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Interview with Mandrake's Head Honchos

Posted by Hemos on from the talking-with-the-men dept.

Shipud writes "Newsforge has an interview with MandrakeSoft CEO François Bancilhon, and Mandrakelinux co-founders Jacques Le Marois and Gaël Duval. Among the issues discussed are a the business model for a GPL-based public company, Mandrakesoft's shares, the role of user subscription in funding, the bankruptcy, Xfree 4.4's new non-GPL license, and more."

4 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Bigger than that by wombatmobile · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the value of the tale goes significantly beyond Linux. It's a business story with some template lessons for how to manage venture funding (and how not to).

    Easy lessons. Hard to learn.

  2. Re:sc0wned! by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OpenLinux being an example of a badly assembled distribution had nothing to do with it...

    At least Slackware, even with its problems has a long history and has an avid base of followers. Debian has ease post-install administration and maintains a good place with their different versions. Gentoo has a lot of fans of the "bleeding edge". RedHat and SuSE both have good corporate and community support for those who want something pretty right out of the box.

    I didn't see Caldera OpenLinux having any of these, and there were forces resistant to fully accept the GPL as well. The only surprise is that they lasted long enough to turn into SCOX.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  3. Re:They're french? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    France was opposed to the US invasion of Iraq, and since then, they have been declared "unamerican".

    Which is okay, because, as far as I know, they're not American anway

    Yes, but that comes as a huge shock to some Americans.

    I'm joking, of course, but only in part. Americans are particularly good at assuming that people in other countries think just like they do. This probably has something to do with the relative lack of other countries nearby compared to much of the world. In the U.S. one can live hundreds of miles (600? 800?) from the nearest foreign nation. Very little of their media gets into the U.S. either (the BBC and Telemundo are about it). And of course, foreign language (and thus foreign cultural) education are not emphasized in schools here in the U.S. In other words, there's a lack of experience with that sort of thing.

  4. more than just opposed by asv108 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The main French government action that caused the Bush administration and others on the far right to promote anti-french behavior was the French government's opposition to a second UN resolution, authorizing the use of force in Iraq. There were plenty of other countries that were against the resolution, but France was the only member of the UN security counsel that said it would veto any attempt at a second resolution outright.

    Personally, I think what France did was a brave a noble act that should be applauded.