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Mandrake Appealing to Community, Again
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that MandrakeSoft's short-term financial problem is worse than was thought. A new page on the Mandrake web site says: 'Everyone who is concerned with the company's future is encouraged to read and distribute the following message. In order to reach the next release, MandrakeSoft currently needs to raise cash, and quickly complete the Increase of Capital.' Darn, and I thought they were almost over this hump. Looks like a good time to help recruit Mandrake supporters for the Club."
they made money with selling the box distros, but that is certianly not enough for all the iso downloads. they make a soild distro, so giving them some cash would be good.
Isn't Mandrakesoft a COMPANY? Why should we help a company? Is this "Charity for Corporations Week" here?
I am a 31 year old male virgin and I really, really need to lose my virginity this year. At this point I don't care if you're a guy or the world's skankiest geekette. If you are willing to finally make me a man, please reply to this post with your address. I'll fly over next week.
Mandrake should either go non-profit so they can beg for money without being an embarrassment, or shut the doors.
slashdot broke my sig
IMO, Mandrake is about to get thinned from the herd. And it'll be too bad, since they've provided a lot of leadership in terms of desktop Linux, but I think we're all a lot more realistic about business realities than we were a few years ago.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
to the community, if not enough people bought their stuff!
sulli
RTFJ.
If I wanted Red Hat Linux with some ugly-ass icons, I'd... well I guess I'd make some ugly-ass icons.
My Ass hurts.
I remember my first Linux Distro... It was Mandrake 6.0. It is the best one I've ever used, for it's bare-bones Red Hat compatability and ease of use. They are missing the boat by trying to compete with people like Red Hat because they know they can't steal Red Hat users. RH users are dedicated to RH and usually revere Mandrake as child's play. Mandrake needs to re-evaluate their position and make themselves a Linux for the working man who doesn't have the time to sit around for hours making it work.
You too can MAKE MONEY FOR ABSOLUTELY FREE!
;p
just grab linux, give it a name, and SELL! easy!
too bad, if you want to sell something, YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS TO MAKE IT BETTER AND DIFFERENT! make kde/gnome FASTER... its kind of hard to sell a free product, seems bottled water companies do pretty well, copy what they do... claim other linux distros' are "unfiltered TAP distros"
dont hate me because i'm not funny
Er, Red Hat's in the black, trollboy.
I think there approach is very smart in the Free Software community: in just a few year they succeeded to become one of the most popular Linux distro which very small means. For instance there are currently one of the most downloaded Linux distribution: http://download.com. It would be a pity that such great project disapears now. I wish them a very good luck and happy christmas.
Get a new business model. I will not donate to comapnies with bad business models. Let survival-of-the-fittest take its course.
But why continue to throw money into toilet? It's already started flushing man, get out while you can. When a company begins a downward spiral like this, the first instinct it to start throwing some money into it, putting out fires here and there. However the damage is too much and without a huge investment, and I'm talking more than the Slashdot community could ever raise, its going to continue all the way down.
A second point to be made in this is Mandrake is a company. When they start begging for money like this to save the company, I want to see a plan. I want to know how my money is going to help. What they have is way to vague.
Our current cash needs are approximately 4ME ($4M USD). This level of cash infusion would resolve outstanding debts, cover the expenses needed to become profitable, plus secure an extra amount to satisfy the needs of future growth.
What kind of outstanding debt? Is my money going to pay for those 1,500 dollar Aeron chairs the executes who are already being paid 6 digit salary are sitting in? Is it to cover "corporate meetings" held at the Sheraton or some other overly expensive restraunt? Those are the things that bother me the most. I'd be more than glad to help a company that is going under due to the pressure of the market, but I want to know why they got to where they are now. Is it because of a sincere inability to raise profit and lower required expenses? Or is it because the executives demanded fresh squeezed juices while they sit back in an Aeron chair.
I'm not saying Mandrake is like that, but I know plenty of companies that are to be overly cautious about investing any money into a company about to go bankrupt.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Flash: MandrakeSoft's Future
Many of you have followed the evolution of MandrakeSoft throughout the past few years. Everyone who is concerned with the company's future is encouraged to read and distribute the following message.
Despite the many financial challenges of maintaining a fully open source business model, MandrakeSoft has always followed the Free Software approach, but in this normally joyful holiday season we are experiencing a serious short-term cash crisis.
In order to reach the next release, MandrakeSoft currently needs to raise cash and quickly complete an Increase of Capital. Please take a moment to read this important message at the Mandrake Linux website: http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3
We know you may have read our previous appeals, but if you are truly concerned about MandrakeSoft's future, now is the time to mobilize and help spread the word.
With the holidays upon us, a great way to spread some "Linux cheer" is by offering the gift of a MandrakeClub membership. The Club is a great way to support MandrakeSoft, and to help others too.
Sincerely,
The MandrakeSoft team.
By my watch, with the amount of money that Mandrake has already spent, they should have the absolute best commercial distribution of Linux available. There should be no question as to the performance of Mandrake compared to any other commercial version. They should be kicking ass and taking names. Unfortunately, the only ass they're kicking is the collective behind of the Linux community, and the only names they're taking are followed by credit card numbers.
Meanwhile, we're a non-profit company that produces the absolute best-of-class general-purpose audio compression codec in the world, proprietary or otherwise. We've been through recessions and poor economic times before; Hopefully we'll live through this one, too. Everybody and their brother has a Linux distribution; Why don't you support the smaller projects that actually make a difference?
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
if Red Hat bought Mandrake - the merger of those 2 Linux companies would be dope - at least for us beginner users :) IMHO since I really feel torn between the 2. Theirs features like "Harddrake" that I really like on Mandrake - but Red Hat recognizes/includes more device/sound drivers without the hassle of looking up the drivers on the net and figuring out how to compile, modprobe, install, where they go etc...
Ave Molech Setting
Look, look, look, I'm all for free and clear and good and brightness and light and Open Source and all that, but if all these idiots do is run themselves into the ground one after the other, what the fuck is the point?
::deep breath...::
Either you MAKE A GOOD PRODUCT and CHARGE FOR IT, or you shut the hell up. Redhat are making money because they're doing that, and while they're not making tons of money, at least they're fucking solvent! Hell, at least Microsoft is doing the right thing -- and yes, I do think XP is worth paying about $80 for, flame me at your fucking leisure. Do your worst. The shit runs and runs well, and I don't have them giving me guilt trip bullshit about supporting OpenWhatever so they can line the pockets they can't seem to fill on their own!
Look. Linux. Nice idea. Great idea. So, sell it. These fucks couldn't sell ETERNAL YOUTH if they had it, and Linux is damn close to that (IN THEORY, anyway). Charge a price for it that seems fair and people WILL pay for it.
Giving it away is attaching a level of contempt to it that people find hard to dismiss. Scream if you like, make nasty comments about what a failure shareware is if you like, but you know I'm right.
The Karma Asshole
509 Pepperidge Ln
San Antonio, TX 78213
rawr!
again.
There seems to have been a recent change in how some people/businesses are coping with online financial difficulties - begging.
There's probably an earlier example, but save karyn comes quickly to mind. She spent too much money on shoes on her credit card and she asked for donations to pay it back - and people did.... or at least, they pledged money. It's become enough of a phenomenom that there are articles on wired, caplan, and newhouse and many many others. And that's mostly in the realm of personal begging.
Companies now seem to be joining in.
Mandrake now have this money drive, and another one earlier in the year. Gnome is asking for money. And there seems to be a trend of having software for ransom.
All of this concerns me because it seems that there a plethora of open source related companies/products that aren't viable on their own merits.
Cool, but useless.
My company, UG-WebDesign, uses Mandrake Linux. I use Mandrake for the Web Server that runs our primary site along with several of our Clients sites. In addition, I also setup Mandrake Linux to run as our internal E-mail server.
:)
The setup we are currently using is Mandrake Linux 9.0 running MySQL 3.23.52, Apache 1.3.26, and PHP 4.2.3. Along with the we are running Postfix and the IMAP server for our internal E-mail.
We originally started with Mandrake Linux 8.0, but tried several competing solutions including FreeBSD 4.7, RedHat 7.2, RedHat 8.0, and Windows XP Professional. For our needs, we finally decided to return to Mandrake Linux as the best of choice. With this, we gave Mandrake Linux 9.0 a try and haven't looked back since. Our main reasons were that Mandrake Linux was the fastest, most stable option for us as our Hardware is slightly aged. We see minimal slow-downs even with steady work loads. This is especially noticeable when comparing Mandrake Linux to the Windows XP server we tested. The Windows XP server couldn't handle more than a few simultaneous connections before seriously beginning to slow down the entire network.
We will continue to use Mandrake Linux 9.0. At least until the next Mandrake release.
Flash: MandrakeSoft's Future
Many of you have followed the evolution of MandrakeSoft throughout the past few years. Everyone who is concerned with the company's future is encouraged to read and distribute the following message.
Despite the many financial challenges of maintaining a fully open source business model, MandrakeSoft has always followed the Free Software approach, but in this normally joyful holiday season we are experiencing a serious short-term cash crisis.
In order to reach the next release, MandrakeSoft currently needs to raise cash and quickly complete an Increase of Capital. Please take a moment to read this important message at the Mandrake Linux website: http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3
We know you may have read our previous appeals, but if you are truly concerned about MandrakeSoft's future, now is the time to mobilize and help spread the word.
With the holidays upon us, a great way to spread some "Linux cheer" is by offering the gift of a MandrakeClub membership. The Club is a great way to support MandrakeSoft, and to help others too.
Sincerely,
The MandrakeSoft team.
...but how the hell do I actually program?
I used to use WordPad in Windows 2000 to edit Active Server Pages (.asp) when I used to design Web pages for businesses around the neighborhood.
But I recently switched to Mandrake and it seems cool and really easy to use, but I still have no idea how to code stuff. I'm trying to learn PHP so that I can use Apache/PHP/MySQL and build weblog sites, but I can't find anything that works better than Pico. And Pico is only viewable in the Terminal window, so it's not really helpful (can't cut+paste, etc.).
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
...like maybe Gentoo, if we're gonna talk distros? Having done several installfests, my university LUG has had consistent problems with various versions of the Mandrake distro on a variety of pretty generic, stable hardware. Mandrake used to have a rep for ease of use and a slick installer, but these days all they're known for is bloat and instability, at least in my circles. All corporate wellfare issues aside, put your money where the product is; in the Linux realm, that means RedHat for everyday use and Gentoo for power use. Mandrake can go hang.
While I am a fan of the "Club" concept, let's find out if it is any good.
If anyone that is a member of this "club" is reading, can you explain to those of us who aren't what is good (and bad?) about this club?
Thanks!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
They weren't maintaining so many websites...
k estore.com// www.mandrakeexpert.com/s es.com/w .mandrakeuser.org//
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
http://www.mandra
http://www.mandrakeclub.com/
http:/
http://www.mandrakebizca
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/
http://ww
http://www.mandrakesecure.net
http://www.mandrakeonline.net/
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
I'm about to quit bothering with Mandrake anymore. They removed their 486 distribution from the mirrors! It's nearly impossible to find now. I burned a CD of the 486 7.0 distro, and the next month it was gone. I use it as a simple way to put moderate functionality into some of these 486 boxes I have lying around. It runs ok on 486's around 50MHz+. However, I tried to go find txt_bootnet.img for it, and everything had vanished. Redhat 6.0 bootnet disks nearly work, and I did find something on a mandrake-CLE server in Taiwan. Don't know if it works yet.
If Mandrake wants people to like and buy their distribution, they shouldn't actually go through the effort of wiping their old distributions out of existence. I though some of the ideas were pretty neat, but won't buy a distro that not only completely drops support for older systems, but makes sure you can never get the old distro again.
Anyone want a mandrake486 cd? I'll burn you a CD free and send it for price of Priority Mail postage ($3.20). I'll only send out ten total, just want to make sure other people have it, so it won't completely vanish.
...
So now when Amazon isn't going to make their quarterly profit they should turn on the amazon 'donte now' buttons and we'll all save them out of the goodness of our heart?
Oh no, Playstation 2 is behind schedule cuz it costs too much, donte money now!
this is a bit on the weird side folks. maybe it's the codeine i've been taking for my surgery but this just don't work for me.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
This is simply a matter of a company asking for a bail-out. The fact that it's a linux distro is simply tugging on your heartstrings, in the hopes that the plea will tug on your purse-strings.
What this all boils down to is you have to decide how many chances you feel Mandrake should get. How many times will you give money to an entity that, although they make a nice product, seems incapable of balancing gains and expenditures. This is merely a business decision, one which occurs daily. The strong survive, the weak die out.
Don't throw good money after bad. Your money will not save Mandrake. Instead, it will wind up in a few lucky creditors' (and their lawyers') pockets after bankruptcy proceedings.
If you have some money that you want to donate to a good cause, pick one where it will do some good. I don't care whether it's the Salvation Army or the EFF, but be effective with your donations. Let the market take care of the less effective corporations--that's what it does.
I think many of you are the same who post "linux better than windows on desktop" and all that stuff.
Have you ever thought that about ALL the people that gets started with linux does it with mandrake linux?
Because it's easy.
This is the only corporation that really helps the linux community. Many of you certainly would have tried linux if your linux buddy told you "yes, try debian, i can't guarantee it'll work if you don't know all the crappy commands but, whatever, they're a non-profit corp!".
Yeah sure, Mandrake is giving away for free a great product for beginners or simply for all those who want linux but don't really care about configs and servers and all the command line thing.
Personally I started with mandrake. I guess i could have started with redhat too, since i had quite an idea on how it works. But many of the REAL beginners would never try linux if not because there's this easy distribution.
I certainly can install and get to work slackware, debian, gentoo and many more, but the new users in the community come from Mandrake. Not for any of the "hard" distros.
Realize it: if linux has grown so much it's a LOT because of Mandrake. So don't act as an idiot, if you won't give away your money, that's cool, but let the others think without all your stupid "ugly distro" shit.
IMHO, of course.
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
I paid £70 for the 8.1 PowerPack last christmas it was the most buggiest linux distro I ever seen!
I got more bang for my quid with SuSe 8.0, and I'm using it now because it aint a hacked together mess like mandrake is!
Any way "Man-drake" sounds like gay slang!
I'm sorry, but "we swear things are looking up" isn't going to cut it. Exciting new announcements? Come on, this vague language worked in the dot com era.
Let me spell it out for you guys: show us graphs. Show us numbers. Let's see your exact plan for ending your reliance on our philanthropy. I wanna know what your assumptions are.
The only data points I have right now are:
- You sell something that you also give away for free, with little obvious value-add in the for-sale version
- Your business model, despite mumblings otherwise, has relied in the past on the goodwill of the community
- The goodwill of the community is running out
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
Get red hat
My company is an ASP for the major computer vendors. In the shop itself, I use Mandrake Linux 9.0 on my work machine, haven't ran any MS for years. Besides my machine, we use a Mandrake Linux 8.2 machine to access our FACTS software that runs on a SCO box, with the secondary purpose to test Epson and HP scanners, network printers of all makes and models, and an example to customers so they can see what else is out there.
The software ordered is for a customer of ours. They use Mandrake Linux 8.2 for SMB filesharing for their PeachTree application, serving printers, DHCP, Internet connection, mail server, web server, etc. The Samba filesharing has turned out really nice, and has a considerable performance increase, as well as stability, over their Novell 4.12 server. The network connectivity has never been better, running their own mail server has proved very valuable, and the remote administration through Webmin and ssh is a priceless commodity.
At home, I run Mandrake Linux 9.0 as my main OS, dual booting to WinXP ONLY for MechWarrior 4 and Hitman 2: Silent Assasin. The rest of my games I run in Linux, including Unreal Tournament 2003, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Jedi Knight 2. I also use OpenOffice constantly, do PHP web design, program up some Python, and frown whenever my WineX doesn't run a game, so I have to boot into XP.
I started my Linux experience back in 94 with Slackware, moved to Red Hat, tried a plethora of other distro's, and wouldn't go back to any of them, not since finding Mandrake Linux!
Who are we trying to kid? Slippery slope. There are too many commercial linux distro, with not enough to distinguish them and just not enough market to sustain all those jobs. You know it, I know it, we all know it, we just delude ourselves otherwise.
Some commercial linux distros are going under, and Mandrake is showing all the signs that it's going to be one of them. Ask yourself this; if you bail out Mandrake (again), do you acccept that means that someone else will go under instead?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Bill Gates
1 I Am God Drive
Redmond, WA
Bring light beer, a big black rubber dildo, a copy of "Hardcore Gay Robot Beach Weekend 3" starring C-3P0, and plenty of KY. I'll be waiting in my best thongs, big boy...
France and Russia in bed together to defend a madman, and we are supposed to support the French?
France colaborated with Russia to veto the first 36 arms inspectors, settling on wimp hans blix.
France is more interested in trading with a madman, rather than stop someone who is torturing and killing Iraqis, and stop someone who is doing everything possible to deliver a nuke, and chemical and biological weapons into western countries. Or someone who is planning to burn his own country to the ground rather than join the human race.
France is the enemy of NATO, and one of the axis of evil.
Yeah, I'll be supporting Mandrake. Tell them to wait for my check. It's in the mail.
By March 2001, the results of this strategy showed a marked decrease in income, while expenses increased by 400%. At its worst point, MandrakeSoft's "burn rate" was approximately 1.5 ME/month ($1.5M/month). As a result, it was soon decided to remove this experienced management team and to refocus the company's activities strictly toward Linux.
So, because they've made poor business decisions in the past (to include hiring bad management and throwing away money) we're supposed to support them? Give me a break! Sheez, by this logic, someone should just pay off my credit cards and give me a house (any takers?).
Feel free to mark me as troll.
..the recent announcement by Sony & Matsushita, and their plans to develop Linux into a more suitable system for the home entertainment market.
Mandrake has (in my opinion at least) always been more comfortable in the home / desktop environment (sorry, but I dont believe in using X windows, and graphical tools to admin a Linux server) - perhaps Sony and Matsushita could look at some kind of buy out for Mandrake, and put their expertise to work for them instead?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"In May 2000, a new CEO and his management team joined MandrakeSoft. With this new management team, the company dramatically increased expenses (by 400%), hired many new employees, and entered into many expensive long-term agreements."
Where did the CEO work at before microsoft?
Many companies have been driven out of business by the same marketing stratige,
1. Aquire company with decent product.
2. Dump product.
3. Profit
If no 3 then jump ship and sink another company.
Fortuniltly
"As a result, it was soon decided to remove this experienced management team and to refocus the company's activities strictly toward Linux."
So they decided to go back to what worked for them on the first place.
Good and Good luck
I think it's best we look at Hollywood to answer this little problem. What happened when George Newman needed money to save his UHF station, U62? Why, he sold shares in the company.
Why should someone donate $50 or whatever to Mandrake and see the same benefit as the guy who donated nothing?
Now all they need is Stanley Spidowski's Word Processing program pre-installed as well as Conan the Librarian's File-Sharing client.
Maybe the people at Mandrake should start thinking about making reforms, if they're having such a hard time staying business then don't stay in business. I can think of atleast one really good opensource project which puts out great software, lets you download ISO's and doesn't plead to people about forking over cash. Sounds harsh but..
It seems to me that beginning distro's do quite fine, being sponsored by the universities where they originate (I guess many distro's find their birth there). They can use the fast network of the educational institutions, and since many developers are students, the human cost is pretty low (perhaps nonexisting even).
;) ). I would feel I did wrong to GNU and other developers who did it for free; I know most companies contribute to the OpenSource initiative, but still... I'd rather make a big contribution to GNU, Debian and family, than to pay for a packaged distro when I'd rather compile it myself without all the fluf and semi-proprietary binary package systems etc. I don't really see why I should pay Mandrake, SuSE or RedHat for their 'added value' when I'd really just want to have a raw system I can play with myself. It's all about the source, this binary distro's with their own package managers take away a big part of the freedom opensource software has.
But commercial Linux companies seem to have a hard time to survive. The point of open/free source, it's goal, is often the exact opposite of that of commercial entities - free, open, public domain-like software for all is a quite anti-capitalistic idea, and I'm a bit sceptical about profit for the brave companies who try. It seems a bit contradictory to try to make money of something that's often called 'free' software...
Perhaps the best chances for Linux are the public domain-approaches from distro's such as Debian (example, not endorsing). I think OpenSource companies can succeed, when done right; but they'd to have a clear 'extra-value', not just package software that's available for free. Perhaps they should give the 'service'-area more attention; train people to use Linux, educate them, and help companies switch from other, proprietary OSes.
I never gave money to a commercial distro (I am a poor student, though
Ofcourse, many people don't care about the source, and I guess they would buy those big, binary distro's. And need education. There is a big demand for people who can help to 'make the switch'; why not attach more importance to that? The main distro's focus on regular 'users' rather than (opensource) developers, unix guru's or real geeks anyway.
RedHat posted its first profit ever last week. I don't recall them ever asking for donations. Maybe they should buy Mandrake and dislove it/convert their user base to RH 8.0.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
since the French love social assistance and subsidies and Vive La France and stuff like that.
I feel like mandrake has earned my money. With Redhat on the path to becoming the next Microsoft, I feel like there need to be more distros available and mandrake staying in business is a big part of that.
Since I regularly use Mandrake, I try to buy the distribution CDs for major upgrades. The price is well worth it, especially if you get the DVD. When I download the ISOs instead, I answer 50 or so support questions on mandrakeexpert.com for free. Since other people pay to ask the questions, this is a way I can indirectly support the product. My point is don't be a leech. If you use the product, find some way to contribute, monetarily or otherwise.
This space intentionally left blank.
The latest figures showed that yes, with very imaginative accounting, you can get the firm in the black. It has nothing to do with the reality, though.
RedHat is not making profit according to the proper accounting practises.
...and in Soviet Russia, 10 years ago realizes you!
-pyrrho
I haven't so far, but I will since I use Mandrake on a few machines. The price is a hell of a lot better than the price of WinXP, and they don't try to force any registration or similar thing on You.
A feature that I really like about Mandrake is the "urpmi". I don't need to register anywhere, just point out where the upgrades live (on some ftp mirror) and have a "urpmi.update -a ; urpmi --auto-select --auto" in my crontab, and my system will be up to date and I don't even have to care.
I even upgraded my 9.0 system to a 9.1 (the devel-version) this way. All I had to do was to point the urpmi to the devel-version and it took care of everything.
I really hope they make it.
Want to be a stable node?
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I can't speak for others, but I've tried to approach Mandrake about business partnerships in the past, and they never respond. They've got a phone number in the US which is never answered, and 'fill out this form' pages never get responded to. There may in fact be many other companies that would like to do business with Mandrake for mutual benefit, but they're probably way too focused on just desktop linux development to consider anything else (and, while their distro is OK, it's not really much better than anyone else).
:)
RedHat specifically is branching out into training and vertical markets ('advanced server', 'rh database', etc). I don't see Mandrake really trying to address any specific need beyond not pissing off the general linux community. That's just not enough to make a profitable business, imo.
If anyone from Mandrake actually reads this message, please email me at michael@tapinternet.com. Thanks.
creation science book
for Boston Harbor if we bail them out again?
Or a giant hat for the bail out hat trick?
I got the karma to burn and after dealing with a very crashy server, I got the angst to burn as well.
I swear . . . you people amaze me. You cry a river over Palladium and litter these message boards with cheers when some country decides to go Linux. You hate Microsoft - yet - when the most user friendly desktop distro is in financial trouble - you scorn them. I mean - wtf? If you believe in the cause and a major leader is having problems - you help them out. You help them out not because you want something in return, you help them out to keep the movement alive. And don't give me this market philosphy bullshit either. If you really believe that shit, stick with MS.
I swear you people are incredible. You cry so much about the DRM thing yet you make it invetiable by turning your back on Mandrake. You're just proving to everybody (including the RIAA, MPAA) that you just want a free lunch. Nothing else. Nothing more.
Go ahead - flame me to death and knock me down to the -1 country. I don't give a shit.
If so, that explains why they ask for handouts.
What really irks me is that the French people can't stand Americans even though we bailed them out of both WWI and WWII. Yeah, 60 years ago..right. Tell that to my relatives who were killed in France.
Or RedHat, Mandrake provides a service. This is their business.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...begging.
Score: 3, Informative???
http://www.commweb.com/article/IWK20021217S0007
Just because you creep out from under your bridge and run your mouth sure don't make what you're saying true. If you have some real evidence to the contrary, let's see it.
"Looks like a good time to help recruit Mandrake supporters for the Club" ..or just pop that Red Hat cd back in...or yes..Debian
I've read quite a few opinions here moaning about how mandrake is merely a company and that they don't really do anything positive for the community.
Actually they do a hell of a lot for the community and it is clear that most of the negativity here is coming from people that know nothing of mandrakesoft.
1. Mandrake pays supports many full time developers who work on open source software such as KDE, PHP-nuke; the linux kernel, CUPS.
2. New mandrake distributions are always available for download immediately (usually before the box sets).
3. The mandrake-linux distribution is all free and opensource software.
The real problem is perhaps that they should only offer iso images to club members. I've been using the mandrake distribution since I started using free & opensource software several years ago and I never bought a copy. I was never interested in a box set. The mandrake club has given me and others like me the opportunity to pay for the work done providing us with a distribution we like.
Unfortunately, it seems that amongst all the people who happily use the mandrake distribution iso downloads, there aren't enough that feel a moral obligation to support mandrake by joining the club. This is unfortunate - dispite all the heckling here, their distribution is the most popular of the desktop orientated ones, and in my opinion, rightly so.
"They need no less than 2 million dollars IMMEDIATELY!" on Mandrake's Forum
to that I say, SO DO I! My PayPal account is standing by! Seriously, I got tired of being treated like a 2nd class citizen b/c I "ONLY" bought the box, I wasn't a club member. I'm using Slackware now and couldn't be happier. Now 'scuse me while I join Slack subscription service...
CB
I think that I will just buy a hat and 30 shares of stock.
Give a man handouts every time he asks and he becomes dependent. A little tough love a year ago and maybe mandrakeSoft makes it out okay. Sorry but are you a business or a charity?
Well I wont blame them because they're French-even the French can run a business ;-P
I will blame Mandrake. Lets see...pay to use it via purchasing it out-right, or signing up for subscription service called "A User Club" if you donate $60 you still can't get the new StarOffice 6.0 (Who cares I like Open office) then "we need money for 9.0" Get released, and as we know they always release a Beta as the final...more time passes, "Oh crap what happened to the money?"
Sure we can say it happened because of 9/11 that seems to be the catch all, but as many people stated how does a company burn through so much money? I would want to see how they spend the money, and I mean a detailed record rather than three lines of info. Plus they are a company, they even have stock for jehibu Christmas! A company that has stocks issued and is asking for handouts is in a bit of trouble, kind like Loki in the day eh?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Stop making excuses.
IF you dont like the software they make dont subscribe, just like if you dont like AOLs software you wont subscribe to AOL, and if you dont like Cable TVs channels you wont subscribe to this, and if you dont like Redhat network you wont subscribe to that,
but please do not complain about the business model, you know this is the same Model redhat uses and the only model which works.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm sure I've read about Mandrake asking for money several times...
bool Marketoid::IsGood(){return IsDead();}
If you use their software why shouldnt you support the development of this software?
Are you an idiot?
You subscribe so that you can get more of the software you value.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Mandrake is in a short-term cash crunch. They are approaching profitability, but they won't get there without additional funding. Kind of like the marathon runner who collapses dead within strides of the finish line.
Mandrake's plea is directed at people who have downloaded Mandrake's products for free and liked them. Clearly, not everyone belongs in that category. But, it's OK for Mandrake to ask people to give back something for the wonderful stuff which Mandrake has done for us.
Yes, Mandrake recently screwed up people's preorders badly, including mine. That's because they were forced to lay off a lot of people, in order to shrink their losses. They have a chance to be profitable, but they need a little help.
How this is different than LWN.net asking for help is beyond me (although I'm sure there are plenty of smart-alecks waiting in line to tell me). Mandrake provides free goods and services, and all they're asking for is that people who have benefited from them will consider giving something back. After Mandrake is gone, then SuSE will be the next one to go under. Then, we can all rejoice and run Red Hat.
Even Red Hat has only JUST NOW broken even, and they are the ones with the inside track to all the enterprise installations.
Why not give Mandrake a little help, so they can make it to the break-even point? If you haven't checked out the new Mandrake Club, it's worth a look. The multi-language support is truly extraordinary. I compare it to slashdot, in terms of a paradigm shift.
I'm a standard club member, and I purchased the DVD for the last release, so I think I've done my part to support my favorite distribution. Have you?
i use debian and im not thinking about changing in the near future but... from the reviews i've read mdk(among others) is a good thing. :)
i dont like the idea that linux should/must be hard, so if there is companys out there making linux usable to everyone then they should be supported and praised
Smile... tomorrow will be worse.
The community appeals to you!
... membership, will you promise that cheese-eating surrender monkeys from France will fellate me for the rest of my life?
It's a deal, only if they're stinky left-bank intellectuals, or skanky milking maids with huge forests of arm pit hairs and well-developed forearms.
I've been a devoted user of SuSE after the pain of configuring multi-headed XServer since 4.0. SuSE is the only Distro that I know of that was able to configure itself (Sax2) for mutli-monitor out of the box without doing anyting. FYI
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
Wow..great job genius. Nice to see you aren't trolling the comments any more, at least, still have that lame-ass referrer link for a homepage though.
http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/m/msft.html
You donate money to Redhat when you subcribe to their services, how is it any different than subscribing to Mandrakesoft?
It works for Redhat because Redhat targets a userbase thats not filled with greedy chumps like you who want freebies.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"make themselves a Linux for the working man who doesn't have the time to sit around for hours making it work."
They have been that for me ever since 6.1. I'm a financial analyst, just to give you some context.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
We should all happily sell all our possessions and give them to the various OSS companies so they can buy more Aeron chairs and ping-pong tables. These guys have gotten accustomed to their lifestyles and asking them to get real jobs is simply out of the question. I am going to sell my house and car and move in to a card-board box behind the 7-11 to help these poor, poor corporations.
"Yes, you do get more from supporting Red Hat. Red Hat pays quite a few of the kernel devs, they are also mounting a big push to get Linux in large companies."
It depends upon whether you're interested in the desktop or the server space. I'm not very interested in more server configuration tools, so my money is better spent on Mandrake.
.. you could just get behind Debian and push that a little harder. Debian is cool. .. uh.. I've never used Debian but I like their package system. :-)
Don't hurt me.
Redhat gives away the code and the OS. So you say you'd pay for a redhat subscription in one moment (a donation to redhat) then in the next sentence you dont donate money to for profit corps?
Do you work for Redhat?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
As a qualified investor, I was throughly unimpressed by the presentation (for want of a better term) on the Mandrake webpage referenced to in the article. As a user of Red Hat (my first distro back in the day), later Mandrake, M$, and other products, I can state that my confidence in the future of Mandrake, and it's current management, have diminished. I'm not sure if it is even legal to advertise for shares like that: "If you are a qualified investor who would like to participate in the current round of financing, please contact (email) with the amount you wish to invest." Ummm, would you happen to have a prospectus lying around? The whole page looks like someone banged it out late at night while sweating and trying to ignore that ache in the pit of their stomach. I formerly recommended Mandrake to friends who wanted to get into Linux because it was easy abd friendly, but that is no longer the same this day. And if they are as shakey as they appear, then to purchase something intangible (like services) make be a very poor investment, in my opinion. And that's unfortunate, for like the apparent demise of the Russian space program, innovation, however incremental it may seem at the time, will be forever retarded.
I'd much rather give to beggars in the street...if you can't stay in business then get out
sounds like the dirty GNU hippies are experiencing a cleansing purge. Looks like their bolshevik propaganda hasn't paid off after all, eh? Of course, it would all be different if Xfree86 wasn't responsible for the Desktop Linux Failure, and there was a decent gui instead of that GNOME shit and KDE bloatware.
I'll give a dollar to a bum, but these guys should know better. Good luck.
In honor of Mandrake's impending demise, I will purchase a boxed set of my next RedHat upgrade instead of downloading some isos.
Good riddance to Mandrake. These are the same people who made reference to Microsoft as 'Micro$oft' on their official website. C'mon - unless you're running a humor/parody site, you shouldn't be that childish.
Donations to a for-profit company. What arrogance. What outrageousness!
And I see no open books. Tell me, where are the books? The juicy details of what money goes where?
I'd also like to see what Mandrake has done for Linux as a whole, not just for themselves. Distributions like RedHat and Debian look out for the rest of the community, not just their own users. What has Mandrake done for those who don't use it?
Or were they just trying to ride the bandwagon to some sort of ill-gotten wealth?
It's noise. An aberrant fluctuation. They will be firmly back in the red next year.
Your project is unique, as far as I know, and genuinley useful to lots of people. I fail to see how another Linux distribution, that when I tried it (version 7.0) was more or less a RedHat knockoff, is any sort of huge benefit.
So people, if you are feeling the urge to donate to free software, give it to the Xiph guys. No matter what OS you use, OGG is available to you, and it's GOOD at what it does. If Mandrake dies, well, then they die and we are limited to only the other million and a half Linux distros. If Xiph dies, we don't get updates to Vorbis, and none of the rest of their projects come to be.
Remove all FSF soft from your Linux system and try to use it before speaking like that -- and you'll see.
Life is the slowest way to death.
I'd hate to see em go but I'm guessing they arn't living within their means so to speak. Either way I paid for my distro when I ordered it from them and think thats fair. If they want to charge for update access to their servers and support like Redhat does I think that would be fair too. A club with perks thats fine, but don't make it be the only way the company can survive. All I have to say is cut your costs, live with in your means, and pay your bills up front.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
They should just say "Only club members can Download Linux Mandrake, Join the Club or Leave the site"
This is what you want isnt it?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
help them out. If you don't like the product, don't support them, but damn folks, some of you whine more than Mandrake.
I'm starting to think the "???" part of their business plan is "beg for money". Clearly, charitable donations have become part of their business plan.
The little respect I had for them the first time they -- a friggin' for-profit BUSINESS -- begged for my money has completely dissipated. To me, MandrakeSoft has become nothing more than a corporate Linux gnat that won't leave me alone.
Take your coffee can and go beg somewhere else. Do it quickly before you give all legitimate Linux businesses a black eye.
Note the graphs on the linked page,
obviously generated in excel (and not
gnumeric). One way to cut costs is to
use free software.
Didn't just trade on the French Market they would have a little better chance of becoming a better company. The majority of US investors don't look to many foreign markets except for London and Japan. They are NYSE and Nasdaq and the other U.S. markets they CNBC doesn't talk about. Look at Red Hat they may have a $7.00USD stock but hey they aren't in the red. If Mandrake goes down then newbies will look to Red Hat and Bluecurve.
Red Hat is the king of Linux distributions, and they have only JUST NOW broken even. So, it's kind of overcritical to attack Mandrake for not reaching the break-even point yet. They are on a good track to be profitable by next year, if they survive. All they need is for everyone who downloaded the last ISO for free to cough up a couple of bucks.
I paid for the DVD set of Mandrake 9.0 as well as a club membership. What have you done for your favorite distribution?
If I had a daughter like her, I'd shut her out of my life as well.
It's amazing the queen bitch of radio has the nerve to practically accuse her mother of what happened ("she chose to live -- alone and isolated"). Some of us like to live alone, isolated and with the least possible amount of human contact -- there's nothing wrong with it.
Why don't they just have membership drives twice a year, like PBS? That way they can waste tons of money producing content noone watches, save a few brie eaters who'll write their donations off against their taxes?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
from the announcement, they need $4M to pay off outstanding debts. why would individual people want to pay off debts to other businesses? let mandrake the company go under, and it's software survive (since it's open source, the distro can be picked up by private individuals, or a new company, or somesuch), alleviating the $4M debt. screw the corporate world.
Beg
I have my own distro in the works, it's called Prometheus (used to be called SimplyGNUstep). I have never fooled myself into thinking that I could make a million dollars (or any amount really) from making it.
I do have one idea though...
I have been thinking that for the next release, which will be at the beta level but still usable, to package the install cd-roms in some nice fashion and auction them on eBay.
The cost to do this would be about $5 a set. It would involve putting nice labels on the cd-roms (install and source disc), a little quickstart booklet, and a nice, labeled DVD type case.
I was thinking of starting the bid of these at $10, which will gurantee I will make $5 a copy, which seems fair to me. Any bids over $10 will be distributed among opensource organizations. Since Prometheus is totally dependent of GNUstep, a large percentage would go to them, as for the rest, who knows.
This way, there is an easy way to pay for a nicely packaged product, plus, you can donate as much as you feel like donating.
On another note, I wish there was a central web-site one could go to learn about donating money to opensource projects (maybe there is one already).
Donate $300 to bill gates.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
But apparently it's not working for them (it is for RedHat). That's all I am saying. There may be a few too many for-profit Linux distributors out there (at least considering the current market shares of Linux) and it's gonna be survival of the fittest. In other words, MandrakeSoft will most likely go.
It they are so appealing, why do they always have to beg for money?
..but my unemployment insuance is running out fast. Hey, maybe I should start my own distro and beg for funds. heh
If MandrakeSoft is in such dire straights, then what's all this about? Just last week revenue was up 31%, operating costs down 42%, and they were giving themselves a big pat on the back. And now they're asking for handouts again? What?
Subscribe to transgaming instead
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Linux
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Maybe Linux companies in trouble like this should look to see how the Microsoft business model works? (hear me out....)
Microsoft software is appealing to businesses because you can take their server, their workstation, plug them together in a network and it all just works very smoothly. There is no hassle tweaking settings until things are stable etc.
Why don't Linux companies start pushing for the business market by selling them networks in a box? They could do thin client solutions that run on dodgy old pentium desktops (cheap but only ok for standard word-processing type work), they could do a server/workstation solution using LDAP for centralised management that just plugs together and works a la W2K and Active Directory.
I suppose you could look at it as vendor lock-in after a fashion, with the huge difference that standards and protocols are open so there is nothing to stop someone adding a slackware or gentoo machine and making it work.
Rather than making sure they have the latest version of xeyes included they should try and DO something with the software they are developing. People don't like blank canvases, guidelines are good. Rather than giving them a product that lets them set up a certain type of network, do it for them?
Mandrakesoft gives you free access to download software, they freely allow a programmer to work on KDE and the Linux Kernel, they freely give you a website, Mandrake Expert, Mandrake Forum etc,
You cant donate some money to keep these free services? I guess you dont really want them.
If PS2 were giving out free games why not donate $60 once in a great while?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You dont seem to understand the situation. Mandrakesoft were originally a very profitable company that was doing well. When the wanted to expand, the venture capitalists would only give them money in exchange for letting some "Proffesional" management team in. This team was obsessed with eLearning, and cost the business an absolute fortune. Mandrakesoft still have some really stupid contracts with really large buy outs because of these professional idiots. Even with all this debt brought on to them, they have still pulled back to being almost profitiable.
to bail them out. It seems to me that the French government could benefit greatly from supporting a French software company. Why doesn't the French governemnt have Mandrake become their official Linux distribution and infuse them with the cash. It would bring good quality Linux code to the government, and would help break their MS addiction.
Just my two cents.
Perhaps if they can't keep afloat, then they should rightly go out of business.
It's harsh to say that, but people have to realise there's a finite amount of money available in the paying Linux market. That money is always going to go to the companies putting out a better, or more consistent product, or those who provide better services. In fact it's one of the few markets where distribution is often selected by people with a clue - less vulnurable to the pressures of idiots in suits dictating corporate policy.
Is there space for a distro which is essentially "almost RedHat", when RedHat exists. It would seem there isn't. I've always had a hard time working out quite where Mandrake fitted, after having talked to quite a few newbies who installed Mandrake, praised its ease of installation, and then came totally unstuck when it came to getting more software, or getting a build environment installed.
Personally, I think the *paying* Linux market is going to be better served by two or three larger players in competition, than lots of much smaller outfits - the lack of consistent standards when it comes to Linux installs, desktop setups, file locations, and the infamous library versions, is a real headache for people trying to provide Linux software.
It had to be said.
--
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Mod parent up, it very much needed to be said, and echoed my own thoughts after reading some of the pathetic responses so far on this subject.
I need Karma, real bad man. Please mod me up. I promise I won't waste it on first posts this time. Com'on Mr. Moderator, won't YOU PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!
Seriously, it's too bad Mandrake has come to this. I suspect they'll be gone soon for all of the reasons mentioned in the posts above. I actually installed it once, didn't see any reason to use over RedHat which IMO is the defacto commercial version Linux now.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
If you don't use Mandrake, it's not worth saving, plain and simple. If you use Mandrake, and you like it, then getting Mandrake through this rough patch ensures that they'll be around for you to use their next release.
Numerous polls show that Mandrake is the favorite desktop distribution by a wide margin, so there are clearly a lot of people who use Mandrake and like it, and if Mandrake goes out of business, they're all going to be moving to SuSE or Red Hat. Clearly, there are reasons that so many people opted to use Mandrake in the first place, so SuSE and Red Hat are going to be a step down for many.
I am a standard member of the club, and I purchased the DVD set of Mandrake 9.0, because it was worth paying for.
Had they stuck with the tried-and-true gcc 2.95, they would probably be selling their retail packages in the stores now and have income a-plenty.
Truly, they took a risk, and they are now paying for it. What would a bailout prove? That they can majorly screw up their distribution and people will contribute money for nothing? You think that they would learn their lesson and NOT take enormous risks when their butts are on the line.
As much as I like Mandrake as a distribution and as much as I abhor the thought of less choice when it comes to selecting a distribution, the only reasonable course of action is to allow this mismanaged company to go bankrupt. It's the only way that these business people will learn not to abuse their user community.
While that sounds harsh, and i fully admit they have contributed to the 'community'..
But the fact remains they are a FOR profit company.
If they cant turn a profit, then they dont have a viable business plan and shouldnt be around. Regardless of what market you are in.. be it GPL, or cars, or even street drugs.
If they can, then more power to them, and hope to see them on the other side of the resession..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This made my mom laugh! Thanks.
Wish I could mod you up to +100, but I'll leave that honor to someone with the power. Well said!! :-)
"If you were REALLY a financial analyst you'd be trying to sell us some context; not giving it away for nothing."
You mistaken me with a "wealthy analyst."
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Wouldn't that make them Mandrake Rooters?
Yeah. Sounds like a real solid business model.
Reality:
Mandrade could make money selling distros by following the OpenBSD model, copyrighting the ISO images and not making them available for download. Alternatively, they could write proprietary installers and configuration tools that are not open source, witholding those from people that download the OS components. What they have now is a losing business model that will only get worse as more and more people have access to broadband.
Companies either sale a worth while product and learn to live within their budget or they die. It's called capitalism.
Would you do the same for Microsoft who much many more people need? No, because Microsoft no matter how evil you think they are, lives within their BUDGET!
The Cynic
Let them eat cake.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
I'm certainly not a company spokesman, but if you've ever received value from Mandrake Linux over the years, or if the distribution helped you get started with Linux, please consider purchasing a MandrakeClub membership (for yourself or for others). Your contribution *will* have an impact.
Since most of the code is open source anyway and their only real asset is the collection of developers they have why not just file BK and flush the current company shell and start a new one from scratch with the same developers and no debt. It looks like they got into this mess chasing the bubble anyway!
Why worry about iso downloads whenever there are proven source distributions out there?
Gentoo rocks - if you have all day to install
i have not tried sourceror(sp?), but i'm sure it is ok too.
Plus, red hat and mandrake (red hat more so) tend to deviate from the standard linux structure by placing their own start-up scripts in inconvenient directories...
Go for the more hands on linux approach!
All companies with bad business models die. Let Mandrake die.
Maybe now all of the folks who see open source as a business model see their folly. If a foundation or individual want's to make open source software for "the greater good" of humanity, or whatever the reason, good. But get real. There is no "business" model in giving away product. Thats all Dag
ok slashdotess, who REALLY lives there??
Shouldn't it not matter if they go out of business or not?
I thought the whole point of open-source is that buyers were not tied to any one particular company for proprietary software.
So how much of Mandrake's disto is proprietary and when are they planning to release it as open source so it isn't tied to their poorly-managed company?
Just my 2, but if they really deserved your money, they'd be totally open-source and it really wouldn't matter whether they stay in business or not. If a lot of their worthwhileness is tied to proprietary software, then it's best to let them die so that their proprietary software doesn't proliferate.
evanchik.net
Who was passing around the hat for Amiga and BeOS? If a company provides a good product, but can't stay afloat, too bad. Do what everyone else does, cut staff/expenses and restructure. People are whining about why the community needs this distro and how great it is. Well isn't that special, but a poorly run business is a drain on the community's human and financial resources. People want to push their favorite flavor of Linux in the corporate environment, but why recommend a company that might not be around tomorrow? Corporate buyers want stability not a vendor with a tin cup. If you want Linux to spread out to the rest of the world, support the distro with the greatest chance of survival.
From the post:
As a result, it was soon decided to remove this experienced management team and to refocus the company's activities strictly toward Linux.
You can almost see the finger quotes around the word experienced...
I swear you people are incredible. You cry so much about the DRM thing yet you make it invetiable by turning your back on Mandrake. You're just proving to everybody (including the RIAA, MPAA) that you just want a free lunch. Nothing else. Nothing more.
Have you considered that the number of folks who complain are so few they can't support Mandrake? That the number of people who prefer Mandrake over some other distro are too few? Maybe it's just the Darwinian process, a Linux mutation that was not viable. I have nothing against Mandrake, it's a fine distro, I happen to prefer a different distro. I support my primary Linux and BSD distros, I don't support the "others" that I just download, tinker with a little, but don't really use. Perhaps my sentiments are the norm and there are few ingrates and no conspiracy.
How does this work?
The early affection of the slashdot crowd for Mandrake was always mystifying to me, and by the looks of the up-modded posts on this thread, it looks like a few of them have finally figured out that they've been had. Pity it didn't happen a few years ago.
:)
Meanwhile, projects that actually contribute something unique to the community, as opposed to Yet Another Goddamn Shoddy Distribution, languish. I've donated to the Ogg project; have you?
Emmett, any timeframe on getting vorbis support into the iPod?
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
...Is it possible that all of this is because in the world of open source, there's no smegging money in it?... sure, you can have support services, but for a product that is getting easier and easier to use, and doesn't have any enterprise market share?... Some moron on this list said... "I use Mandrake, and I actually like it quite a bit. If I were to pay for anything it'd be RedHat though". WTF!?... Wow. Some of you people abolutely stagger me. Another said, that he'd help out the company, but it was annoying to have to register to get at the distro. You sh!ts still expect to have the cake and eat it too. Society has a heap of problems, could it be that most of them start by your average slashdotter?...
While most commercial distributions are turning partly-proprietary, Mandrake has always followed the all-GPL/FDL route. Of the commercial ones, only Red Hat and Mandrake remain as really free(dom) operating systems the way the GNU project intended. I don't think they're out of line asking for support when they provide you a free distribution. Look at it as a service (we all know where free software companies should be able to make their profit, right) - you pay for the development of the software. Mandrake is in distress because it's users are mostly desktop users that don't need any support services because they can get the help they need from other places.
:)
The Club also provides services for Mandrake users, you do get something in return for your money. I don't know of any other place you can have discussions/get help/read news about Linux and Mandrake in particular in almost 20 different languages such as Esperanto (!), Japanese and Finnish. There is the RPM-voting system for packaging new versions of software the club members request, the discounts for various products (not only Mandrake's), and some other smaller things. It's also nice to have our very own MandrakeSoft employee answering questions, being generally helpful and continuously coming up with ways to improve the service. Thanks Deno!
Recently the members got to interview the new CEO, the article gave insight to what Mandrake could develop into if it survives. The answers are only available for club members currently but some interesting tidbits are that they're going to focus on providing even more services for the club members, making Ximian GNOME part of the distribution as suggested by a club member (which I think all distributions should do anyway, instead of coming up with tons of different looking GNOME desktops) and developing new software on demand.
I suggest you take a look at the MandrakeClub site and look at what it offers before putting this down as "Charity".
signed,
A happy MandrakeClub member
Enron had thought of this, soo many people
would not have lots their retirment plans.
and if only United had thought of this,
they wouldnt have had to cut wages.
Silly dumb big companies.
Come to Slashdot, will fill yer pockets.
I wonder if this was the Tyco guy...?
I buy the 7 CD distro every year. What else do they want? The Mandrake Club is not worth it and the ~US$70.00 for the boxed set is plenty support. It's a good dostro and I'll keep on buying it as long as I can.
on lease to their execs and the nice expensive UK offices they leased and then disappeared from. And isnt it Mandrake who haven't paid their advertising accounts with the Linux magazines in the UK for a long long time...
Shitting on your own doorstep won't buy you friends in the press.
Someone pass that hammer I feel a coffin lid needs nailing down.
on my new laptop. My collegue received 9 Mandrake installation CDs for free because last time he donated and ordered stuff from their website.
I think I will visit the Redhat site, to see how big their ISO's are.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
I hope they dont go under -- I wanna see what there cluster disto will look like:
http://clic.mandrakesoft.com/index-en.html
Can someone please explain to me why the OSS world loves reinventing the weel so many times? It really seems like Mandrake should be going NPO base d on this news and that a combined Mandrake / Debian distro would rock.
Mandrake's cool installer and control panel thingy with Debians stability. Mandrake's tools are OSS, yet debian is writing thier own installer. Anybody know why this is?
Anyhow, now I have to decide between throwing more money in Mandrake's pit or buy a gift for the woman that GAVE BIRTH TO ME. Whats a Mandrake loving Mama's boy to do?
For giving this issue some perspective.
I will try my best not to be like the person you described above and will support Mandrake, even if it may be futile. They have been too good to me to abandon them now.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
"The following table shows the impressive progression of operating results, semester by semester (in KEuros): "
Let's have a look.
1 million loss, 4 million loss, 7 million loss, 6 million loss, 3 million loss, 2 million loss. Impressive in that they lose millions every quarter yet haven't filed for bankruptcy yet. I can smell coffee, and the can hear the noise of investors waking up.
...maybe it's the codeine i've been taking for my surgery...
Hmm... that Codeine thing - is it some kind of hacker shit?
I read somewhere about Code monkeys...that makes sense!
I don't know if anyone can find it, but I remember reading an article that pretty much outlined the above as the cause of the dot-com bust.
1) small company grows into medium-sized one under original founder.
2) board decides that current CEO/management aren't "qualified" enough and replace them with their college friends in order to "grow the company".
3) new CEO/college friends hire more college friends at bloated salaries and spending quadruples.
4) company goes under.
5) everyone wonders why.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
But I'll keep my current subscription active.
This initiative so soon after the last one, especially since what they got last time was yearly subscriptions, is a little disheartening.
I agree with the other posts saying this request is just too vague and doesn't explain where all the money that was raised last time went to.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Get jEdit from jedit.org I am a programmer and use this awesome editor every day. Fully customizable, many features and free!
Meh.
I've purchased three Mandrake box sets in the past few years, as well as a couple from SuSE and RedHat. They all do the same job, and are roughly comparable for features and support. If only 10,000 copies of the pack are sold per year at $75/ea at a $50/pack profit (far less than it should be), that should be bringing in 500,000 per year. They are asking for 4,000,000 in donations above that.
Lets assume I've wildly underestimated their sales by 500%, and they're actually making 2,500,000 in box-set profits. That is still only 38% of their current cash-burn rate of $6,500,000 per year. (The alternative is that they are only covering less than 20% of costs from sales income, which even the most asinine of managers would realize is a failed business.)
At $100K/developer plus another $100K/developer to cover overhead, corporate income tax contributions, etc., $6.5M would cover 32 well-paid staff.
I "rolled my own" distro last year over 3-4 months of 2-3 hours/night (i.e. 15-20 hours/week), ending up with every feature and package that I use under Linux. If I can come up with an installation by myself in that short a time, there is absolutely no way I can see Mandrake requiring assets beyond:
That is still only 23 staff members, roughly 15% of whom are grossly overpaid ($100K for a shipper is more than even the most obscenely bloated union salary would reach for the skills required.)
What are the other 9 staffers doing? Or are their staff that hideously over-compensated and unskilled that they need nearly a 50% incompetancy overhead?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Mandrake was profitable ever? Can you provide a link?
Thanks.
Unless mankind redesigns itself
but not Mandrake. Mandrake is here to make money. As such it is a swim or drawn situation. Sorry, no lifesavers.
nt
I've bought a few of Mandrake's boxed sets in the last few years...7.0, 7.2, 8.1, and downloaded 9.0 with the intention of purchasing it as soon as I saw it on the shelves. Honestly, I've been more and more impressed with it with each release.
But I didn't want my money going to France, a country for which many of my forefathers shed their blood to keep free from tyranny, yet today is so anti-US that it supports terrorism over a fellow democracy.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Survival of the fittest shows Microsoft being the fittest of all software developers. In the same time that MS went from MS-DOS to massive profitablity with Windows (and MS-DOS), only *one* purely OSS company is making any profit, and that's only a few hundred grand.
I'm sure mandrake was hoping everyone had forgotten. From the Mandrake website, May 2001:
May 22, 2001
In order to quell further rumours regarding MandrakeSoft's alleged
pressing needs for financial liquidity, recent layoffs of part of
its senior management team and planned layoffs in its Development team,
MandrakeSoft Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO Jacques Le Marois explains
that "former CEO Henri Poole and himself mutually agreed on the
management change over a month ago as a result of a divergence of views
regarding the Company's strategic outlook.
Le Marois further points out that "MandrakeSoft's prospects have never
looked so good: In 2000, Linux-Mandrake took #1 slot in US Linux retail
sales (Source: PC Data). The recent management changes and refocusing
of our strategy on our core distribution and related online and offline
services have allowed us to make major savings and we are on course to
break even within a few months. The announcement of the latest release
of the Linux-Mandrake operating system - version 8.0 - has met with
unprecedented success, both in terms of user adoption, which is made
obvious by the hundreds of thousands of versions downloaded from our Web
site since the announcement, and in terms of positive media coverage and
pre-sales to our business partners throughout the world. The imminent
launch of MandrakeStore, our online store, will create a solid new revenue
stream: we've already pre-sold thousands of PowerPack Editions
online.
In addition, there are already more than 35,000 registered users on
MandrakeExpert and MandrakeCampus, which represents massive revenue
potential for us going forward: we will shortly be introducing an online
'tipping' system, allowing users to reward those Experts who provide them
with useful responses to their Linux-Mandrake related questions, and
MandrakeSoft will take a commission on each transaction.
Besides, a paying user registration system to MandrakeExpert will also
shortly be introduced, which represents yet another source of revenue
for the Company". Le Marois concludes that "all these positive elements,
together with the fact that we have built a very large individual and
professional user community at very little expense, and have an experienced
and highly committed management team to execute our strategy, are playing
in our favour for our plans to IPO in the coming months, so watch this space!"
Public support and a charity model may be very reasonable approaches to funding the development and maintenance of free software. After all, the supposed rationale for free software is unlimited public benefit. The idea of making a profit from it only crept in with the relatively recent open source fiasco. Open source proposed a poorly thought out and completely non-quantitative business model that has dragged down every company of significant size that's tried it. You can't make money selling software that can be given away for free. It's just that simple.
I think organizations employing the charity model would do better to seek corporate or government grants rather than appealing to their traditionally tight-fisted technical constituency, though. Certainly trying to play both sides of the fence, incorporating as a for-profit company but then asking for donations, is not going to make any friends or confer any credibility.
The URL of the article is http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3
They're just doomed with such an approach.
From what I can see in the discussion here, there are people who are insisting that we support Mandrake because it's apparently our obligation to do so, no matter what we think of the company's business practices or their product, because they're a Linux company and, well, we need to support Linux.
This is a specious argument at best. I don't give money to a company just because I believe they're "doing the right thing" -- especially not if they're doing the right thing in the wrong way. I believe in supporting the company that does the right thing for the right reasons and in the right ways. I use Windows, but I owned stock in RedHat (until recently, due to me rearranging my portfolio) because I wanted to see at least some money go towards one of the better-managed and -executed competitors.
Another thing people have pointed out: what if we do bail them out, and they just dig another, even deeper hole? They haven't done a very good job of managing themselves in the past; why should we stick our necks out for them now?
On a side note, some other folks in the same thread have mentioned rolling their own micro-distros -- a very good idea, especially if you get a distro that solves very specific problems. I'm still looking for one that a) installs cleanly, b) doesn't require 3 CDs of bloat to be functional, and c) has an elegant interface that I don't have to employ guesswork to use. Irony of ironies: Mac OS X was about the closest I ever got to that.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
I used to use and highly recommend drake all the time. That ended with Mandrake 8.2...
Their business tactics, and shoddy software have made me think twice. Aside from a super simple install and urpmi, there's just no obvious benefit to Mandrake IMO - ymmv.
Yep...they begged for money a year ago too. That's about the only time you ever see anyone from Mandrake show their face on alt.os.linux.mandrake.
Sure, pay however much $$ to be able to join the 31337 Mandrake club and use the "Mandrake Expert" forums - which is nothing but other users posting the same unanswered stuff you're about to post. Last I saw, there were literally thousands of unanswered posts there - and the ones that were answered weren't done so by any drake techs/employees - they were answered by the other people who got ripped off to join too.
Sure - pay $90 to buy the "Power Pack Edition" at a store, or wait literally months for them Mandrake to ship it to you, just to find out that the downloadable version has some THREE HUNDRED more packages included with it...THREE HUNDRED!!!! We're not talking totally obscure stuff either...things like slocate and grip and joe - stuff people actually tend to use, and that's not to mention all the devel packages that were missing...from the "Power Pack Edition". Power pack this! Provided explanations/excuses were as lame as they possibly could be. Click Here for more info on that little fiasco.
I still don't know, nor do I intend to find out, whether or not they've finally dis-allowed kernel upgrades to be done via the "Mandrake Update" tool - hosing the system in the process. How many "HELP!!!!!!!!! I ran the update tool and now I can't boot!!!!!!" threads have been seen all over usenet and message boards? Not many lately, so one can only hope they've fixed that lil snafu.
Then they shipped drake 8.2 with KDE 2.2.2 was - a big mistake IMO. KDE 3.0 was released within 2 weeks after 8.2 - and upgrading KDE is *not* a newbie-friendly proccess for a suposedly newbie-friendly distro.
Mandrake admin tools, that either crash the machine or do nothing at all... msec... a tool that'll change/revert settings that the machine's admin has made? Don't even get me started...
Have you ever tried to submit a bug to them? You have a better chance of winning the lotto.
Mandrake? Schmandrake.
Want to learn linux? Get Debian, Slack, or Redhat. Want to learn Mandoze98? Get Mandrake.
I didn't even bother with Mandrake after 8.2 - I just couldn't see the point. They've sunk ther own ship. This is just my 2 cents folks...come to your on conclusions.
In spite of the very unfortunate way MandrakeClub is "advertised" (ahem), MandrakeClub is not a charity, but a service.
I am in charge of MandrakeClub, and i have worked very hard for last 12 months to build that place into something really special.It isn't finished yet, but it is indeed on a good way to become by far the best "service" for private users and small companies.
I wan't bother you with the details (as if someone would care to read anyway), but there is a whole bunch of people there who are really happy to be Club members today, so I must have done something right after all.
I know that everyone on Slashdot is telling you that Club is no-good, but maybe you should just go there once, and try to build your own meaning.
OK, it wan't be a very excitiong trip (site is not made for anonymous users, and it is in fact even quite unfriendly towards them), but maybe you could still get a feeling that it isn't "just charity" by browsing trough FAQs, and looking at the discussion in the "future" forum on MandrakeClub.
Actually the reason why I like Mandrake is because I want my KDE unmolested. Screw unified desktops! I don't want a freakin' unified desktop, man...I want my KDE. I also like having my choice of other desktops when I want it, and Mandrake is set up to where you can use just about any window manager in existence by just choosing it at the pull-down menu on the graphic login.
I also like getting everything I want from a Linux distro in a package that works right out of the box. No other distro has installed so perfectly and has been so usable from point zero than Mandrake is. Gotta love that. Also gotta love those neat little games...Frozen-Bubble, baby! ;-)
As soon as I get my first full paycheck from my new job, Mandrake is getting another club member. And I hope if Mandrakesoft doesn't make it, that they release ALL their goodies to the rest of the world so that other people can keep the distro going.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
Okay. So they say they're almost to the point of breaking even, which implies they've paid off a great deal of their debts. They say they have a solid business plan for the future.
If that were true, then they should be able to simply borrow money from a bank.
Yes. That's how banks make money -- they loan money to businesses with a good plan for earning a profit, and then recoup the investment with interest. The company uses the profit they earn to pay the loan balance.
If Mandrake can't get a loan, do you really believe in their Not Very Specific At All plans?
San Antonio, TX 78213
John Romero's address?
What kind of woman are you?
But, I don't feel right contributing cash as yet. Maybe I'll become a member this time if they are giving away some good goodies.
It's sad, really. I remember trying to support OS/2 a decade ago, buying it twice (2.1 and Warp). Well, nuff said.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
The other distros, lets see, how many newbies can install slackware or debian?
Thank you.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I will donate 10$ in exchange for a French woman at mandrake to suck my dick. Plus i'll throw in a pearl necklace.
Its watered down and fake, its not very flexible, they dont listen to or care about the community,
Linux Mandrake actually listens to the community.
The only linux community for newbies is mandrake, debian is too hard, Lycoris is too much like windows to be considered linux, and Lindows is totally corperate.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Howcome I can buy Mandrake 9 at Cheapbytes.com for $6.99, but I *hafta* buy the manual and pay $39.95 if I want RedHat 8. Either RedHat is smarter and makes sure that their stuff doesn't get given away, or...>insert imagination here>...
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
Houdini would be proud of Mandrake.
They are asking for donations... Fine. Except that they sell closed-source software.
Guess what! I still have principles. If you think I am going to help Mandrake to sell proprietary code, forget it!
Damn.
It's like if Moby Dick asked Captain Ahab for fish.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
That I will be more than happy to see crash and burn. Not unlike /.'s parent company, VA Linux Systems^W^WSoftware, it's once-grossly overhyped worthless piece-of-shit stock flirting with delisting. ESR was "theoretically wealthy" on this crap at one point. Hey Eric, how's your stock doing?
Karma: Sucky (mosty affected by saying things people know to be true but don't want to hear)
the way you spelled that gave me a boner! I can imagine the scratches now....
Wait, you DO have two 'X chromosomes' and no 'Y', right?
This isn't some video game or cool toy like Newtons or some shit that we want to succeede. If it truly is a "cause" to anyone, then it's a cause about philosophy, not market dominance. It's about Free versus Proprietary, not market versus market. Mandrake is on our side, but they're just a corporate trapping on top of the "cause". Their survival is nice, but not necessary. Frankly, if they -- a supposedly for-profit organization -- need to beg for cache, then we'd be better off giving our money to a charity like the FSF. At least they won't vanish if the donations turn out to not be enough.
The enemies of Democracy are
Lot's of good companies go out of business because they didn't have the cash at the right time. Their business model is strong and they have friends in high places (WalMart?) to make them a success.
While everyone is entitled to an opinion, I find it interesting that several posters are dismissing Mandrake's software as "crap."
I've been a loyal Mandrake user now for a few years now. While Mandrake has put out a few substandard releases, Mandrake has also produced a lot of good work over time. With the latest releases of RedHat and Mandrake, Mandrake still installs okay, Redhat doesn't. Perhaps they are *all* bad.
Also, Mandrake has employed a lot of open source folks over time. If you are using Linux today, chances are you've probably run more than one or two lines of code that were written by someone in that "crappy company."
I'm tired of Mandrake going to the well too. Still, if open source software has a chance, it needs a way to pay people. Sure, we all donate some of our free time, and that's great. Producing a world class distribution isn't *only* a free time affair though. Notice that the most popular distributions are not maintained by a bunch of guys in their living rooms in sweats.
It is fine if you don't want to donate, but I don't see why we need to be "anti-company". Mandrake made some mistakes in the past and they had some bad management. They are trying to pull themselves out of it though. A negative review on Slashdot pulls a lot of weight with some folks. Hopefully when you anyone posts they aren't simply letting their "hurray open source, down with the companies!" mentality get the better of them.
-M
Quarantine this troll quickly -- before it runs rampant!
#SickNotWeak
My personal favourite is KATE (K Advanced Text Editor). It has PHP highlighting built in (Easier on the eyes), it can have multiple documents open at the same time, and has some advanced features in comparison to WordPad.
This is located at
Mandrake comes with several browsers (Start->Networking->WWW) but my personal favourite is Phoenix.
then you would be able to access it by typing in the address
http://localhost/myscript.php
This should work fine.
I found the default configuration fine, but I needed to set up users for mysql. To do this I used Webmin, it should be on your Install CD if it isn't installed already. Once you have Webmin installed, in your browser visit:
https://localhost:10000/
Log in using your root (Admin) name and password. Then click servers, then click mysql, and there you go. For a frontend to mysql, i would suggest using PHPMyAdmin
For learning PHP, I would suggest buying a book (I used "PHP A Beginners's Guide", published by osborne see here If you just want to use online resources, I personally think PHP's online manual (Just search The PHP Website. I also find PHP Freaks a good site, with lots of tutorials, examples, free scripts and a friendly forum, if you get stuck
If you need more help, feel free to email me. People will also be happy to help you at MandrakeExpert.com and for specific PHP needs, go to the above mentioned PHP Freaks. Hope I was able to help!
Just a quick note, the PHP Freaks site seems to be down now, but hopefully it'll come back up soon, it is a really good site.
Jason O'Neil
mdk is simply asking for money without providing much extra value. the 'subscription' to RHN is a defined value-add - priority access to tested update packages.
If MDK was smart, they'd say the $60/year ($5/month) buys access to priority servers to URMPI update packages tested for your MDK version. That's easy to understand and define, and adds value to everyone. A 'club' just *sounds* childish, and is not at all a 'professional' image, regardless of what it may offer.
Whenever I've tried the 'mandrake update' in the past it NEVER works - slow as hell, and the 'mirrors' are generally in Europe. There are very few North American mirrors, and the interface locked up a lot. Iron out Mandrake update, provide commercial URPMI servers, and I'd pay $60/year for that, as would others I know. Until then, there's not enough value add anymore with MDK.
creation science book
make me appreciate the not for profit distros that much more. This community was built out of the love for software, not the love of the dollar. I remember when I "bought" my first version of Linux (Slackware in the back of one of Pat's books that I purchased to learn a little more about VI) I was able to download the next version without feeling guilty -- or that if I did not sign over my allowance -- the Patrick would go hungry and Linux would die. You know what people -- granted a little eye candy and a few extra memory sticks required things are not that much better today. The only thing different is that all these new guys code with dollar signs in their eyes and not a itch in their souls. Not once have I ever heard Linus ask for my dollar....yet he seems to be doing pretty good for himself. FOrgive me if I sound bitter....It has been a long day.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
How about we put Mandrake into a proper charity, like Debian? We Debianise Mandrake, control what packages are a part of this Debianised Mandrake, and we take some of the Debian packages. That results in less duplicated effort, and means that we have a true charity looking after all of that, and last time I checked debian's not looking like going down the gurgler. As a distro-maker, you could package that, offer support for it, and hopefully make a couple of dollars.
My A$0.02
Michael
I use Linux as my only working environment. I started with Red-Hat 4.2, Next was suse 6.2. And after that MDK 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0.
;^)
After I installed MDK it gave me the chance to wipe out M$ because it was so good. Everything just worked, I mean simple things as Flash, Real-Player, Mp3(still not workin with Red-Hat), Office, Mail, sound,... etc.
I'm geek, but that is just my hobby, professionally I'm a medical student. So, I think it is nice to play with the system, but I don't have time or intrest to hamper with it all the time. And I can't code my own stuff.
MDK gives me a working solid system without need to update drivers and everything as in Windows world, just new install for example 4 time/year, which is easy and fluid. Linux just works and works, but MDK gives me the extra bonus that I can use the system for my pleasure.
Conclusion: I'm happy to help Mandrake team by giving them money. If they are new Enron, then I was fucked up, but so what, it was only money. And also I have been using the MDK for free many years allready.
P.S. I'm trying to learn Python, MySQL and Server administration, no other system can give me those with so cheap and easy but MDK. Maybe after couple of years I can bee true geek and nerd.
You can't just shove someone through a three-week training course and have them fix Linux boxes, you need people with some degree of skill.
You can if all machines are running the same version of something (MDK8.2, RH7.1, etc). You don't seriously think someone who supports 'Windows' can cover all nuances of 2000, XP, NT4, 98SE, ME and so on in 3 weeks, do you? A 3 week course would cover basic troubleshooting of one system. 'Reboot' is a common troubleshooting technique as well, which would be perfectly reasonable to most people (not to most techies, but more 'average' users who don't expect anything else)
creation science book
Mandrake 7.2 was my first linux that I really used. Used it all the way up to 8.2, but never thought it was secure enough to put my finances and wouldn't last too long without something crashing and having to reinstall again.
They kept asking for help, please beta test, report bugs,... When they first started this silver and gold membership thing, I paid $60 and
have been beta testing for awhile. Access to report bugs expired while learning Debian. I finally got feed up with their attitude after several months went by and still couldn't report bugs, several glaring bugs were still there and they were reporting that the RC was going final in days. Several other things happened to the point that I just asked for my $60 back, I got it also. Note: I had to request to report bugs in for awhile before I sent the money.
Except for buying the computer, I have never spent money on Microsoft. I have though donated to Linux when I finally found a distro stable enough to use full time:
Gentoo!!!
They have a Great Distro, stable, hard to setup, but easy to use and upkeep, ability to report bugs, develop, Great Forum,... So I am willing to support something I can use and is stable to keep using. Thank you Gentoo.
I think Debian and Gentoo are the only distro's that I have used on several computers that earned the right to be donated to. Mandrake was a leader, helped make some good contributions, but never had a stable enought distro to be worthy of donations, IMHO!
But I won't deny we in the Linux community do have a Lot of FREELOADERS. People, that never write a tutorial, never fix a bug, never donate, never do anything but take. But if you still use Windows and just experiment with Linux, I don't think your obligated to help.
I was happy to donate when I finally found a linux distro that is STABLE and kept me off Windows completely, well almost completey.
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20, @11:10PM (#4934429)
.iso's that only club-members could access. I got 9.0 without the usual "is there an opening yet?" Frustrations. And the discounts for products are nice too, I got win4lin at a significant discount; and am considering getting the Kohan Sequal (no transgaming flames please, if there were a native port I'd but [yes, buy] that.)
;^)
Well, I am a member of the club, but I can't really tell you much about it to be honest. I rarely go to the website and any new packages (and associated dependences) I need can be accessed easily with 'uprpmi'.
"Why do you bother" you may ask.
Well, some people buy boxsets of distributions. Some people donate a great deal of their time developing opensource software and do not pay anything. As for me, I pay $60 per year to mandrakesoft because: 1/ they produce the distribution updates that I download free of charge twice a year, and 2/ they financially support open source development projects such as KDE.
To be honest, I would be happy with their donation page, but it is clear that it is apparently not a socially acceptable method of payment.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Mandrake Club (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20, @11:01PM (#4934387)
Commerical Apps that are only available through the PowerPack are one example. Also, when 9.0 came there were mirrors for the
So there are some benefits to the club, it's the equivilant cost of buying a powerpack each year, but you get the benefits for any releases in that year (and MDK does 2 releases a year so, it saves some cash in that respect).
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
My reason to buy Mandrake Club Silver membership (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20, @11:10PM (#4934429)
I use Linux as my only working environment. I started with Red-Hat 4.2, Next was suse 6.2. And after that MDK 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0.
After I installed MDK it gave me the chance to wipe out M$ because it was so good. Everything just worked, I mean simple things as Flash, Real-Player, Mp3(still not workin with Red-Hat), Office, Mail, sound,... etc.
I'm geek, but that is just my hobby, professionally I'm a medical student. So, I think it is nice to play with the system, but I don't have time or intrest to hamper with it all the time. And I can't code my own stuff.
MDK gives me a working solid system without need to update drivers and everything as in Windows world, just new install for example 4 time/year, which is easy and fluid. Linux just works and works, but MDK gives me the extra bonus that I can use the system for my pleasure.
Conclusion: I'm happy to help Mandrake team by giving them money. If they are new Enron, then I was fucked up, but so what, it was only money. And also I have been using the MDK for free many years allready.
P.S. I'm trying to learn Python, MySQL and Server administration, no other system can give me those with so cheap and easy but MDK. Maybe after couple of years I can bee true geek and nerd.
I'm a newbie. I didn't like Mandrake or Redhat. Call me stupid, but the ide of having tens of identical apps installed doesn't appeal to me. Who needs 10 text editors ffs?
So, I tried installing debian3. Install seemed to go fine, but I could not get X to start. Spent an evening fiddling and searching on google and in the mailing lists, but no help.
Installed Slackware8.1 - great! Stuff just works now.
The problem was a few days ago I needed to get some DV from a camera. I had a quick look at my options in linux and soon decided to stick XP back on that box to do the firewire capture.
I'll be putting slackware back on that machine as soon as I can get round to it, but as that's the only machine with a FW port, I may have to keep putting XP/Pinnacle Studio8 back on there. If anyone has a better solution using linux I'd very much like to hear it, even though it's a little off topic.
This is a +5? *sigh*
... er ... what do you want, a trophy? Go back to your crashy server.
Who is "you people"? Everybody who reads slashdot?
Your posting seems to read: Because some people on slashdot (who have opinions on DRM) disagree with other people on slashdot (who have opinions on Mandrake), everybody on slashdot is an idiot.
News flash! Not everybody on slashdot has the same set of opinions.
(And if I really wanted a free lunch, I wouldn't spend so much time developing open-source software and giving it away for free.)
Now, supposing you can find one poster who has expressed inconsistent views on slashdot
The other distros, lets see, how many newbies can install slackware or debian?
//e came out (which I knew inside and out -- knew ROM entry points from memory and did a LOT of machine code programming).
Knowing how dedicated Debianites are, I'm sure this will get modded to troll immediately, but...
I'm not a newbie. I was taking classes in assembler back in the early 80's. I've been working with computers since the late 70's, in high school, and I've had a computer on my desk ever since the Apple
I had to set up a new system last week. I spent 2 days trying to get Debian to install. If it asked for Disk 1 and I mistakenly put in Disk 2, and hit return, then put in the correct disk at the error message, it wouldn't even acknowledge the correct disk. I checked all my CDs to make sure they were readable in the drive I was using, but not once, in 2 days of trying to install Debian did I have a successful install. Every single time, whether I installed from the network, or from a CD, it kept telling me it couldn't get all the packages (and this was a basic install with the basic X-Windows and KDE, not something with a lot of extra programs). I tried the floppy install, following directions, and it still asked for the CDs (not when it was asking for debs sources -- at the beginning). If it installed, X wouldn't run. It did not talk well with my ATI Radeon A-I-W. And forget it even realizing I had a firewire card! I had really wanted to set up a video system under Linux and all my Debian loving friends have been swearing on how good Debian is.
2 days and not once did I get a working install that could recognize my hardware and give me X w/ KDE. So after all that, I decided to try Mandrake 9.0. It worked perfectly the first time. I went to the Penguin Liberation front and got the commands to add RPM sources and all the extra programs I needed (like Cinelerra) installed perfectly. My firewire card worked and for the first time I could capture video in Linux, as well as getting MPlayer to play DVDs.
Mandrake got skunked by venture capitalists who "knew better." Right now I'm still in the startup stage of a business. Money's coming in, but it's paying off startup costs. Mandrake has won my loyalty and I can tell you that within the next month I'll be buying the most complete version of Mandrake 9.0 and will continue to do so with each upgrade they offer. Why? Because it just works! I use the computer as a tool to do work, not as a tool to create tools to make more programs to do more techie stuff with Linux. I use it as a tool, and Mandrake works as a tool. Plain and simple.
Newbie or not, Mandrake is a solid distro and a great tool if you want to actually use your computer to get work done. Such a company deserves our support if we ever want to see Linux prosper on the desktop.
Debian sure isn't anywhere close to the "just install it and it works" stage yet.
Mandrake can have my used toilet paper. I'd rather donate to Debian.
Feed me Seymour! Feed me now!
Xiph could have followed a similiar route that Mandrake did. They hired the wrong people and made some bad decisions. I realize you are bitter, but your post does not help the situation.
I find that Mandrake is a step ahead of the other distrobutions in general polish and usability. They are also closer to the ideals of the Free Software Foundation than any other distrobution.
Mandrake has made a difference for me. I probably would just be using windows at this point if it hadn't been for Mandrake. This was back with version 7.0 that was just a RH clone, but with better hardware support. I have purchased just about every release since then. And I consider them to be a good investment.
The Linux world will be a poorer place without Mandrake. This call for help was directed at the existing community of Mandrake users. If you do not want to support Mandrake, then don't. But don't use your position to degrade them and discourage others from supporting them. That makes you a very ugly person in my eyes.
I have also supported other small and medium projects. With that attitude, I am not inclined to support Xiph though.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
... do those graphs and such on that page look like they were made with microsoft excel? All the money there must be going to microsoft liscences and the zillions of domains they own. I don't know if it is all being spent wisely.
"Call me stupid, but the ide of having tens of identical apps installed doesn't appeal to me"
Ok, stupid, here's my response.
Mandrake has a mystical, well-hidden feature during the installer called 'expert mode'. With this unbelievable mechanism, you, yes you, can CHOOSE what packages get installed and what packages are OMITTED. Wait. It's not hidden. It's the 3rd thing it prompts you for.
Don't blame a distro's bloat or duplication of apps on the distro, blame it on yourself. Even gentoo would be bloated if you did emerge mozilla ; emerge galeon ; emerge phoenix ; emerge netscape ; emerge 10 more browsers. Clicking on the default everything like so many windows installs has taught you isn't the answer. Linux has 'choice'.
Poor Mandrake... what a poor method to do business!
This means... community: f*ck you! if you don't give me your bucks I'll not release anything... great Mandrake, just GREAT! I had 19 systems in my network with Mandrake, fortunately I changed to Red Hat which is a serious company, not a homemade business of people that want to be millionaire and have a very bad manners with the community.
Mandrake doesn't believe in Linux, they believe in money. Go to the hell. Will never use Mandrake again in my life... Red Hat or Debian is THE choice.
"Give us more money. We can't survive with our buissness plan."
I am all for open source, but if your company can't make enough money to sustain itself, you shouldn't be around (as a company).
I am not too fond of their distro, to user friendly, and thus hard to change the setup.
Being a broke college student I don't have $60 or $120 bucks to drop on mandrake's user club. On the other hand, I give transgaming $5 bucks a month. It's a nice compromise between buying sofware and this rental garbage Microsoft, IBM (lotus), etc. are working on shoving down everyone's throat. Pay $5 or $10 bucks a month untill the software does what you want it to do, then stop. Seems ideal to me.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
OK it's now (at the time it happened) Dec 10 2002 Mandrake 9.0 has been out for over 2 months. But what happened? Well even though SuSe and Red Hat both came out a month later it seems that the stores here in the Silly-Con Valley are still empty of Mandrake 9.0 oh yes there are still a couple of copies of 8.2, and people who are wondering why Mandrakes 8.2 is so far behind RedHats 8.0 (as far as kde etc go.) So what happens people download the product. Then once it's downloaded they don't need/want the boxed set... heck if you are a club member you get to download the "extra's" anyway so.. ah heck I'll just wait for 9.1 and see if that boxed set comes out... it's only a couple of months away right?
What does this show... simple economics rule #1. before you can sell something you have to have something to sell. It's now Dec 20th.. I went to Fry's today to get 9.0 boxed, the guy in the store said the 2 or 3 boxes they got sold right away and he doesn't expect any more till next year... And people wonder why MDK is in trouble....
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
This may be a good thing for the following reason: It's been said that one of the reasons large-scale app development for Linux is so slow is because there are too many different distros to maintain. RedHat should buy Mandrake so that we could have at least 1 target platform for uniformity's sake. I know this doesn't solve all peoples' needs, but to become a bigger competitor on the desktop, the distro madness has to stop. How many times can we give KDE or Gnome a new theme, create a new GUI for RPM, and call it a new distro. If someone wants to make a new distro, put NEW features in it. Don't give us a warmed over, buggy RedHat. If Mandrake can't cut it, shut it down. The developers can go to RedHat and help them make it easier to use for newbies.
Contrary to many posts I have no objection to make to the reiterate cash-in plea from Mandrake, let the fans decide that. However I wonder where do they find the nerve to write such a bunch of intricate fallacies with charts and percents galore. I am going to save that web page, it's a gem.
..."The solution we are working on -- Increase of Capital". Nooo, really?, 'never crossed my mind.
Good News: "MandrakeSoft's business model is more solid than ever"
Bad News: We are going under.
"we need to restore our capital finances (e.g. we need cash) to meet our supplier's engagements...As a result we have a big short-term cash issue."
Ladies and Gentlemen!, before your very eyes!!!, a solid business model with a $4M "big short-term cash issue".
What bloody MBA is theaching all this NONSENSE crap?, makes you feel quite sympathetic. Having in mind that this is already the second time they meet the "technology bubble", why don't they just recognize that their business model is useless and then ask in all honesty their user base for more ammunition???
Run gvim or get kvim or whatever
for at least the next 600 days. The site just helped me discover "webmin" today which is going to greatly help me manage my family member sites.
I don't give to charities, but I do try to contribute to benevolent communities, and I do pay for services that help me become a more productive citizen.
If you have a problem with that then our paths should never cross anyway, so just move along to the topics that do interest you. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
"And you should leave Microsoft, DRM, and all of the other /. buzzwords out of this -- they are not relevant at all to the topic."
Funny, I always thought that MS, RIAA, and MPAA had crappy business models because they depend on controlling the masses when freedom appears to be an innate human condition. I guess the fact that they make billions of dollars automatically makes these "good" business models in your book. And how exactly to explain this to your children?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I know their page lists investor information too, but to me that looked as if they where only interested in people with much bigger pockets than mine or most other linux community members.
This is trolling:
Need help! (Score:-1, Troll)
by MandrakeSoft (133134) on Friday December 20, @01:40PM (#4932877)
(http://www.mandrakelinux.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 13, @04:57PM)
Please, give us a substantial sum of dollars, euros, or whatever. Don't bother giving us code; code alone won't feed us.
G. Duval.
I got my start in Linux using Mandrake 7. The distribution was easy for a newbie like me to set up and I wasn't doing anything too terribly advanced. Dealing with RPMs wasn't even the biggest of my worries. I was on a dial-up connection, so all the added stuff ("Crap" as many others would call it) really helped to open my eyes to the world of open source software when I wasn't free to just download whatever I felt like. After their first call for help, I subscribed to Mandrake Club for $60. It was money well spent because without Mandrake I probably would've been coerced into paying far more for the latest and greatest from Redmond. So thank you MandrakeSoft for making such an excellent distro for "people like me" to learn on.
I'm on broadband now and have since moved on to the Gentoo distribution, so Mandrake won't be getting money from me this time around. However, my mom is still trying to learn the basics of Linux. When I get a chance to see her next, I'll put Mandrake 9 on her box and see where it goes from there.
Browsing through the posts at +5, slashdot is beginning to look more and more like people forgot there's more to free than beer.
Sad really.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Linux is dying posts?
2M KEuros. How many gEuros is that?
Yepp, just another post from a happy Madrake Club member:
Remember: You get StarOffice for free, if you are a silver member. You can vote for the most important missing rpms. You get really good support. You get some rather big discounts on things like VMware, Tramsgaming stuff, etc.
It's REALLY worth the money IMHO and a wonderful way if you prefer ISO downloads to their CD boxes (the download is available sooner (which IMHO may be one reason for their financial problems) than the boxes and I want the money to go to Mandrake directly instead of 30-50% to Amazon or some other reseller, the CD maker and the book printer.)
And remember: Mandrake is a lot more open source friendly and fair to the community than e.g. OpenLinux.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
One of the great things about Linux is that it will always be free. Who needs a RedHat ripoff Distribution anway? Use Slack or Deb and you'll be fine. At least Debian appears to be around forever since there is no company behind it. I must admit that i never really liked the mandrak approach of Linux anyway.
I'll help you out. I am neither male nor skanky, and I'm horny as hell. Call me at (216) 321-3546 sometime.
;-)
Esther Sassaman
2776 Hampshire Blvd #B1
Cleveland Heights, OH 44106
Talk to you soon!
Which "you people"? Did you look at the post history for each (non-AC) user who had "scorn" for them?
/. posters are homogeneous? Are you psychic?
What leads you to think that
And how would "scorn" for Mandrake and "hate" for Microsoft translate into what you apparently view as hypocrisy?
Just because 2 viewpoints (that you have not established, BTW) seem contradictory to you doesn't mean they are that way. Cry a river but if you can't make a cogent argument, yeah, I will flame your weak post/cheap troll.
from work where i can't sign in
This is all about survival. It seems that Mandrake is not able to survive by it self. Let's close the store.
With all due respect to RH, but the issue of Mandrake's survival or not means a lot. Debian did have the same problems a while back, the same problem ended Corel Linux, and now mandrake. The only tough fighting distro is RH which made a profit of 200 K grands as i recall.
Now does this scenario remind us of something that happened about 15 years ago with M$.
I dont mean to say that RH is a monopoly, RH was commited since day one to open source in general, and did pay back and still is to the linux community; and this is something i respect and love about RH.
But we as linux users and developers should stand by all distros with our mighty $, just to make try to make the choice availabilty of good, dependable SW exisiting.
And lets not forget that Mandrake is No 1 desktop linux distro, and its worth the effort and the money. As techis we see what other business men dont see, and that is quality, if Mandrake goes down, so does another quality SW factory.
The lunatic is in my head
Nice Troll! Kudos to you!
No sig for the moment.
I was using an older Mandrake, decided my primary machine needed updating, put on RH 8.0, and lots of stuff just didn't work. My printer was all hosed, and very little multimedia capability (no way to play MPGs OR MP3s??). Sure, I compiled and installed xmms, but with my printouts coming out all wrong (even though RH 8.0 had a selection for my specific printer as oppsed to a near match), over to Madrake 9.0 I went. MPGs and MP3s play, and the printer just prints.
Try ya next time, Red Hat, or maybe the next time I do a server.
You keep using this word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Much of what you assert about the difficulty of updating Redhat is false. I will agree that apt-get install is generally easier to use, but the picture you paint of Redhat update options is far too bleak. I suggest you read the output of man up2date or man gnorpm.
Oh, and if you're sufficiently clued in to worry about POSIX standards (and I note you fail to mention that Redhat is LSB certified), why the hell are you worried about their custom kernels?
Learn how to read...they made a profit of $305,000 during their latest quarter.
I'm going to post here what I said at osnews: I've tried a lot of distros including the latest Red Hat, SuSE, and Slackware. Slack is the only one that could possibly entice me away from Mandrake, but they will have to do much better than Slackware 8.1 to do it. Mandrake is very newbie friendly and works great for CLI fans. Mandrake also has something that no other distro has...........The Club. Yes, Mandrake Club is for helping to financially support Mandrake. And that support makes the distro get better and better with each release. I joined in December, 2001 and just recently renewed my membership. There are a lot of benefits to being a Club member. Among them are: - A multi-lingual forum. Yuo can get help or help someone, praise or complain, make suggestions about Club or the distro.........and MandrakeSoft listens to us. - Commercial software available only in retail packages is available for download to members. Over 130 apps last time I checked. - For Silver+ members, StarOffice 6 with a complete license is available. -We get discounts at MandrakeStore and MandrakeOnline. The club also negotiates discounts with third parties on behalf of Club members such as Win4Lin, Yopy, TransGaming Kohan, and several others. -We have our own list of download mirrors and we can use the Mandrake Software Manager with these mirrors, which solves all the dependency headaches. - And best of all, we directly influence the direction of the distro. - We have a RPM voting system where we request and receive new custom packages. Denis is constantly adding things to improve the MandrakeClub site and bring us even more benefits. We have something that NO OTHER Linux distribution can offer and I think $5/month for a standard membership is a bargain. Mandrake Linux is not just the distribution I use, it's MY distribution. The CEO of MandrakeSoft visits the site and answers our questions. It much, much more than buying a box with CDs in it. With Mandrake, it's personal. Mandrake has been my distro of choice for almost 2 years and I can't see anything that is going to change that.
I would have no problem whatsoever that another distro would fail. I'm not using those. I have been using Mandrake for the last 4 years and I happen to like them. The only 'new' distro I have some sympathy for is Xandros. The others, I don't care for them at all.
Dennis Warren Mann
5022 N Oak Trfwy, Apt 325
Kansas City, MO 64118
warren@clusterlizard.org, opensourceman@yahoo.com
Gary L Davenport
264 Forest Hill Dr
Youngstown, OH 44515
(330) 793-8831
trollaxor@trollaxor.com
Craig Lee McPherson
2020 N Chestnut Ave
Fayetteville, AR 72702
(479) 251-1018, (479) 409-4407, fax: (206) 289-5888
craig@bcm-hog.org, cmcpher@ipa.net, CraigMcPherson@email.com
A bank loan has to be paid back. That INCREASES debt and does not help.
They need less than 10% of the estimated 250,000+ users of ML to buy a Silver membership in the Club for 120USD to get them over this BIG hump. Then they will need another 20,000 to pay the next bill. At that point it is all up to MDK to keep it going and not get bitten again by seemingly good ideas from bad management. Current managemnet is doing a good job but need cash to resolve the last mgmnt screw-ups.
All totaled, if even 50% of the freeloaders would have given back $ome of what they have gained from the MDK distro, none of this would ever have happened.
So how much of Mandrake's disto is proprietary
ZERO. MandrakeSoft dld edition has absolutely no proprietary SW in it whatsoever. They do not even include Netscape because of their license.
It is already one of the most OPEN projects in the Linux communities with all of the development work being done on the "cooker".
The boxed versions include all kinds of software -free and commercial, IOW. That is to make the boxed sets appealing and more valuable. It has apparently worked as their sales have really increased. Unfortunately, the sales revenue is not enough to cover the immediate need.
The BIG debt was brought on, primarily, by MandrakeSoft's attempt to set-up and maintain an "e-learning" site for everything about Linux. The _previous_ mgmnt had a good idea at the _wrong_ time. IOW, they made bad decisions. The *new*, current, mgmnt has turned that around PDG so far.
It matters also because of the effect their collapse can have on the OS and Linux communities in general.
-Those that hate us will be quick to point out how OS does not work, blah.
-Lending institutions will be even harder to convince of the necessity of lending money for 'vaporware'.
-The next time an OS company needs help, there won't be much of a chance for it to succeed. In fact, they probably won't even try and will just lock the doors. That will leave a lot of people wondering if OS is such a good idea...
These are some facts and my opinions. I'm entitled to the latter(at least I am currently.)
WITH did you have to put "Again" on the end of that?
You make it sound like this is business as usual for MDK. It is not.
They have been working very hard to develop the best Linux OS money can buy and repair the damage done by _previous_ management. The published decrease in costs and increases in revenue _PROVE_ that they are succeeding. It just has not happened as fast as they need for it to occur.
Think about it like this:
You are unemployed and almost completely broke. You have excellent resume and several companies want to employ you. But your light bill is due and you cannot pay it. Since you have little of value to sell, where do you get the money to pay that bill and others until you can get the job and stand on your own again?
You are not just going to quit when you know that everything will be better in a few months. So where do you go?
You go to your friends, if you have any.
And that is all that they are doing. They are asking their friends to help them out.
They could have pointed out that the last effort by their friends to help them was not enough and that is why they need more now. But they did not do that - they have not even hinted at it. The truth is that the previous support was not enough because there are many thousands out there that never contributed anything. The people that helped them in the past are not their focus for an immediate increase in capital.
It is not "Again". It is a continuation of the same request and one that they hoped they would not have to make.
It really would be a crying shame to see them go down when they are so close to getting in the black.
It's mine too... 3 years.
I'll renew the club membership when asked.
It would be a shame if Mandrake were to go out of business. 9.0 is proof that you can get by without Windows if you want to. It's been good for promoring Linux on the desktop because people know that it is (I know it's not perfect) easy to install and get up and running with.
There are so many distros out there, from single-floppy toys to DVD-sized that compete for a user's attention that it's nice to have a poster child distro or two (eg Red Hat or Mandrake). One of those poster child distros going down the toilet will send the wrong message to lots of those people that might otherwise start looking at alternatives to Windows (especially with the new licensing).
I hope the Mandrake guys are reading this discussion in Paris and taking on board some of the constructive criticism - I think they probably could do more to help themselves.
No need to get sarky. What is it with you linux people that makes you arrogant? No wonder it's always a nightmare getting help with linux as a newbie.
I did try selecting expert mode with mandrake, but I would have been there for god knows how many hours selecting and deselecting thousands of packages - most of which I have no idea what they do.
Seems that one of linux's greatest strengths is also its greatest weakness - "choice".
"No need to get sarky." I'm guessing this means sarcastic, and there's no arrogance involved. When people like yourself offer discouraging words about a distro, out of ignorance, you scare others away from trying it. There are a wealth of resources for newbies, particularly for Mandrake users. It's not a nightmare getting help at all as long as you avoid dalnet on irc.
Complaining that you'd spend many hours doesn't absolve you from doing it. If you want it trimmed down, do it. Every package describes what it does in the Mandrake installer, you just click it when you're selecting/deselecting it and you'll get a nice description. Now that you're armed with 20/20 hindsight, perhaps you can offer clues to others that may try it in the future.
I agree with your last statement though. Choice can be a double-edged sword.
From the "Appeal":
The world already boasts of several million Mandrake Linux users, and we know at least 200,000 of you. We could get over this crunch if less than 20,000 users became Silver Members of MandrakeClub.
Unless my math degree has failed me, that means, if true, that the "world" owed them about 210,000,000USD (several=3 million at 70USD per Power Pack). Presuming that they already collected their share(unknown %) of 14,000,000 USD from the 200,000 and all they want is for less than 20,000 ( 7.14% ) of the remaining 2,800,000 Mandrake Linux users to pay up, it begs the question:
Why don't they go after the other 92.86% NOW?
Before the next quarter ends they are going to need another 1,200,000USD, equivalent to about 10,000 Club *Silver* members, or they will be in the exact same situation.
Once they get past those two hurdles,but before the end of the following quarter they are going to need another X-thousand to maintain capital and so forth.
And yet they have published no plan showing how they are modifying current managment of the company to sustain continued growth. They have bits and pieces spread over the site which one could (wrongly) assume is their plan. It really does irk me that they can ask for money but do not publish _any_ new, consolidated business plan to make sure this S! does not happen in the future.
I'm broke with no job(ummm, yes, I luv BEANS- yech!) but if I called my (rich) Uncle, the FIRST thing he will ask is: "What is your plan to use the money?" He doesn't mind giving away thousands to the right charity but he certainly does not want it to vanish into (cyber) space. He may be old but he is not stupid or naive. (In fact, he is pretty D! smart and wise -best I've ever seen or even heard about at 89+ years.)
I wish them luck. I hope the other 2,799,999 freeloaders have jobs and are finally willing to fork over the bucks. Even if 10% of those would send a 10USD Paypal or Wesern Union gift, MDK will be OK for now. S! even I can find 10 bucks worth of quarters...
Of course, there is no place to send it - they did not plan for that.:)
freeloader
1- Build and invest money in Product A
2- Give Product A away for free
3- Sit in daze figuring out why your now bankrupt.
Gee it's like a Polish supermarket.
HEH
Oh yeah how's "LNUX" doing these days? bahahah
If they cannot remain a profitable organization then let it die already. Man I really hate to say something like that but enough is enough. No amount of money is going to fix flawed management.
Got Code?
Among many things that the company have been supporting out of their own pockets are the ones listed on this page: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/labs .
Some of those are KDE, GNOME, Plex86, Bastille Linux, Prelude, Aurora, CUPS, PHPNUKE, Linux Kernel Development, LinuxPrinting.org and the list goes on...
I am sure that the worthless fsckers that troll thru here will find fault with some or all of those. To you I can say now:
So, like, what have YOU done to help Linux grow and prosper?
Since I won't be back, I'll give you the answer: The answer is that you have not benefited the world community nearly as much as MandrakeSoft has in less than four years. If/when it happens that they have to lock the doors, it is going to hurt a lot of people and you are probably in that list whether you know it or not.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings:
(10) Sorry, but that's too useful.
(9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent!
(8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell
#pragma is for.
(7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too
hard to write.
(6) Them bats is smart; they use radar.
(5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in
here?
(4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!"
(3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this
sucker.
(2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth.
(1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...