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..."

Comments

It's one option

[ThoreauHD]

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.

Re:It's one option

[f97tosc]

Someone correct me if I'm worng, but it bears little resemblance to emergence from bankruptcy that US companies enjoy.

Well, US companies can file under chapter 7 or chapter 11. Under chapter 7, they are closed completely, but under chapter 11 they are allowed to continue to operate while they restructure their business.

Many big and high-profile companies file under chapter 11, but in fact there are many more chapter 7 filings in total.

Tor

Re:It's one option

[spurious cowherd]

according to the actual announcement it looks very much like what we 'murkins would expect from Chapter 11

Re:It's one option

[Mr.Ned]

There was a comment at the Newsforge article which I think said the same thing - French bankruptcy is killer. I'm pretty sure there were several refutations about that, including one at Slashdot:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=50817&cid=50 88 920

Quote:
---
Under French bankruptcy law these penalties [getting out of E-education contracts] would be voided and the remaining company (the company that sells a Linux distribution) would be viable.
---

Things are probably not as bad as they seem.

Non-profit?

[MeanMF]

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...

Re:Non-profit?

[jbolden]

When Mandrake was selling software they were doing quite well. The software division still turns a good profit. The debts from the e-Learning contracts are what is killing the software.

Mandrake's Demise

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if a "community" takes over Mandrake or if a non-profit organization does. The company has a flawed design. When you associate yourself with what is called "free software", then consumers will be confused and your product will not sell. Let's be honest - if you google on Linux, you get information that says FREE SOFTWARE. Managers can do this much research, and no more, and will be confused about the "free" aspect of Linux. This amounts to a product driven by people who are advocating open source and the free distribution of products.

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.

Re:Mandrake's Demise

[Fnkmaster]

Though you resemble a troll in certain respects, I'm inclined to think you have some decent points (in fact, your insight into the mid-level management mindset leads me to believe you either are one yourself or have had an inordinate amount of experience with the most small-minded from that set).

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.

Donations

[Klerck]

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?

Debian

[arikb]

There is already a 'community' based distro. If Mandrake is to go down, maybe it's best to combine the effort put into Mandrake into Debian?

I can see the fights over the GNU/Mandrake/Debian (or is it GNU/Debian/Mandrake) name.

Re:Debian

[Chris Canfield]

While I agree that Debian and Mandrake would be an interesting marriage, I hardly think it is an appropriate one. How many years of testing does Debian do before they will put a package into Stable? And Mandrake? Mandrake is an ultra-easy to use distro. Debian is an ultra-easy to administer distro. While I would like to see a lot more bleed between the distros, I seriously doubt the two would survive the honeymoon. Still, an affair might bear fruit.

Re:Debian

[ThoreauHD]

I'd go for that with the desktop freindly branch of Debian with the GPL'd Mandrake toolsets/control panel and the option for more recent packages. That would be pretty slick.

Re:Debian

[jbolden]

I gather you are a Debian user. The cultures of the distros are really dis-similar. Lets start:

1) Mandrake started as a Redhat + KDE. In many ways Mandrake is the "home" distribution for KDE. Conversely Debian and Redhat are the core supporters of Gnome.

2) Mandrake was one of the first to compile to Pentium; Debian still compiles to 386. Mandrake would naturally after the 2.6 kernel (which is going to require a recompile) probably set up Pentium III required optomized for the Pentium 4.

3) Mandrake tends to be feature rich QA poor. Debian is almost exactly the opposite.

4) Mandrake is RPM based debian is APT based. Though Mandrake isn't religious about this. However one of the key tools unique to Mandrake is an application control center which would be worthless with RPM.

5) Mandrake has never concerned itself with producing a similar feel on multiple platforms. The PPC version of Mandrake was designed for PPC users and had features not present in the x86 version that would be important for PPC customers (Wine sort of thing for MacOS, netatalk installed be default...). Debian conversely wants the distribution to be very close on all platforms. While not quite as extreme as NetBSD they certainly don't see the PPC version of Debian as a seperate but related product from the x86 version of Debian. In general they won't include software that doesn't work on multiple platforms.

Probably the best thing would be for Debian Desktop to just grab the Mandrake Wizards and use them. Perhaps they might want to consider Mandrake's automatic security level scripts. That's the only contributions I can see Mandrake making to Debian that they would want. In the other direction I think RedHat not Debian remains the best place for Mandrake to get support.

Re:Debian

[TheWanderingHermit]

Oh, I get that point.

You are missing my point.

Before I was even a teenager, I was putting together working Heathkit radios (and other kits). I learned to program in high school, back in the 1970's, on a PDP 11. I used to program in Assembler (often hand coded) on an Apple //e in the 1980s for a hobby. I had my first program sale (an Assembler program) to a magazine before I graduated from college in the mid 1980's.

While I'm sure someone will come in as a troll and think they can be clever by twisting what I say, my point is I have a background of working with technical material -- a background of over 30 years of it.

I tried a test install of Debian on my video workstation. I needed to get the system up and running, get X working, be able to use my USB ramdrive, firewire IO for DV import, get the video IO on my ATI Radeon AIW working, get a CD-RW working, get my DVD player (also the 2nd CD-ROM) working to play NON-CSS DVDs.

After a week, I still could not get X to work with my Radeon card. Even on the Debian mailing list, nobody knew what to do. Not being used to Debian, I hesitated to change from stable to unstable or testing, but I finally did it. The newer version of X worked.

While that, in the long run, was a simple fix, it's just one of the symptoms of what I see as an overall Debian problem. It takes so long for programs to be integrated in the stable branch, hardware that has been out for over 18 months is still unsupported!

As to the CD-RW and DVD, it's true all it takes is links, but there's a problem there, and I'm going to sound quite snotty in saying this (and probably get modded to troll immediately for speaking the truth). I've worked with many programmers, techies, non-techies, and the whole range. The Debian community has a BIG problem of being closed minded. In any distro discussion, there's always got to be a few Debian people who pop up and say, "Hey! Debian is the best." Look at this discussion -- it's happened here.

The problem is, at least in my experience, Debian-ites are so busy being right, they are not interested in listening to other opinions. Whenever I say the install (and post install setup) is impossible unless you're a programmer, I always hear, "But you only have to install it once!" I have never, ever, seen any case, in person, or online, where someone said, Debian has a problem with this, and that's why I don't use it and a Debian person replied, "Hmmmm, you're right. Maybe we should look into it." It's always, "But that's not really a problem. Just do it the way that works for us."

My point: I am doing a LOT of programming and I don't consider myself a professional programmer. I'm just doing what I need to do to run my business. I'm working long hours. I don't have time to fart around with adding links to get my CD-RW working. I don't have time to do a lot of post-install work. I need to put in a CD, go through the prompts, and get the box up and running so I can use it for production. If Debian were the only Linux distro out, I'd use WinXP instead. I know that a lot of Debian-ites and programmers will respond to that with something like, "Let him use WinXP..." followed by comments about incompetents that can't or shouldn't be allowed to use Linux. That attitude is doing more to keep Linux tucked away in server rooms and in a tiny corner of the market than anything M$ could ever do.

I've included more than I planned, but the point is, for those of us who have other things to do and a limited time to spend putting our boxes together so we can actually use them to produce services or products, we can't mess around with trial and error setups or researching problems because 18 month old hardware is not well supported wit ha distro. We need to install and get it working. When we have the time, then we can explore and learn.

The computer, to many of us, is nothing more than a tool. A good craftsman, in any field, needs good and reliable tools, but they also have to be able to focus on their work, not on fixing or setting up their tools.

If/When Debian can fit my needs, and can do it without me having to go through and re-adjust everything AFTER an install, I'll be more than happy to use it (the idea of keeping a system up to date w/ a 1 line nightly cron job is VERY appealing), until then, in its present form, Debian is by programmers and for programmers. Unfortunately, this group of people seems incapable of understand there is more than one way to do anything and that their way may work for them, but may not work at all for others.

Yeah, let the community have it

[RailGunner]

Hopefully, the community can take over the Mandrake Distro. Mandrake has the reputation of being once of the easiest distros to get up and running, and with KDE 3 it's definately something that could appeal to Mom & Pop AOL'er.

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!

Let Mandrake Die

[slasher999]

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.

Re:Let Mandrake Die

[Amich]

While I am no slouch when it comes to Linux, Mandrake is the only distribution I will use. I refuse to spend hours of my time editing config files which I can simply click Mandrake Control Center and have everything working in 5 minutes. Out of at least a dozen systems I've installed Mandrake 9 to, in each case, after install, the system was 100% usable, all hardware autodetected, autoconfigred, etc. Saved me tons of time. Why anyone would WANT to piddle with config file when they don't have to is beyond me - and if config file editing is your thing, what's keeping you from doing that in Mandrake?

3d issues? I've never had a problem with 3d in Mandrake. I download the Nvidia RPMs and go. On my ATI system, the dirvers were automatically installed. I've never had a problem running games such as UT2003, RTCW, or Counter-Strike (through WineX).

If Mandrake dies, I will be faced with a tough choice. I had problems with RedHat (plus I'm a KDE nut),SUSE refused to work properly with my video card (an nVidia card), and I don't think I'd like Lindows or Xandros (though I'd try them if Mandrake died). I would probably end up going to Windows, something that I swore I would never do.

So, all of you wanting Mandrake dead - just remember that if Mandrake dies, a LOT of people (their employees as well as their users) will be left out in the cold.

-Jim
"Amich"

*MandrakeSoft* launched the MDK Foundation idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The problem, as I see it...

[Squidgee]

is that, while this would push Mandrake into rapid developement, it would most likely lose sight of its user-friendly goals, and move toward the road of Slack or Debian (Both extremely good, but complicated).

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.

I'd rather Mandrake stay for profit

[HanzoSan]

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.

Mandrakes Business plan is GOOD

[HanzoSan]

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..

Re:Mandrakes Business plan is GOOD

[AxelTorvalds]

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.

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.

Re:Mandrakes Business plan is GOOD

[fucksl4shd0t]

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?

the question is

[asv108]

Would the community be able to release a good consumer oriented distro? Community efforts have led to the release of great software, but there is a tendency to focus on solutions for the people writing the software, which is only natural. How would usability, graphics, and interface design folks be integrated in to a development team for Mandrake?

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.

The community already * has* Mandrake!

[aquarian]

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...

worst comparison ever.

[Yankovic]

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!

Does anyone actually read anymore

[woogieoogieboogie]

Equivilent of US chapter 11

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.