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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."
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.
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.
"Please help these needy software developers. Your donation can get a Linux developer a brand new system, a 100 gig SCSI drive, or maybe a clean t-shirt. For the cost of a Mountain Dew you can give a developer some Mountain Dew to develop trivial new Linux applications you might not ever use or understand. Is that too much to ask for a command-line driven utility?"
For each Linux developer you sponsor, you will recieve a 45K JPEG portrait, and a monthly email detailing his progress."
Giving them some cash would not be good. It would only delay the inevitable (this is not the first time they do this). MandrakeSoft is a for-profit corporation. Clearly they can't make a profit - it is time to close.
Who knows, Mandrake-the-distribution may live after MandrakeSoft dies. If it's that good of a distro (I wouldn't know, never tried) volunteers will keep it going.
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'
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
509 Pepperidge Ln
San Antonio, TX 78213
rawr!
If you like Mandrake and believe in Linux then the only way to show it is by actually supporting the products to believe are valuable. Free software, unless you mean free-beer, doesn't alleviate the producers of a product or service from the realities of economics. If you do not believe Mandrake is viable, despite liking their products, then don't purchase a MandrakeClub membership or box. If you do believe in the products, then support them.
I've got a shiny new Mandrake 9 PowerPack, and I'm happy with it. I've replaced MS Office with StarOffice. Those who value the products should do the same, and those who don't value the products should not. I think Mandrake has a chance to get back into the black, and I've voted with my $.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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?
Ah, but you contradict yourself. You say "pay for a redhat subscription" then say it's a donation? That is wrong, what I would be buying from redhat is a subscription. In no way is it a donation, because I am getting an actual service from them.
And no, I don't work for Red Hat. I find it funny that if you say you would pay for a commercial Linux distro that is making money, you are accused of either being a troll or working for red hat.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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.
Replies like the one the parent poster has received are the number one obstacle to any Linux distro making it big on the desktop. "RTFM" and dumbass inside jokes are going to send hordes of potential Linux users back to Windows. Maybe you taught yourself everything by reading man pages -- well, good for you. For most people, an informative answer to a reasonable question is one of the most useful and encouraging possible resources in making the transition to a new platform.
To answer the question: nedit and xemacs are two pretty decent GUI text editors that run on Linux. nedit is probably easier to learn if you're coming from the Windows world, but if I were you I'd put the time into learning xemacs, since it's descended from emacs, which is one of the standard text editors in the Unix world.
Also do at least learn a little bit about vi (type "man vi" at any Terminal prompt) since it's a) very simple for quick, in-place editing, and b) on just about every distro of every type of Unix machine.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Are you trying to be a troll? If this is a serious question, go look at fsf.org . It should suffice to say that there would probably be no Mandrake distribution without their work.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.
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.
San Antonio, TX 78213
John Romero's address?
What kind of woman are you?
I voted with my dollars when I joined the MandrakeClub. I really like the easy-to-use Mandrake distro, and I'm seriously considering upgrading my membership as long as it's a one-time (one year) deal.
But, I still have some concerns. Is it a good thing to help a company recover from management mistakes? Of course, this is not Enron, and they got snookered by a fast-talking group of used-car salesmen, but what's to prevent it from happening again? I am not trying to undermine Mandrake, I use it. I'd like to see some policy statements.
I love Linux as much as anyone, but let's be realistic. If Dell had an option on their order page to pick Microsoft XP or RedHat 8.0, %99.9+ of users would pick XP. Furthermore, Dell probably doesn't want the added tech support of a Linux machine. 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. I know Microsoft has used illegal tactics to award OEM contracts, which I'm sure we all hate, but in the end *most* OEM's wouldn't want the extra hassle of dealing with Linux.
And if you think the reason Microsoft dominates the desktop is marketing, you need to slow down and take an honest look at the situation. Marketing never hurts, but having an OS that can be run (and maintained) by a slobbering idiot doesn't hurt either. See also: Apple.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
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.
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
Nice troll, but in your ignorance, you're overlooking the good Mandrake has done for the Open Source community at large. To date, they have:
1. Donated heaps of cash to KDE developers to encourage development and keep people fed.
2. Open sourced all their software they've created in-house in order to benefit the community.
3. Provided free downloads of their distro from day one.
I'm sure there are dozens more, but first and foremost, they work for the community.