that businesses prefer fixed payments up front.

The word "donations" is misleading anyway. I'll bet most people who send money to Mandrake are themselves Mandrake users, who consider the money not a donation, but a form of belated payment. I myself use Mandrake Linux, and am considering joining the Mandrake Club (whatever it's called). I certainly don't mind paying. I was never under the illusion that Linux distributions are truely free (in that they require money and manpower to produce).

In conclusion, I think getting donations (aka belated payments) from users is a perfectly fine survival plan. As for business plans, well, I don't know.

Re:Its somewhat depressing...

[Omnifarious]

I think you persist in willfully misunderstanding their business plan in the service of the "You can't make money selling Libre Software" meme.

I use RedHat, and religiously buy a new box with every release so they get money and it stays on retail shelves. I know I don't _have_ to, but in my own cost/benefit analysis, the money I spend on their boxes is well worth it. I'm not making a 'donation', I'm consciously investing in my own future. I'm investing in the security updates I know I'll recieve. I'm investing in the next version that I know they are working on. RedHat has earned my trust in this regard, and I know that to continue to produce the things I need and/or treasure, they need my support.

It's not free software, it's Libre software. It takes time, and effort to produce. The people who put in that time and effort need to eat as much as the rest of us. When people like you spread the 'donation' meme, you devalue their work and falsely give the impression that it's voluntary and a 'gift' when what it really is is an investment in the future of a product you use daily.

Re:My point of view on Mandrake

[tweek]

Let's see here:
1. I still can't play Shockwave files with Mandrake installed "out of the box"
- Nor can anyone else on any linux distribution. Get the crossover plugin and you might have luck. Flash is the only native plugin available to linux from Macromedia.

2. I still have to resort to the command line when installing apps like OpenOffice
- Since when is this Mandrake's problem? Talk to the openoffice people.

3. I still have to resort to using LinNeighbourhood as Mandrake won't see my user account exported from a Linux box via Samba
- Again this seems like a KDE problem and not Mandrake's

4. CTRL+C and CTRL+V still doesn't work flawlessly between applications from different Desktop Environments (i.e. KDE and Gnome)
- yet another "talk to the actual application developer

5. I still have to manually configure mime types in Evolution to make it use Galeon instead of Mozilla
- So you decided to use Galeon over Mozilla which Mandrake happily preconfigured as the handler for those file types? Sounds like a you problem. I personally don't WANT galeon to overwrite my mime settings. Isn't that one of the pains in the ass under windows is that every app under god's nutsack want's to be your default handler?

6. I still have to manually configure Mozilla setup a minimum font size so that I don't get those stupid fonts that are so small that they are unreadable
- I'll give you this one. Why can't distro providers preinstall mozilla-fonts and set those as the default. Then again, maybe you like your fonts bigger than most.

7. I still have to re-configure mime types so that when I click an m3u (MP3 playlist) in Galeon, it uses xmms
- Sounds like another case of you just wanting to be a little different. Not a problem mind you but Mandrake (and any other distro for that matter) have to make a stand somewhere. This is our default config. We can help you with some stuff but not others. Hence the support subscriptions.

8. And of course I still can't edit Microsoft Word documents with 100% accuracy, despite all the crowing that goes on about OpenOffice, StarOffice, KDE Office and the others
- So this isn't a mandrake problem either. It sounds like an OpenOffice,StarOffice,KDE Office and the others problem.

Having said all that, I still fail to see what your problem with mandrake is? I don't personally use it but everything you've listed is not related to mandrake by any stretch.