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MandrakeSoft Files for Bankruptcy Protection
An anonymous reader writes "It's official: MandrakeSoft has filed a 'declaration de cessation des paiements' - the French equivalent of a U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. From a statement issued by the company: 'This reorganization of liabilities enables MandrakeSoft to continue its current operations, which are showing increases in revenue and significant decreases in expenses. MandrakeSoft's strategic partners are supporting the company in this process and the MandrakeSoft team is focused on continuing to deliver high quality services and products to its customers.' Best wishes to MandrakeSoft as they work through this process."
Sorry buddy, but the Sally Struthers approach didn't help your cause.
I'm a capitalist, and I firmly believe that any business must make money through the sale of goods and services to turn a profit and survive. Look at RedHat. They took the same product, spent large amounts of capital developing a product, and sold not only that product, built on freely available technology, but support services and add-ons that people want to buy.
The difference between them and Mandrake? They created a business model that works. Mandrake was built on top of RedHat, with most of the work already done for them. If Mandrake has been unable to attract investors in a Linux-crazy world, something must seriously be wrong with their fundamentals.
So sorry, Sally. I won't be giving a failed company a handout. I'll continue to purchase products that warrant it. This is Darwin's theory of Capitalism at its finest....the strong survive.
Hate to tell you this but free software can survive just fine. It's a bloated company based on free software that cannot.
Why the hell should I give my hard earned money to a company that isn't doing enough innovative stuff to be able to sell their product? RedHat and Apple don't seem to have these problems.
Realistically how many people does it take to make a distribution? Patrick V of slackware probably doesn't do it alone yet I wouldn't be surprised if he did.
If you really want to contribute just write free code. Otherwise stfu about "contributing" to a bad business model.
To say it in french, "Je m'en fiche".
This might be a mistake. If you donate now the money might go into the distribution fund available to the creditors. Please email Mandrake (I did) asking them to set up a separate untouchable account that only becomes available once the appointed Judge has approved the bankrupcy distribution and reorganization plan.
The fund should be earmarked for development as well.
Help fight continental drift.
Mandrake has done a fabulous job with 9.0 - amazingly good for a
I feel like if they just went not even an extra mile, but an extra 100 yards they'd have a fabulous distro. I've finally migrated back to using Mandrake much of the time, which I abandoned a few years ago (for my day-to-day desktop work) for Windows 2000 since desktop usability was just not there yet, and because I needed Outlook and Word on a daily basis for work. Thank god OpenOffice.org has solved the Word issue for me, and Ximian mostly addresses the Outlook issue (though thankfully I no longer need the Outlook calendaring features that everybody at my old company fucking loved).
Actually, I copied the config file from Knoppix at one point, since Knoppix is Debian based and worked perfectly. I spent a LOT of time working with the X config files.
That was just one of MANY things I tried. Not one of the local Debian fans or anybody else I contacted had a good suggestion that actually worked.
My experience is that many Debian people have forgotten the install because updates are so easy. That's the reason I wanted to change over. If/When I can get Debian working on that machine, I'll probably switch. In the meantime, it's Mandrake, which I got up and running quickly and even got all the extras (like firewire) working easily. It's my first Linux video workstation!
Let me start out by saying that I've used Mandrake for years, I still do. Nothing I've seen comes close in terms of ease of install and automatically detecting and setting up my desktop hardware.
But, unless they fundamentally change the way they do business, I don't think they can survive. Their primary products seem to be a boxed distro that you can download for free and MandrakeClub, which as far as I can tell is paying $60 a year to feel good about yourself. The subscription adds nothing of real value, at least to me. I don't really want the free but commericial software they have there (and if I do, I can download it elsewhere). I don't care to "vote" on which RPMs get packaged up next, etc.
Here's what I want from a linux disto: The ability to use the OS. To not have to tinker with it. To not have to spend a week updating it just because I want to run a more up-to-date version of some program (GNUCash 1.6 comes to mind.) To not have to update the OS every year because the company drops support (and some here bitch at MS for dropping Win-95 support!).
Simply put, I think Mandrake would be better off concentrating on making less versions of their OS, supporting them better, and helping people move forward without updating the whole system. They could easily charge for access to their servers, etc. a. la. the Red Hat Network.
With Red Hat's recent decision to only support their Linux distros for 12 months, I think the market is ripe for something with real support for the end user at a reasonable cost. Move away from the hacker market who DOES like to reinstall every few months chasing the latest and greatest.
I'm just going to play the devil's advocate here..
You complain that debian was hard to install.
This is good! Because:
*) Like you said, you learned a lot in the process.
*) It forced you to realise that some packages aren't totally free, and made it just that tiny bit harder to get them - that's a good thing.
*) If you weren't smart/compentant/knowledgable to install debian, then what use are you to us?
*) You used the new found knowledge to make money, and so I assume helped someone else move/use linux, and possibly develop for it - definetly a good point.
Over the years of helping on a chat channel, I've noticed questions have gone from "How do I check dma is on on my hard disk" to "How do I use kmail?","How do I add a bookmark?", "".
I've noticed more than one person complain/comment on this. If you feel I'm being elitest, just imagine all those AOL'ers suddenly using linux and clogging up the irc channels with really dumb questions.
At the moment, the linux community wants people that will help and develop. Even if that is in translating docs, writing docs, doing art, etc.
Having said that, there are some useful points to having the general AOL'er using linux:
*) More people = hardware companies taking linux seriously.
*) More people = games companies taking linux more seriously.
*) More people = UI considerations taken more and more seriously. (Good as long as the UI only becomes easier to use, not dumbed down and reduce efficency of those who know how to use it)