MandrakeSoft Exits Bankruptcy

joestar writes "It's official now: the Court has approved Mandrakesoft's exit plan from the Chapter 11-like protection status. This seems to be the result of the recently announced profitability of the company, and means that Mandrakesoft is now fully back to normal activities. Great news for the Open Source community and Mandrake Linux users! All details are available in an online PR."

Comments

They may be out of bankruptcy, BUT

[ModernGeek]

they have debt to pay off for the next 9 YEARS. That is almost as long as Linux has been around. Who knows what it will be like in 9 years since it is so far away in computer time. The french chapter 11 is a lot differnet than filing bankruptcy in America when you just don't have to pay your bills after you are done with it.

Re:They may be out of bankruptcy, BUT

[Joe5678]

Chapter 11 in the US is reorganization; essentially protection from the debtors until you can get your act together, you still have to pay them though.

Chapter 7 is liquidation, pretty much a free for all of your assets by the debtors.

Re:They may be out of bankruptcy, BUT

[imr]

Bankruptcy is a legal phase.
They are out of this phase where they didnt have to pay their debts. The judge found them worth of continuing to exist (first phase), and now he ruled that they don't need this protection (not paying debts) anymore because they are profitable. (around 7% of those who go bankrupt reach that stage, at most).
But on the other he must also protects those with whom mandrakein in debts, without putting this process of revival at risk (which would also goes against everybody's interests).
So there is this plan which is based on mandrake's good health, where they continue to live AND SLOWLY pay their debts.
But on the business side, they now can do a lot more than in the precedent phase (prettymuch everything, i have heard, but I'm not sure on this point), which was one of the reason of them being so low profile lately. For example, until now, they werent allowed to make deal with governmental entities. Right now, they can sign such big deals again.

disclaimer: Of course, ianal, so i dont know what i'm talking about, and french, so i could be bullshitting you with no shame.

Thank you Mandrake Club members, Deno

[InodoroPereyra]

A key to keep Mandrake afloat in the real hard times was the club, an initiative by former Mandrake employee Deno, and followed up by thousands of enthusiasts who decided to support their favorite distro. Great work to all.

I hope to see more and more features and advantages for club members in the future, to encourage not only nice people who want to say "thank you", but also many other people to join ...

Re:Thank you Mandrake Club members, Deno

[Lane.exe]

When I was first learning to use Linux (back in the Mandrake 7.2 days) the club was indispensible to me; even though I no longer use Linux as my main platform (OS X), I still keep my Mandrake box around and updated regularly. The club is still the best place to get support for Linux-related issues IMO. Plus, their club-only FTP and package directories are great ways for using urpmi to manage the packages on a system.

Re:That was close...

[Anonymous Coward]

While knowing that Mandrake Linux was 'borne' in France, I've never made the mistake of confusing a Linux distro as being any one country's origins - except for maybe Finland.

I am

[MAXOMENOS]

Not chapter 11, but chapter 7 (dissolution of the corporation.)

Bankruptcy 101

[chicagothad]

Ok,

Just as an FYI, most companies are profitable *under* Chapter 11. During 11, the company has all of it's debt (aside from secured) debt stayed and does not pay interest. So, it would be make all the top line $$$$ and not having to pay what drove you into barkruptcy in the first place!

I am rooting for these guys...but let's see what the profitability looks like over the next 2 quarters...

Re:Do we see a pattern here?

[Stinking Pig]

A handful of samples != overwhelming evidence. You'd see a very different picture if you were on a Mandrake-specific list, where loyalty is high and the majority of people seem to be coming from Red Hat and SuSE rather than Windows.

Re:That was close...

[haeger]

I don't agree (surprise surprise).
Mandrake is not "mostly presentation". Mandrake is true to the GPL and all work that they do are licensed under the GPL in a true OpenSource manner. They also focus on usability.
Most people that _use_ computers want something that "just works".

I wouldn't call myself a newbie and MDK is still my flavour of choice when it comes to my work-machine. Easy upgrades, nice interface, everything just works. It's just what I want it on one machine.

This is not to say that others don't have the same benefits, but I haven't found another distro that combines the above things. True_to_GPL+Simplicity+Good_UI+User_friendly+Power = MDK

Also, I think they are the only big one left to focus on users. All others seems to have gone "Enterprise" now.
Perhaps MKD will be the Windows of Linux, Gates et al didn't try to go "Enterprise" until they had the home users... *hmmmmm....*

.haeger

Bright Future for Mandrake and Linux

[stealth.c]

With even more positive press, I hope more people decide Mandrake is worth a subscription or two. I used to be a SUSE guy, but Mandrake was my first taste of Linux, and I've at last returned to Mandrake, for a few very important reasons.

It's a great distro because you can get your hands as dirty as you could with Debian, and yet its glossy and friendly enough for a newbie. And that's good for me, because I don't ALWAYS want to pretend I'm running Gentoo. That, and Mandrake doesn't seem to lean so heavily on one desktop environment that they ignore the other. I can use GNOME or KDE (or install XFCE4) and not feel like I'm running in some secondary mode. SUSE was like this with GNOME and RedHat & Debian seems to treat KDE that way.

Mandrake has always been concentrating on desktop use, and has been doing it for years, so I think it's a lot more mature than Lindows (can't speak on Xandros). As soon as I can afford it, I'm purchasing 10.0 Final on DVD. God knows I've been using their distro for long enough.