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..."
Now that Apple has entered the area of Unix computing, they would make an excellent customer to buy out all of Mandrake's capital such as software, hardware, office furnishings, etc.
Apple could take Mandrake's slick new graphical installer, Konqueror Web browser, and other great pieces of software made by the French developers and really make their OS X product shine.
I think this sounds pretty feasible, and could at least serve as a nice parting gift to the Mandrake creators as they enter unemployment.
It's sad things have come to this, but at least get out while you can. I admire the Mandrake folks and think they changed the Linux world, community, and followers forever.
Computing will never be the same, and we have Mandrake to thank. It's just a shame things didn't end up better.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.