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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. courtesy of LinuxWorld... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...you can hear Francois too if you like :)

    It's a good interview

  2. sc0wned! by astrokid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought it was funny:

    A GPL-based business isn't the easiest model to be successful at; what makes it successful?

    FB: A GPL-based business has lots of advantages, such as benefiting from a huge contributor team who help develop and improve our products, and also communicate.

    JLM: If you look to the history of Linux distributions, you will see that the fastest growing are the ones which follow the Open Source rules. Most of the proprietary ones have completely failed. Caldera/SCO is a good example.

    --

    Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
  3. Re:They're french? by yamla · · Score: 5, Funny
    France was opposed to the US invasion of Iraq, and since then, they have been declared "unamerican".


    Strangely enough, the only people in the world who think this is an insult are Americans.
    --

    Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
  4. 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.