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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..."
From what I hear, the French version of Bankruptcy pretty much kills the business. Someone correct me if I'm worng, but it bears little resemblance to emergence from bankruptcy that US companies enjoy.
Non-profit does sound like a good idea.
the best course of action for Mandrake Linux would be a community or non-profit takeover of the Mandrake distribution
It sounds like they're already being run by a non-profit organization...
A manager would much rather spend money and get a lot of Microsoft product than try to understand why Linux is free. I don't care what you want to say, the savings are too great. They become confused by this and don't have any interest in Linux because of the price. Now, until "free software" and "Linux" are entirely separated, Linux won't be mainstream. I know this may sound like an awful thing to say but it is true.
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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.
It would be a shame for Mandrake to go the way of the dodo, so I personally hope that members of the community step up and support it.
Personally, I use Mandrake 9. Previously, I was running Red Hat 7.3, and since I didn't like what Red Hat did to KDE (which I prefer to GNOME, though GNOME is definately not without its merits), I decided to give Mandrake a try - and I've been running it since. Other Linux distros would do well to take a look at Mandrake and see how easy they make it to install and set up a Linux box. While not for everybody*, the drakconf utilities can be extremely useful.
*Perl script wizards need not apply!
After using Mandrake for a few releases (6.1 - 9.0) I can honestly say the world won't - or shouldn't - miss it. It maybe nice for the Linux newbie, but even they deserve better quality that Mandrake shipped with. Out of all of those distros, I had 3D support that worked in one - 7.2 I believe. Fonts were always a complete mess. Package names were changed from their defaults (ie RedHat names) for no apparent reseaon. Bleeding edge in some ways, but a little too much bleeding and not enough edge most of the time.
I read that in a recent interview of Mandrake Linux founder Gaël Duval at Ofb.biz:
Interview:
For the future, we are thinking about a "Mandrake Foundation" which would be a non-profit organization that focuses on developing the Mandrake Linux distribution exclusively. It would be financed partly by Club memberships and/or donations and/or by a "Street performer"-like system, and partly by companies that make money with Mandrake products, including MandrakeSoft. We think this approach would be much clearer for everyone to understand, and would also provide a more secure future for the Mandrake Linux distribution. It would also help MandrakeSoft become a more successful and profitable company by cutting most of its development costs.
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.
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.
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.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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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Lindows is using the same business plan. Thats get subscribers and sell the services.
However, Mandrake screwed up in their budget early on, and ran out of money. IF Mandrake dies all the Mandrake users will be forced to use Lindows or Lycoris.
Honestly, I think Mandrake has the perfect business plan for a Desktop Linux, Mandrake just needs investor support, if a company were willing to give Mandrake 5 million dollars of investment Mandrake would be profitable in a matter of months..
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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...
Since Redmond is doing such a good job of preventing the Dells, HPs, Gateways from bundling Linux: Maybe Mandrake should partner with a start-up computer maker to sell and support a really good "(Mandrake) Linux on the Desktop" machine and be the first one on the block. Look what a little head start did for M$>
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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Desktop users dont use Redhat or United Linux, they want something for the desktop,not for hosting servers.
Uhm no. Desktop users do use Red Hat, and Red Hat isn't a server distribution. It is a desktop distribution. It's install is very easy, just as easy as Mandrake.
I use Mandrake, and I'm a software developer. I like an operating system that works. Red Hat works, Mandrake works, Debian works. These are all operating systems that are, in fact, easy to install.
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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!
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Thank you for posting this. And to add to your point, Mandrake has always been open. People could have started up Openmandrake anytime in the past. Why didn't they? Because there was some kind of value added in paying developers to code that did not exist in the free developer environment (mainly, easy hardware detection and easy to use interfaces). I mean, Debian is proof of what a distro becomes when nobody is paying the developers (I mean this is a positive way. Debian is pure technology, but this is not attractive to some users).
I think Mandrakeclub addresses this issue, and we will soon see a 9.1 version coming from a profitable, but very humble Mandrakesoft this spring. They will still be paying off debts for the next year or so, but they will, hopefully, have returned to a simpler time when life was just about getting an easy distro available to the public.
That is why I am a Silver member for the next 584 days and will probably renew way before that period is up. Call me stupid, but what do I have to loose? I am still paying MUCH less than I would have for MS, and I am helping others have an excellent distro for free. And for someone who will never get his name written down in history books, this will be as close as I can ever get to having an effect on the world.
Anyway,thanks again for the great post.
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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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Ok, I'll bite the bullet here...
What makes Apple os X slick & cool? After all it's a ppc port of a BSD kernel and apps... it's drivers, it's having the hardware you bought working at it's best without fiddling with it to desperation. So Mandrake, or any distro, could sign NDAs and get the source to those damn drivers (3d accel) and patens (freetype, legally) and release dual licensed boxes. That is, sell the box with GPL only components and access the FTPs with the license number to get the extra you pay for.
Ok, you can do that already for free (beer) but having them work clean and out of the box is what the consumer target would want and pay for.
I would certainly pay for encrypted XFree sessions, alphablended HW accelerated KDE/GNOME themes and not the current hacks that turn performance to ground (very clever... but still hacks).
Infact Desktop Linux efforts are stifled by XFree and it's lack of focus on these key issues (to be fair, they don't have the resources to keep up with the pretending users). Get some X hackers, pay them, build a value-added X; don't embrace & extend a là M$ but place the option for high performance at a price.
Afraid of breaking up the standards and the opennes? Ok, give back the code if you like, but at least lead the innovation and pretend the $$ to get it done!
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