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MandrakeSoft Exits Bankruptcy

Posted by michael on from the free-as-a-bird dept.

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."

21 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Just more proof... by The_Mystic_For_Real · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that open source software truly is a profitable industry!

    --

    _____

    Thank you.

    1. Re:Just more proof... by Knight+Thrasher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Zing! This is so very true though. The software might be free... but you can bet your sweet wallet the support is not! (But since when is that news for the software world?)

    2. Re:Just more proof... by TheWanderingHermit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As one of my relatives used to always say:

      Speak not of what you know not

      And it's clear you know not, or know nothing of bankruptcy.

      Mandrake was under re-organization bankruptcy. They will be paying all their debts. They had to submit plans for payments at least once (I don't know the system in France), either when declaring, or when exiting -- They could not get out of bankruptcy status without having a plan approved by the court and all their creditors for paying off their creditors.

      A large percentage of my clients are bankruptcy and consumer advocacy lawyers. There's a lot more to it than you, in your need to be a smart ass, make it out to be.

    3. Re:Just more proof... by globalar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You don't have to maintain a business model around open source software to take Mandrakesoft as an example. Mandrake has taken time to develope a community of loyal users, who have good reason to be loyal. Their distribution is nice and improves Linix for the enduser (IMO). Businesses should learn the power of user-based community.

      The fact that this community can get as involved as they can (this being open source software), is critical of course.

    4. Re:Just more proof... by 13Echo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      More proof that people will pay to sustain the things that they believe in. They will pay to keep it alive, even if they can have it for free. Any daily user of a good Linux distribution can see the value in sustaining its maintainers.

      Open source is a still a pretty new concept to many. I think that it was just a matter of time before traditional "brick and mortar" rules stopped applying. It took some time, but the system is starting to catch on. You don't need to go to the store to support your favorite Linux distro. Mandrake club and online payment systems have proven that.

    5. Re:Just more proof... by TheWanderingHermit · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I won't bother with most of what you say, since it's (as Shakespeare said), "..full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (And yes, I'm implying that the first part of that line, which I didn't quote, applies to you.)

      If you've been keeping up with the story and if you knew as much as you want everyone to think you know, then you would have read the article that was on /. a while back where a Mandrake employee talked about the repayment plans and how it would take them years to repay everyone they owe.

      Stopping payments is what they do going into bankruptcy. Then they get protection, so they can reorganize, then, if they can come back, they do better, their creditors get paid after all, and everyone is better off.

      Otherwise they can not file, get no protection, get sued by everyone, go out of business, and they lose, their creditors get screwed, and their customers are left without a product.

      But that's not the point here. You're more interested in bitching and trolling than in participating in an intelligent discussion.

  2. Who cares if they're Frencch? by wardomon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They put together a better distro than you complainers do...

    --

    - - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
  3. Significant by FortKnox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is quite significant. Its difficult for some major companies to dig themselves out of bankruptcy (see KMart), but for an open source/linux company to do it... it really proves that open source can survive in a capitalist economy.

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
    1. Re:Significant by emtboy9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not sure I would look at it that way... although I do very readily admit it is difficult to get out of bankruptcy without A: folding, or B: being bought out/liquidated.

      I tend to view OSS companies more like the farmer's market. In small towns and country settings you have the farmer's market. All the farmers come there to sell their produce, eggs, honey, etc. they all pretty much have the same things (tomatoes, beets, lettuce, eggs, etc) and so all are basically in competetion with each other. HOWEVER, listen in when the farmers are talking to each other, and you will find that they very readily help each other out with tips, advice, and even labor. Even though they are technically competing with each other, they share what they know amongst themselves to assist their neighbors.

      Open Source is a lot like that. Red Hat may be in direct competition with Mandrake and SuSE/now Novell, but at the same time, work done on Red Hat linux ends up in each of the others to some degree, and vice versa.

      The proprietary world is more like a pack of wild dogs... they run in packs together until they find prey, then its every dog for himself, and the weakest is killed/devoured by the pack, or left behind to die alone and be picked apart by scavengers.

      Now the true test is when the Farmer competes against the wild dogs. Farmer usually wins in the end, because the farmers all band together, track the pack of wild dogs, and remove them from the equation. Thus ALL the farmers livestock is safe.

      Not a big fan of Mandrake, personally, but cheers to them for getting back on their feet. The more OSS companies there are at the farmers market, the more endangered the pack of dogs becomes.

      --
      "Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
    2. Re:Significant by 0racle · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Simply being capitalist does not preclude being open and sharing to solve common problems, it just often works out that way when the capitalist becomes short sighted and greedy. If being capitalist was exclusive of being helpful to the community or industry in which they compete, companies would not fund research in public institutions, and they would aggressively fight all published standards, and before you say Microsoft, they do not fight all open standards.

      On the other hand, being open does not mean sharing everything. There are portions of RHEL that can not be freely and openly exchanged, and until recently YAST was also closed.

      It is often short sighted to group things together into groups based on extremely simple criteria just because you like one side and not the other. Your analogy, while appropriate in some regards, boils down to people that do things I like are like farmers and those that don't are just savage animals.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    3. Re:Significant by Tribbin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Open software will probably beat propritary software but it is not comparable with the relation wild dogs and farmers have.

      Wild dogs chase animals to eat. Farmers make food to sell. Why would the dogs and the farmers fight? They are on a completely different market.

      --
      If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
    4. Re:Significant by emtboy9 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      On the other hand, being open does not mean sharing everything. There are portions of RHEL that can not be freely and openly exchanged, and until recently YAST was also closed.

      I never said anything like that...I said the Farmers shared SOME things. Of course the farmer with the prize winning 200 pound head of lettuce is NOT going to give away his secret, but he WILL at least help others out who cant get anything to grow at all... That was the analogy.

      Your analogy, while appropriate in some regards, boils down to people that do things I like are like farmers and those that don't are just savage animals.

      Oddly enough, the "Dog Eat Dog World" idea sprang, IIRC from corporate culture in the past few decades. Farmers didnt come up with the idea of fierce competetion, and decimating the competitor. Corporations did. Hence VHS v, BetaMax, and other ideas. Personally, the way many large corporations act, I think it is highly appropos. Besides, it was an analogy, and the way business is conducted is somewhat savage when you get down to it.

      Look at Oracle and PeopleSoft. Oracle lost again and again in the US, and are now trying to talk the EU into getting behind a takeover that PeopleSoft does not want, nor their shareholders. Tell me that is civilised?

      The wars may not always be fought with rifle and sword, some of the most important and telling battles are fought with the pen and mouth.

      Besides, its an analogy, a simile, not a metaphor.

      simile == like or as (he smelled like a tuna)
      metaphor == direct comparison (he was a tuna)

      Cheers

      --
      "Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
  4. That was close... by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I still have my distro preferences more towards the RH side of things (though it is drifting towards SuSE more and mroe), and the Franco-American antipathy over Iraq may cloud the political arena darkly...

    However, Mandrake is one of the absolute best newbie/intro distros of all time, IMHO, and it's damned good to see them come back from the dead.
    No matter what US folks may think of French things, and no matter how disdainful one may be, when it comes to Linux at least, we're all family.

    Cheers,

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:That was close... by pr0c · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't know what his definition is... My definition is a distro suitable for newbies to install and maintain. Mandrake is, xandros is, gentoo isn't, slack isn't. Newbie distro means that a newbie is the minimum target.

      Now of course someone will come along and say well gentoo is easy to install, slackware is easy to install... and that is of course their opinion. The more instructions a product needs the worst it is for a newbie.

    2. Re:That was close... by el-spectre · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Nah, it's mostly presentation. For example, some distros list every app by name in huge menus. Instead of seeing a link to Konq/Mozilla/Opera/Lynx (heh) in the menu, a Mandrake user will see "Use The Web" or something similar. Likewise, a call to OOo Writer is "Make a text document", etc.

      Plus it uses a Fisher Price style that makes XP look professional... but eye candy is popular.

      --
      "Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
  5. Re:Good by ScottGant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm glad they survived also. I'm a Gentoo guy through and through...but we all need to help each other out. I donated a few sheckles here and there to Mandrake when they were going through their hardships.

    Hey, we all need to stick together, right? Giving back to the community, even if it's in some small way. Every little bit helps.

    This is great news.

    --

    "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
  6. Re:Good by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Uh, check the wording of the story, then check the wording of your post.

    Mandrake is profitable and is coming out of Chapter 11. That means that they're producing enough of what people want in order to stay in business.

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  7. It's now official by MukiMuki · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: Mandrake is not dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell failed to hit the beleaguered Mandrake community when recently The Court confirmed that Mandrake accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all exit plans. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey, which plainly states that Mandrake has gained more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mandrake isn?t collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by not failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Mandrake's future. The handwriting is on the wall: Mandrake faces a promising future. In fact, there won't be any failure at all for Mandrake because Mandrake is not dying. Things are looking very good for Mandrake. As many of us are already aware, Mandrake continues to gain market share. Gold ink flows like a river of honey. Mandrake PPC is the most successful of them all, having regained 93% of its core developers.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    SUSE leader Seibt states that there are a whole lot of users of Mandrake. How many users of Mandarke PPC are there? Let's see. The number of Mandrake versus Mandrake PPC posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about a whole lot/5 = a lot of Mandrake PPC users. Debian/Gentoo posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Mandrake posts. Therefore there are about a few users of Debian/Gentoo. A recent article put Mandrake PPC at about a chunk of the Mandrake market. Therefore there are [beyond here lie dragons / 4i] = [woah, Nelly] Mandrake PPC users.

    This is consistent with the number of Mandrake PPC Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Mandrake PPC didn?t go out of business and wasn?t taken over by Red Hat who sell another fledging OS. Now Red Hat is also prospering, its profits turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that Mandrake has steadily inclined in market share. Mandrake is very healthy and its long-term survival prospects are very bright. If Mandrake is to prosper well it will be among large enterprises. Mandrake continues to grow. Nothing short of a miracle could stop it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mandrake is alive.

    Fact: Mandrake is alive

    (note : I originally forgot the bloody plain old text option. crap.)

  8. Re:No Suprise by rokzy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    flamebait isn't about being untrue, but being inflammatory.

  9. Bah by Lakedemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Americans, french, israeli, palestinian are all human people...
    We all eat, drink, sleep
    We all like children
    We all love Women (men/dogs/cats/sheeps...)

    Having the same tastes, we could all be friends (Bah...).

    Well, there are these that bad bad things called "Hate" and "Politics" that make/made people do awfull things this century and the last one...

    Personnaly, I'm french and I love americans (the american girls).
    So, you see... The antagonism between france-us isn't so bad.... ^_^
    Lakedemon
    ps : go go go Mandrake !

  10. Re:Do we see a pattern here? by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 2, Insightful

    >It appears that Mandrake is a great distro for newbies (I know, I started with it myself) who then do not stick around (yep, me again).

    This got me thinking in the context of the current article on migration to Linux and the Ask Slashdot on installing packages vs. compiling source. While many of us love to tweak and play with the OS, most computer users are just that: users. They want to boot the sucker, load a program or two and use it to do work, communicate, and/or play games.

    To say that Mandrake is a great distro for newbies, may be saying it has a bright future. The vast majority of computer users are lifelong newbies, and that's OK. If you want to make money selling a computer OS, that's one of your markets, whether you like it or not.

    I started off with Storm Linux and Red Hat. I am now a Mandrake customer, because it works great for what I do. With my first Mandrake version, I had to recompile the kernel to get pcmcia support on my laptop. Trust me, my wife is not up to that.
    --
    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.