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A Community Takeover of Mandrake?
sombragris writes "Ben Reser wrote an interesting opinion about MandrakeSoft's current financial woes. Reser maintains that there's no great value in MandrakeSoft's current business model and that the best course of action for Mandrake Linux would be a community or non-profit takeover of the Mandrake distribution. Sounds definitely interesting..."
Well, may as well not let all those donations go to waste and put the people who donated (the people who cared) in charge of something. Maybe the people who really care about Mandrake can turn it around?
I can see the fights over the GNU/Mandrake/Debian (or is it GNU/Debian/Mandrake) name.
MandrakeSoft has perhaps taken too strong of a position spouting off about Free-this, Free-that. You and I here on Slashdot understand that Linux is about Free Software (or Open Source, depending on which idealogical leaning you have, pro-RMS or anti-RMS). Freedom is important, Freedom is worthwhile. However, Freedom is not the same as Marketing. Selling a product is about Marketing. As I've stated before, I think MandrakeSoft would be much better off if they started charging for ISOs (or rather, making ISOs available only to MandrakeClub members), and starting focusing on marketing to businesses and home users, and spit-shining their product (get their fucking QA people in line for god's sake, and use your brain before you stamp a release as ready-to-go). If somebody in the community wants to put together a FreeDrake ISO with MandrakeSoft RPMS, let em. Hell, they could do that now, and put some spit-shine on the stuff. But they don't. People use Mandrake, and like it. They need to start capitalizing on their popularity among geeks who want a desktop Linux distro that Just Works (newbies and others), and broaden their damned market appeal and start selling some shit. If they don't, somebody else will. And my fear is that it will be Lindows or somebody equally smarmy. Ugh.
IMHO, if Mandrake is to become as user-friendly as it hopes, Mandrake needs a contingint of professional coders/GUI designers. If it becomes non-profit, Mandrake will only be coded by hackers.
Not to look down on hackers; I'm one myself, but I'm making a serious effort to move my programs toward user-friendliness and performance. But hackers will not make a user-friendly OS with a good GUI; they will make a hugely powerful OS with a ugly, horribly unintuitive interface, and complete user-hostility. Mind you, this isn't a bad thing; for things like servers, no problem. But Mandrake is aimed for the desktop, and that will just not do.
I'd hate to see Mandrake go, as it had a great goal. But I fear if it goes this route, it will fade into the sunset, a lot like Slack sadly has.
Buy their stock.
Subscribe to the Mandrake Club.
By doing these two things Mandrake will remain operational, but they will be forced to obey you because if they dont you'll just unsubcribe or sell your shares, not to mention you can sue them.
I want Mandrake to be a private company because this allows them certain freedoms. I'd rather support a private company which can benifit from the features of capitalism, one reason is because we all can earn money by owning their stock while no one earns any money by just having them be a non profit.
second if we do it like this, we can buy other companies if we ever get enough power. All we'd have to do is pressure Mandrake.
We dont need another community Linux, we have Debian, Slackware, Ark Linux. We need a commercial Linux for the desktop thats supported by the community.
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Subscribe to the Mandrake Club.
Lets face it, we will be paying the same amount of money regardless of if Mandrake is a for profit or not.
Buy Stock, by owning stock if Mandrake is a for profit company and they ever do well, we all will get rich and be paid, so theres more incentive to do this than to just donate to a non profit which will never really make money back.
By owning Mandrake as a company, we will have the power of shareholders, we will be able to control a commercial entity.
We have no commercial linux which supports the community and we have enough debians and slackwares, newbies would understand supporting a company more so than trying to do the non profit thing.
The best ideal situation for us would be to control a successful company in the industry. The only way to do this is to subscribe to Mandrake or buy stock.
Subscribing gives you the same power as buying stock just without the $$ making benifits.
Buying stock is just like donating money only you have a good chance of making your money back 3-4 years from now when the Desktop Linux market actually exists.
Non Profit is an idea of last resort, but its certainly not a good idea. A non profit will have not even a quarter of the $$ support of a commercial entity.
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Had they sold their product commercially, along with the source code in accordance with the GPL, they would have had more paying customers. In this case, distributing the source code would allow hackers more room to tinker, but the binary cd and installation still would be infinately more useful (and necessary).
Since they're distributing under the GPL, they can't put any restrictions on what can and can't be redistributed. The GPL says that the source code must be available along with binaries, but it also says that anybody can make the binaries available for free as well. If they want to restrict access to binary versions, they would have to release under something other than the GPL. Given the fuzzy distinction between "aggregating" and "combining" software for distribution, this might be tricky to pull off without risking legal problems.
The community will support Mandrake via the MandrakeClub, and via stock.
I'd rather them stay for profit because people are more likely to pay for something when its a legit business than they will "donate" to non profits.
Debian? hahahahaha Debian is not for newbies.
Slackware? Hahahahahaha.
Stampede.org?
No, I'm thinking of a for profit company which survives off of its memberships but still offers free software, like AOL.
AOL gets you to subscribe then they give you all these software. I believe Mandrake can have a good business model, currently the market just isnt mature enough for them to make decent money.. Lindows is doing the same thing with their Lindows insiders and I dont see anyone complaining about Lindows business model. Now I admit Lindows does have more money than Mandrake, but Mandrake has 20,000 subscribers, this is a decent amount of money.
We have the chance here to save Mandrake or watch it die. If it dies it will never be compareable to Lindows, so once its dead everyone will move to Lycoris and Lindows and support them.
Death should not be an option, we should all subscribe to the club under the silver membership right now, anyone who has ever used Mandrake and who wants to see Mandrake release 9.1, Anyone who wants Linux to be successful on the Desktop, stop talking and do something about it.
IF people are greedy or lazy, well then Mandrake will be just like Debian and Slackware and hardcore Linux users will take over operations and make it worthless to the common joe sixpack.
We will have another worthless community distro, which is exactly what newbies HATE about linux, they HATE the debian zealots running around trying to make everyone run debian.
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Most of the OSS projects that are polished enough for the average joe are products that were either started as closed sourced and opened up or are managed by a OSS company. Mozilla and Staroffice are good examples of closed -> open. Ximian's products are good examples of OSS managed by a company.
What is a good example of a community application that was developed entirely by a community and has the polish and interface of a major closed soured project and is targeted towards the average clueless user? I guess Gnome and KDE could be good examples but what other apps are out there besides window environments? There is lots of great OSS software out there but not many community projects have a professional look and are targeted towards non-techies.
It's open source, isn't it? At least as far as I can tell -- the only things that aren't free/OSS are the third party apps included with the pay-for product. The basic distribution, and the neat Mandrake installer and admin tools that make Mandrake Mandrake are all free/OSS. Correct me if I'm wrong...
Why is that? The more likely reality of it is most of them will use Redhat, or a UnitedLinux product.
It's also entirely possible that there will be a community lead effort similar to debian. They already have an insane amount of RPM contributions and such.
Is there any closed-source stuff in the distribution? Is the installer open-source? Mandrake Control Center?
If it's all open-source, then what's the big deal? Just fork it. It would be nice, but not vital, if the user community could cough up enough money to keep, say, one former Mandrake coder employed full time. But there are other distributions that work on an all-volunteer basis.
But if there's important closed-source stuff in there, then I don't see how it can happen. The parent company and all the creditors will presumably want to monetarize all Mandrake's assets, not give them away for free.
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Why would Apple spend money to buy software they could get for free, or crusty hardware they wouldn't ever use? Or, desks that they would have to ship halfway around the world?
Why is it every time a computer company is in trouble, someone roots for another company they like to buy it out? I've seen it here so many times it makes me sad. Here are the ones I remember off the top of my head:
"Why doesn't Apple buy Mandrake?"
"Why doesn't Apple buy SGI?"
"Why doesn't IBM buy Eazel?"
"Why doesn't IBM buy Loki?"
"AOL should buy Red Hat."
"HP should buy Compaq."
Uhhhmm...forget that last one. But get over it. Companies don't acquire unprofitable debt-ridden companies unless the payoff is worthwhile.
From 1998/1999 Fiscal Year to the 1999/2000 Fiscal Year they had a 424% increase in revenues. From 1999/2000 to 2000/2001 they had an 18% increase. And from 2000/2001 to 2001/2002 they've reported a 31% increase.
Consider for a moment Microsoft Corporation. Between 1998 and 1999 they had a 29% increase in revenues. 1999-2000 16% increase. 2000-2001 10% increase. 2001-2002 12% increase.
Mandrake went from 500k to 3.5M in 2 years... Microsoft went from $6 B to $8 B. The two are so vastly different even hearing this comparison makes me want to cry. It's like saying last week my parents paid me $5 for cleaning the garage and this week they paid me $15 for cleaning the attic and painting a fence. I have a revenue growth rate of 300%! I should be valued 30x more than MS who has only a 10% increase y/y!
It's also entirely possible that there will be a community lead effort similar to debian. They already have an insane amount of RPM contributions and such.
IMHO, iif (and I say if) Mandrake dies, then the best thing to do is take their fancy control panel and graphical installer and shove them up debian's ass. Since that's really the only thing that differentiates Mandrake from Debian, then take the good stuff and give it to Debian. Then all the packagers can go learn how to make debian packages and so forth. Rather than having another volunteer distribution. I'm all for choice, but what about the idiocy of duplicating work?
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Personally i do agree that we need to support Mandrake right now but i dont think they really need it that bad. I know this situation is enough to get me to finally join mandrake club after leeching ISO's and lovin' em. Buying stock is not the best idea becuase it can cause you to get screwed out of money you should normally expect a return on. The mandrake club is the best because you know that your money is gone and you know what your getting for it.
The key that most people aren't realizing is that MandrakeSoft didn't lose money off selling the OS. In fact they are making good money off the OS and club memberships. They lost money on their e-learning business. This unbalanced their bank account and all they need is what they are doing. They are going through a restructuring bankruptcy. Once they have cut out some of the bad investments they made they will be right back. They aren't going anywhere, they are just trying to get back to making money.
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Mandrake is not going out of business, they are seeking protection from their creditors and will reorganize their business model. Bankruptcy allows a good business to overcome a mistake which would normally destroy the company. Selling enhancements to a free product is a good business model and one which can be highly profitable. The core of Mandrake is solid, it is the other avenues Mandrakesoft took to increase revenues which have faltered.
Looking at Mandrakesoft's investors, Vivendi is a major investor in the company and has deep pockets. Why do you think a relatively obscure French company can get highly visible and valuable shelf space at US stores like CompUSA.
I find the "Mandrake is for newbies" comments on Slashdot worse FUD than anything Microsoft puts out. Mandrake is a Linux distro and can be as easy or as difficult as on wants to make it. Nobody has to use or even install the the usability features of Mandrake and experienced users can do an expert text based install and create EXACTLY the system they want. This is not to mention that ease of use != newbie. Many highly experienced users prefer the simplicity which Mandrake offers knwoing that underneath it is Linux and can be adminstered either through the convenient supplied interface or via the command line ro by directly editing the configuration files.. Once you have gotten past the NEWBIE stage of impressing yourself with Linux, you realize it is just another OS spending hours configuring a machine is a waste fo time since that time could be spent actually doing something productive with the system.
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