MandrakeSoft Improves Financial Health

joestar writes "MandrakeSoft's latest financial results have been posted to their website. Despite a slight decrease in revenues - mostly due to the dollar/euro rate and negative effects of the Chapter 11-like protection - first results seem impressive: "the company reduced operational expenses by a factor of 5, increased gross margins by a factor of 5 and reduced its losses by a factor of 7". As a result, MandrakeSoft has been cash-flow positive since January 2003, and expects its first positive result for the current quarter! Along with latest Mandrake Linux cool products, these are excellent news in my opinion because it shows that an appropriate business model can help Linux companies greatly."

Comments

Way to go!!

[An0maly]

It's good to see a company that makes a fine product doing well. See, Darl? Money CAN be made from selling software.

good for them

[andih8u]

I'm glad that mandrake is able to make a bit of a profit while still providing a free download edition; without going the redhat way of dropping the home user line entirely. Hopefully other linux companies will see that the Redhat way is not the only way to profitability.

Re:good for them

[Lumpy]

It may be because MandrakeSoft knows something that RedHAT should.

Microsoft got where they did by getting in everyone's home and office. For the first 6 years Microsoft almost encouraged piracy of their operating system from the DOS 4.X to the windows 3.11 Era..

This one act, set micrsoft up to gain complete dominance on the desktop... Businesses used Microsoft because that is what people had at home. OS/2 was not really viable as there were very few people that had it at home or in use... it was a rarity.

so do you set up your business IT infrastructure on something that is superior but nobody knows or do you select what everyone is using at home?

Bingo...

MandrakeSoft hopefully realizes that the larger number of small/home users out there the greater the chance of business adoption.

When the CEO starts talking about this Mandrake thing, the CFO hear's that it has a much lower TCO than microsoft (and it really does... the cost of licensing Microsoft products alone makes this case) then things will happen.

Redhat as far as I'm concerned slit their own throat. us end users at home and in garages are who made redhat what is is today because we could reccomend it at work for no cost/risk with the first taste and segway into a full blown server/enterprise + support setup.

Mandrake.... Hope you guys have a better grasp on reality than the rest of the IT industry.

Re:good for them

[deque_alpha]

You make decent argument, but in my experience, it is usually the other way 'round, people use Windows at home because it's what they use at work. Never have I seen any business or organizational choices made based around what people use at home. I've seen them based on what other businesses and orgs use, but never based on what employess choose.

Where I work, people are always asking me for computer advice (I'm "the IT guy") and in many cases a Mac or a PC running Linux would be what I recommend for their needs, and their first response is always "But I use Windows at work...". I even hear this from people who admittedly prefer Macs, but are so convinced that they don't work with files from Windows machines, they don't consider them a real option.

I don't think redhat cut their throat, in fact they made what is in my opinion a very sound decision. They are focusing on Biz / Org sales instead. It's not a worse choice, just a different one.

Re:good for them

[Lumpy]

the thing is that what is happening now is based on the past. Businesses had minicomputers + text terminals... Unless you were an Uber geek you couldn't get that at home... and many companies were running unix and even SCO Xenix in the 80's yet nobody bought that for home use....

DOS was cheap and came with every IBM PC. Windows 3.11 was for the most part free as it took one person to get a new pc with it and then copy the 10 floppies for friends. (I know of at least 50 Windows 3.11 installs in 1993 that were that way. and most businesses were that way.)

Now microsoft makes it impossible for that to happen, Steve the IT guy that the rest of the IT people hate gives dan a copy of mandrake and says," this is free, you can give copies to everyone you know, and it has an Office suite built in that is also free." people will pay attention, espically after trying to upgrade their W98 box with XP only to have it complain about not looking legit and asking for them to call Microsoft.

Granted, Linux even Mandrake Linux is not ready for the regular PC user. But, it will be.. and Microsoft is making it easier and easier for the regular user to accept the "difficulties" of Linux+Mandrake..

Remember only about 6 years ago people were using DOS, having to fight with config.sys and autoexec.bat files to get a game to run. asking them to deal with some minor difficulties in Mandrake is really simple if their only other choice is to spend $199.00 to upgrade their OS.

What?

[1000101]

Since when is "Chapter 11-like protection" a good business model??

Re:Really?

[Firehawke]

Advertising is a legitimate business model-- it's an annoying one, but nobody can question their right to do so if they choose. As for going under, it doesn't look like they are NOW.

The CD-ROMs thing.. well, blame LG for producing a drive that CLEARLY violates the specifications and reuses a nondestructive command for a destructive firmware command.

You can point to the earlier stuff all you like-- perhaps only the ONE is still valid though-- but the CD-ROM thing you can't point to Mandrake on.