Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mandrakesoft Acquires Conectiva

Posted by Zonk on from the one-plus-one-equals-linux dept.

rednaxel writes "This morning, both companies issued press releases about the merge. French Mandrakesoft is acquiring all shares of brazilian Conectiva for a total amount of 1.79 million EUR (2.3 million USD) in stock." CNet has coverage of the merger as well. From the article: "This won't elevate us to the status of Red Hat or Novell/SuSE yet, of course, but this is a significant growth for us..."

11 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. How? by sfraggle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How do they have the money to do this? Werent they almost bankrupt about a year ago?

    --
    were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
    1. Re:How? by DCowern · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Facts, please.

      Mandrake club is currently less than or equal to 28% of their revenue, not the 80% you claim. From their latest quarterly summary:

      Product sales amounted to 51% of revenues, enterprise services 21% and online sales and services 28%.

      So you're dead wrong about where their money comes from.

      Also, your numbers are slightly off. According to that same report, Mandrake is worth about 40 million euros (market value); that's about 50 million USD. Sure, they're not the size of RedHat but that's one of the reasons I like them.

      I don't know where you got the loss figure from but I bought the stock at 2.1 euros. On 4 August 2004, it was 2.39 Euros. It is now 7.60 Euros. Unless Canadian math is different than American math, that's a 317% growth in the period from August 2004 to February 2005. Overall, that's a growh of about 361%. That's not a bad return over the 2.5 years that I've owned the stock

      Representing your opinion and numbers you pull out of your ass as fact is embarassing when people call you on it, eh? ;-)

      And oh, by the way, I happen to like M. LeMarois. He's always been cordial and straightforward in my dealings with him and he seems to have a good idea of where the company should be headed. That, of course, is just my opinion.

  2. What does MandrakeSoft gain? by kevin_conaway · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not terribly familiar with Conectiva. What does the Mandrake distribution gain with this merger? Just more experienced developers or did Conectiva have certain features that made it attractive? Or are they just combining forces?

    1. Re:What does MandrakeSoft gain? by leoboiko · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Conectiva made apt-rpm. They also made the smart package manager, which I think is underrated. I hope the Mandrake guys see its potential.

      Conectiva Linux will not exactly shift to urpmi, but instead it will be merged into Mandrake Linux.

      And remember guys, we're called Conectiva, with a single "n".

      --
      Prescriptive grammar:linguistics :: alchemy:chemistry. Stop being a nazi and learn some science.
    2. Re:What does MandrakeSoft gain? by leoboiko · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sorry, Lucio, but our country is spelled "Brazil" (and therefore "Brazilians") in English, and this is an English-speaking site. But we have a lot to be proud of from Conectiva, including tosatti, acme, apt-rpm, synaptic, smart, the vesa driver for X...

      --
      Prescriptive grammar:linguistics :: alchemy:chemistry. Stop being a nazi and learn some science.
  3. Re:From the press release: by Emporerx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know about Europe, but I thoroughly enjoy Mandrake. I'm wondering what, if any, effect this is going to have on future releases.
    I'm biased because Mandrake really got me into the linux field and away from Micro$oft products. And linux has made computing fun to me again, which has not been the case for some years now.
    I say, if they are trying to make things a little more uniform with these sorts of mergers(software, releases, security) then yay for them. Let's see how it turns out.

  4. Been with Mandrake for years by kbahey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Being a Mandrake user for several years, I am happy to see that they overcame their financial difficulties and are in a position to expand.

    Apart from the botched 9.2 upgrade debacle, they have a distro that I can use for a Linux home network without spending too much time on it. I have four machines running Linux at home, and don't want to spend a lot of time on each configuring it.

    They are also familiar and friendly enough for my kids to use it as their only desktop. They get to play their MP3, use FireFox or Konqueror, use Open Office for homework, ...etc.

    Moreover, it is also perfectly good as a server for LAMP, Samba, ...etc.

    Go Mandrake!

    --
    2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
    1. Re:Been with Mandrake for years by isotropique · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Mandrake is a company from France. They put a lot of efforts to document and translate Linux applications in french for their own market. I think their acquisition of Conectiva follows the same logic. Portuguese speaking people should be pleased by the announcement since it means more applications will be available in their own language.

      I'm from Quebec and my primary language is French. I do not use Mandrake Linux but I feel their implication in the Linux movement improved my own experience. Vive Mandrake!

  5. Re:Novell/SuSE by Wudbaer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Novell bought Ximian, not Xandros. Also cool stuff but different company. :-) Or did I miss something ?

  6. Re:Mandrakesoft = (very) profitable company by joestar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do the ratio: 1.8 income / 6.7 revenues = 26.8%. Quite efficient.

  7. Nice merge ... by wagner_bila · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, i have Mandrake Community 10.1 installed on my linux box (my notebook) and i always heard good things about Conectiva and its developers. Since i'm also brazilian, i feel very greatful with the fusion ... i think some good products can be build now on with this merge. Also Brazil has a strong movement to the open source software and the open source initiative and also has a great potential to grow too ...