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Interview With Gaël Duval of Mandrake Linux
jukal writes "Open for Business's Timothy R. Butler talked with Mandrake co-founder Gaël Duval about the company's past, present, and future. Worth a read, clip: "GD: For one year, we had a so-called "World Class Management" team that left us in a very bad financial situation, and engaged the company in ventures (such as e-learning) that we should never have been involved with. But that's all part of our history now, so I'd prefer to not dwell too much on that. ""
is it that the saying at the bottom of the /. page was:
"All problems are the fault of the last person who quit, until some else quits"?
"problems? why, there the fault of world class managment, hrumph. hurumph. eveythings fine now though."
I don't know there situation, and this isn't a comment about Mandrake per se, but I founf the coincidence very funny.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Slashdotted already, here's a mirror--
mirror
They do deserve credit as they best distro linux can muster for the desktop.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
...because? I thought we're supposed to say Windows sucks? I'm so confused! Seriously, though, any victory for Linux is a victory for BSD (and vice-versa). Time for the two camps to learn to play well together.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I kind of like www.bakla.net
I've been around for quite a while and to me Mandrake is still RedHat+KDE.. Or as I like to call it "unethical RedHat". And everytime I see something about them I have that prejudice. Even tho I've seen their recent distribution and they seemed quite good as a desktop distribution...
Am I the only one?
18 posts and only 2 worth even considering reading!
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
Plan v1.0
1. Employ "World-class Management"
2. ???
3. Profit!
Oops, that didn't work, let's try v2.0
1. ???
2. ???
3. Profit!
Why you gotta go appropriating Red Hat?
Uou. That is to me some pretty cool idea. I am not sure this is the way to go, but it sounds promising. The other viable model for Mandrake would be to sell solutions (customized desktop environments plus support) to big companies, which is what redhat seems to be trying to do with their upcoming "corporate desktop" thing. Mandrake should go ahead in the same direction. They have a much more polished desktop product.
I fail to see why the company shouldn't have been involved in e-learning - or is making money not one of their objectives?
Is there a World Class Management pool? Some common recruiting agency for World Class Management?
.net web services software make me laugh though. World Class Managment is good at building and protecting empires. The TX operation is mostly a group of empires waiting to be destroyed.
Intira supposedly had a world class management team too. Poor retreads from Motorola, Iridium and Ascend.
Now it's part of divine. Yet another group of World Class Management.
Ha. Screwups. This company has 250+ people in managed services in Texas. Clueless.
I don't mean to go too far off topic. Why are a bunch of stupid microsoft guys deciding how unix/linux systems are being run in DMS? OK. So at last I'm back to Unix. Their *nix screwups, poor designs, and crappy
When will the World Class Management end? After all the companies die? After these world class managers lose their companies, do they go into a world class management recycling bin? Who pimps these guys for large salaries and relative incompetence? And maybe more importantly, why can't senior management or board members not able to detect the foul stench? Is it greed, stupidity, or a con job disguised by tech that purposely seek to fool upper management.
One thing that you can't say about Microsoft is that it has succumbed to this. I mean as much as I don't like them. I'm always kind of blown away when I meet their senior guys. They are pretty darn good.
Why is it that lower tier Linux or other tech orgs just can't get it together with respect to management. Yeah, they don't have the money that Microsoft has, but think about all the senior guys that these companies get. I can't even blame the 30 year old techies who became managers. I don't really think they were necessarily the problem. I've seen it with all the middle age twits that have run these companies into the ground, if not from a senior management point of view, then at least from a board direction.
What is the cure to World Class Management? What causes this malady of mediocrity?
The above quote is the answer to one question out of about a dozen. 3 lines out of a 150 line article. And is misrepresenative of the article. Duval answers the question and moves on. He tries not to bitch, he tries not to complain. What's this "I love X distro, Mandrake sucks!" crap?
I mod this Slashdot story -1 Troll. Despite the fact it was a decent interview.
If you don't use Mandrake that's fine. Is it kind of a Newbie-Linux distro? You could argue that. It was the first distro I used.
There is place in the Linux-world for as many distros as anyone wants to put out. Deal with it.
Press Release
Andre M. Boisvert to Join VA Software's Board of Directors
FREMONT, Calif. -- March 20, 2002 -- VA Software Corporation (Nasdaq:LNUX), provider of the Source Forge(TM) collaborative software development platform, today announced that Andre M. Boisvert, former President of SAS Institute Inc. and software industry veteran, has joined the VA Software Board of Directors. [after being fired from everywhere else]
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The months have passed and I have discovered that the "benefits" were only marketing "painting"
the extra rpms were in their vast majority obtainable from their vendors
StarOffice 6.0 - well, you actually pay for it. Only 120$+ members can get it, not the 60$ ones
the unsupported rpms, made by volunteers, sometimes cause more trouble than .tar.gz source compiling
direct trading ? yeah sure, what a benefit. Even if I were investing with my heart, I would still prefer a regular stock market.
not to mention that we, mandrake club members, don't even have a priority ftp!
Overall, I don't consider I was ripped off. The quality of Mandrake is reasonably good. And because the distro is so user-friendly I'm actually migrating my girlfriend to Linux as well (with some Codeweavers help). But there's no real advantage in MDK Club, and I fear the worst for Mandrake in the next year, when the 2001 March memberships will expire.
The Raven
The Raven
Compare the download page one year ago and now
"Am I the only one?"
.
I totally agree!
1. Kernel 2.4 -> Rip off of Kernel 2.2
2. Bash -> Rip off of Bourne Shell
3. . .
Or maybe that's the point? Don't "reinvent" the wheel. We're talking about "GPL and friends" software, right? Everything is a "Rip off" of something else. That's how the code doesn't get "wasted".
And, if Mandrake never added anything new, they would have disappeared. But . . . they added a lot of things that *some people* found valuable (I know you don't . . . but you're not the only one here).
And, if you wanted, you could create your own distro based on Mandrake, but you probably would not be able to convert the users that the current Mandrake appeals to . . . some might call your ditro a rip-off, regardless of how many new features you added. But, you might, just might, meet the needs of some folks that the other distros (including Mandrake) didn't. So who cares? Maybe one flavor of OS is not enough for 6 billion people. If everyone only wanted Mandrake (or Redhat), why aren't they all using it?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I don't know, is anybody qualified to manage open source projects? I mean, its a completely different business model.
I love Mandrake. It never gave me any problems with the install, it works incredibly well for all of my normal desktop needs, and it helps me with my Calc homework. I've also heard it works well in the server environment, which I never get to try out since I live in a backwards hick town that has little use for anything other than Windows.
If Mandrake says they had problems with a third-party management team, I believe them. They have yet to give me a reason not to.
Sure enough, the new CEO gets into some hot water in about a year and decides he has to open the first letter. Inside it says "Blame everything on me." He goes out and blames everything on his predecessor and the problem goes away.
Some more time passes and the CEO gets into some more hot water. He opens the second letter. Inside it says "Sit down and write two letters..."
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Malcom Gladwell of the New Yorker recently wrote an article about some of the problems with "World Class" management teams, and in general, certain myths revolving around the concept of "talent". It's an excellent read.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Refusing to even TRY mandrake.. whoa.. talk about some fucked up eliteist thinking.
info
I see people saying that they don't like this distribution or that distribution and how they don't want to pay for so and so distribution because they don't use it. If you look at the maintainers of the different components (RPMs, debs, etc. or rather look at the ChangeLogs within the tarballs.) is that all these different companies are furthing GNU Linux development. You'll see @mandrake.com, @redhat.com, etc in all the software that we all use.
:-)
Because of this, I see no problem contributing to them all where I can. I've purchased a years subscription to Transgaming, Mandrake Gaming edition, Mandrake Standard Edition, RedHat, Ximian Gnome, and even bought 90% of the Loki(RIP) games (at full price, ouch). The way I see it, if I can make my minor contribution in keeping all these guys doing what they do best (coding Linux), then I'm also helping Linux become the best it can be.
Also sending patches to the maintainers when I make bug fixes also helps.
Eventually put in 120 bucks . . .
.
-The extra downloads are "extra" (consist of commercial packages) and only attainable from the Mandrake packaged distro not the mirrors. I don't think other vendors let you download Star Office.
-Star Office is like $72 . . . you wanted it for $60 and were considering this charity?(for who?)
-unsupported rpms are "unsupported," but I haven't had any trouble (are you using urpmi?). Plus, I found Mplayer that way, which has been worth the $120 (since I don't have enought time to find such software on my own)
-direct trading only applies if you wanna own their stock, but this really is a revolution in the trading of equity (all they did is put up a little system that allows you to trade stock at volumes as low as 50 shares, without having to pay a 3rd party commission. Nothing special EXCEPT no other company seems to be doing this . . . ). So let me get this straight . . . if you had the choice, you would prefer to pay a 3rd party commission just to buy a stock that you have already decided to buy?
- As far as the priority ftp goes . . . it is unfortunate. However, if you spent some time reading posts at mandrakeclub you would know that something of that nature appears to be in the works . .
I'm sorry the club isn't what you expected but calling it charity seems a bit of an extreme. I wish you could be more specific about what you want out of the club instead of what you don't like.
". . . I fear the worst for Mandrake in the next year, when the 2001 March memberships will expire."
Mandrake 9.0 seems like it will bring in a lot of new members and another 13 new members joined in the last 24 hours so it doesn't seem as bad as you think. Of course, spreading your discontent here, instead of at Mandrakeclub really isn't helping the situation much (though I am sure a lot of mandrake folks visit slashdot on a regular basis).
In conclusion, I really just joined at first to help insure that the distro would continue. The "services" (call them what you like) were really just extra treats. Since I graduated college, I really don't have time to fool around with Linux the way I used to. My job, though it pays well, treats me like a drone and does not allow me to implement most of what I learned during my days in college (both from classes and from playing with Linux). Mandrake is easy enough for me to still play with during my short breaks and the mandrakeclub allows me to give something back since I don't have enough time to learn how to code. Oddly, I don't consider either side of the realationship to be "charity."
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I know this is dumb advice to a Debian user, but the graphical frontend to urpmi should work pretty well if you don't want to bother with the CLI version. Please ignore if not applicable ; )
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Come on, its unfair to quote failure of X.0 releases - everyone gets things right only with .2 - look at mandrake 8.2
The need for these Sun boxes is not there, Intel is the Chip leader is the Server Market, just walk through the Data Center, it is full of Intel!
Plus, Microsoft, they have the best eBusiness solutions software.
Why does anyone need sun Microsystems anymore? Intel processors are now running at workstation and server speeds. You can cluster Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Data Center to surpass the SunFire offering in terms of cost, performance, and interoperability. Once .NET Servers are unleashed onto the world, Sun won't be able to provide the needed Palladium support required to interact with the internet community because all sites will require Palladium copy protection to prevent theft of material.
Mandrake is great, but I really LOVE gentoo.
emerge is the coolest damn thing.
"and partly by companies that make money with Mandrake products, including MandrakeSoft"
I'm not sure I understand the concept. Does it imply for me being a developer, I will be made to pay for using ML on the commercial basis?
Anyway, will ML stay free?
Based on the number of users divided by the number of vulnerabilities. Imagine if your parents and kids had to configure Linux! There would be so much chaos because of improperly configured systems that the whole computing world would stop. The reason Windows is perceived to be insecure is that most people don't know anything about computers, and STILL Microsoft has only a limited number of problems.
Remember Grandma, and Junior aren't computer scientists and they can still run Windows securely. If they tried to configure Linux, Unix, or Solaris they would screw it up folks. We would have service packs up to the wazoo.
Sincerely,
Martin Marvinski, MCSD, MCSE, MS
All 10 are:
They have not fully funded the OPEN SOURCE LINUX MOVEMENT to get it ported to my xbox.
Well you have never worked on enterprise class systems. I work in a Sun and Windows shop and both systems have a place. For large enterprise databases you aren't going to run Intel servers they don't scale. Intel really only scales to four processers, with briding componets eight. But the eight-way server have a performance hit for the bridging. Yes, there are the datacenter servers but they are a even bigger kludge. Sun hardware is designed from the CPU up to scale from one CPU up. Plus dynamic reconfiguration. Try replacing memory or a CPU in a Intel server without shutting it down. Then the bus design on Sun, and ability to split servers into multiple domains. Then clustering the Windows clustering is weak only handling two nodes and four in some case. In fact on Windows I use Veritas clustering for up to 32 nodes and multiple heartbeat support. Intel hardware is good for small to medium systems, not large and enterprise class servers.
I never felt so good by sending out $60 (soon to be upgraded to $120), and expecting to get nothing "further in return".
After beta 4 (of 9.0), I really thought Mandrake had finally sizzled out.
But after testing RC2, I know I have an obligation to dole out another $60.
Keep up with the good work and club membership from the appreciative public will keep coming.
We were interested until the moment we realized that, although possessing a good distro with a significant user base, MandrakeSoft would never be a successful company because it never had a business plan. (Pause here for a chuckle at the thought of "world class management team")
I have all the respect in the world for people who code/invent/create for the pleasure of that moment of coding/invention/creation and do not say that all such moments need be related to an eventual profitmaking plan. However, I do ask that from a company who asks us for millions with the promise of return in the (not so far) future.
This is where you will ask about the ingenious subscription/donation plan of MandrakeSoft. In my humble opinion as a financial investor, this revenue model will probably keep the company afloat, but will never make it a very profitable company, because the subscribers/donators are only agreeing to this because they wish to see MandrakeSoft survive, not to see it thrive! Once the company starts making a little profit, these revenues will stop. In short, with its current "business model" based on subscriptions/donations MandrakeSoft can and will probably be a non-profit organization that can cover its costs... maybe with tiny little profits if its supporters are feeling particularly generous that quarter.
RedHat entering the business desktop market is not good news for MandrakeSoft either - that is one market they could have earned real money from and now that chance is going... going... gone. How can they possibly compete? I have a company that already runs RedHat, who also provides me the service I need. Who am I going to choose for the desktops - RedHat or MandrakeSoft?
I hope MandrakeSoft survives. They do cool software. However, their story would make a brilliant Harvard Business Review and should be taught in schools to show the perils of going ahead with an idea without a thought of how you intend to eventually make money with it.
Folks, there is a reason some things are free. Usually it is because they are crap that no one wants, otherwise it would be a commodity. Linux doesn't have the backing of any one company, and most work is done over the internet. Because of this, viruses, software development errors are a common occurance. That is why Linux is constantly in the process of being patched. Anyone who used KDE on RedHat 7.1 knows what I'm talking about. The Apache Web Server literally stands for "A patchy Web Server". I am not making this up folks.
Folks, there is a reason some things are free. Usually it is because they are crap that no one wants, otherwise it would be a commodity. Linux doesn't have the backing of any one company, and most work is done over the internet. Because of this, viruses, software development errors are a common occurance. That is why Linux is constantly in the process of being patched. Anyone who used KDE on RedHat 7.1 knows what I'm talking about. The Apache Web Server literally stands for "A patchy Web Server". I am not making this up folks.
If the core linux business is that strong, why even consider e-learning?
In case that wasn't clear enough: I can't stand beggars, and they stand no chance to get any money from me. On the other hand, I'm handing out a lot of money to street musicians. So, what's the difference?
BEGGAR: this guy attempts to get money from me by showing how miserable he is. For many of them, begging is a profession of choice. Others really end up being beggars out of misery, but I live in supposedly "social state", pay high taxes, and demand from my goverment to take care of people who can't take care of themselves. Begging is a shame.
MUSICIAN (anod other street performers): These guys entertain me, make my kid happy, and generally "make my day". I WANT to give them some money, because I WANT to see them again. Beeing a street performer is not very lucrative job (they can only reach very small public), but there is no shame in doing it. On the contrary, a town withouth street performers would IMO be a very sad place.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> I don't know how long it may have taken a genius like you... .... ... Warez...
>...freeloaders...
> Schmucks like you
> You schmucks
Hey ! Wash your mouth out and consider the following instead of being abusive:
The Mandrake download page requires you to either:
A. Have previously *paid* them a minimum of $60
OR
B. *State* you *will* pay them a minimum of $60 in future
There is no other option that allows you to download their software.
What's to stop them hiking this 'download price' from $60 to $1000000?
Sec 2.b. of the GNU license states that packages based on GNU-licensed software must also be licensed "as a whole at no charge to all third parties". What they are doing seems to violate this section, and Section 3 as well. (though I cannot say for sure).
Get a life. GNU licence doesn't say "you have to put all your work on public FTP servers, in a most convenient form for downloaders, send a letter to every citizen with a list of these FTP servers, and kiss their asses."
As far as GNU licence goes, it would be perfectly OK to send CDs with sources of everything which is in the distribution
Sec 1:
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an
appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee
Got it? No need to make ANYTHING available for download on public servers, no need to provide ANY binaries to freeloaders, and a nominal fee for all the folks who ask for sources. Btw, sending these sources on 5 1/2` floppies by camel-post is (legaly) perfectly acceptable too.
It's even legally acceptable to put a proprietary licence for installer and configuration tools if you feel so...
It isn't NICE to do so, and MandrakeSoft is a nice company, but folks like you make me wonder...
Firstly, I'm no lawyer.
... but folks like you make me wonder...
However - I don't think the GNU license Sec.1 that you quoted (which deals with verbatim copies) applies to the Mandrake Distro. I think rather that Sec 2 and 3 (dealing with packages *based* on GNU-copyrighted works) apply. These are also the sections that talk about availability of sources.
> Btw, sending these sources on 5 1/2` floppies by camel-post is (legaly) perfectly acceptable too.
Yup, that's fine, except the offer isn't visible on the Mandrake website (I guess making the offer visible *isn't* required by the GNU license, but the offer itself must exist)
IIRC, one restriction in Sec.2. is that media copying charge be reasonable. I'm don't think US $60 is currently a reasonable media copying charge for a couple of ISOs worth of data transferred over the *Internet* - so I guess Mandrakesoft have an unspoken , (possibly cheaper), offer to copy sources.
> It isn't NICE to do so,
Get used to the wonderous world we live in!
Seriously: I hope you got my drift. I'm not trying to suck Mandrakesoft dry. My point is if they can set an arbitrary price now for access to s/w, what's to stop this price reaching a zillion dollars in the future? What would people think about the concept of 'free software' then?
To answer my own question: I guess its the 'reasonable' copying charge clause (for sources only) under the GNU license.
I could be wrong about this but I wish this GNU license clause 2/3 had a sub-clause forcing the provider to publicise the clause somehow (like a statutory reference to the GNU license Version 1.1 somewhere in the sales page).
> Hey, sorry if you consider my post abusive.
Thanks dude. I'm sure the parent to your original post would appreciate your candor here.
About the rest of the post: I just wasn't comfortable with a Corporate setting a arbitrary price on all access to GPL code, but as I understand (see discussion below) there is a third unpublicized option for transferring sources.
Just thought I'd correct myself on one thing - parent poster is right in that Mandrake don't have to put their programs (DiskDrake etc) under the GPL since they aren't derivative works of existing GPL programs. However since they have done so (I think), most of my points above, stand.
Mandrake has always been very close to the "Bleedng edge." Up until version 8.2 I would always install it, be very impressed but find a bug that I couldn't get around. I would revert back to some other distro.
8.2 however has been rock solid for me. I'm hoping that 9.0 will also.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I guess that I just don't understand their business model. Am I the only one that is willing to buy but not to buy a pig in a poke? Is there some reason that they don't want to tell us what's in which level? Or ar they just lazy?
I've seen it over and over again, especially in CS -- people who do the best in CS do the worst in the real world and are forced to stay within the towers of academia
No offense, davidu, but this is the type of drivel that people who do bad in school say to make themselves feel better about themselves (I'm not calling you one of those people, but the remark you made did increase the chances that you are). I'd be willing to listen if you had said that there is very little corollation between success in university CS and the "Real World" but to draw the inverse conclusion is offensive.
People who do well in school often do so because they are smart and work hard. Those types of things pay off in the "Real World." Those "ivory tower" arguments just don't fly.
I, of course, do not offer myself as proof of someone who succeeded in university CS and the real world.