Frankly, what's needed is more $$$, so that we can employ more people in development and QA, and buy more hardware, and get more people in QA to test this, and - have I mentioned more hardware?.-)
I've tried out the 9.0, and it's in fact astonnishingly good distribution, but there is obviously some hardware on which it doesn't run well. More $$$ would not assure that the distro works perfectly on all hardware, but it would assure it works perfectly on more hardware than it does today.
In my opinion the most efficient way of assuring better hardware support in the future were to join the MandrakeClub, and start asking for support for YOUR hardware there.
I said that *OFFICIALLY* these images don't exist. I've even explained the whole thing in details on MandrakeForum:
- why two 700MB ISOs, and one smaller (because we needed 150MB place on third image for commercial packs) - why no official 650MB ISOs (it's a mess to support more than one set) - why unoficiall 650MB ISOs for MandrakeClub (few folks really needed it, and so we did it for their convenience) - why this unoficial set will not be available on mirrors. (again, we don't want the support mess, and besides there are alternative instalation methods too.)
Oh, yes, your experience from the time we just opened up the store, and then bumped in the middle of post Sept. 11 chaos, which made shipping next to impossible (followed by an avalanche of emails which paralised the services dep.) is really VERY relevant to what's going on today.
Kind of reminds me of the "Mandrake? that's this RH ripof with KDE, no?", and "Linux? Oh, that's VERY difficult thing. I tried it five years ago, and..." type of stories..
Send me an email (denis at mandrake), and we'll clear that up in no time. DVD of course can't ship yet, but if they said that cap will ship first then it should have been at your place long time ago.
kiddy stuff. Developers removed it from the distro because it's not free software/open source, and marketing folks obviously haven't understood the value of the package, so it's not on commercial CDs either.
Rather stupid situation, but not such a catastrophy as some folks would like to present it: There is pine on PLF, and I'll sure as hell get a GPG signed package on MandrakeClub (i have to use email quite a lot, and i happen to do it with pine). Suppose the marketing folks will learn from this, and pine will be on commercial CDs next time...
Not only that - we are in fact sensible enough to understand that RH isn't a big red devil either..-)
These games with closed beta testing, NDAs, and such are really bad, because they hamper the development. I'll leave SuSE in peace this time, but let's recal the Correls mistake:
1) Take a KDE as it is, then quietly change it in-house, never releasing anything back, and withouth consulting the KDE team.This pisses up the KDE team. 2) Release the product with "enchanced" version of KDE six months later, and wonder why nobody wants to see your patches anymore, and why the KDE team went on next version of KDE without you. 3) Look at the cost involved to port all of your changes to next KDE version, and shoot yourself.
In short, everyone lost. Now:
* if SuSE and co. want to hide new capabilities of the Yast, more power to them. * If they start holding back changes/fixes they implemented on 3-rd party GPLed code in-house, in order to be able to ship better versions of free aplications that anyone else could, then we have a real problem.
Think I'll let RMS clear this up, in the meantime I believe they are just hiding the new version of Yast, because they feel too embarassed by it.,-)
Epson is one of the few companies that are really pro-active in Linux support.
I know it for sure as far as printers go: Till is really happy with them, and until recently Epson inkjets were the only devices that produced photo-quality output under Linux.
I got really worried when I saw the title of this article, but I'm convinced that this is just an accident of the "ups, haven't thought of that" type. Guess it's really business as usual - their lawyers are chewing on this now, and some reasonable solution will pop up shortly.
Btw, HP is NOT a willan company either: on the contrary, they put a lot of effort and actually write their own GPL drivers for their printers. Don't know about scanners, but they also wrote Linux drivers (GPL) for their multifunctional devices...
I thought you simply want to troll/FUD, but it seems now you may be really concerned. No need: Mandrake distro including sources is on public servers all over the place (as soon as the distro is done), so we have absolutely no means to do anything along the lines you are worried about.
MandrakeSoft managment doesn't have the will to do anything of that type either (on the contrary), and the same is true to developers. If you want to look for some examples of the company which hesitate to publish the source code of the "derivare works", you are looking in a wrong direction.
"giving voluntarily, because you will be better off that way"
or such? It would be really cool if we would have such a word to stick to - "charity" unfortunately doesn't say anything about your motives, and there is a BIG difference between:
Giving because "someone" is in need and
1) you are such a good guy 2) he is working on something that is benefitial to you, and you want him to continue with that work.
I don't expect folks to join the Club because "they are such good guys", I want them to join the club because they really appreciate our work and want us to continue with it.
AFAIK, RH has been a very good citizen as far as their policy towards free software goes.
One can easily argue that they don't care as much about "small users" as we do, but that's a completely different thing. Besides, one can't blame a company for maximizing the profits, as long as they adher to the letter and spirit of Free software movement.
Get a life. GNU licence doesn't say "you have to put all your work on public FTP servers, in a most convenient form for downloaders, send a letter to every citizen with a list of these FTP servers, and kiss their asses."
As far as GNU licence goes, it would be perfectly OK to send CDs with sources of everything which is in the distribution
Sec 1: You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee
Got it? No need to make ANYTHING available for download on public servers, no need to provide ANY binaries to freeloaders, and a nominal fee for all the folks who ask for sources. Btw, sending these sources on 5 1/2` floppies by camel-post is (legaly) perfectly acceptable too.
It's even legally acceptable to put a proprietary licence for installer and configuration tools if you feel so...
It isn't NICE to do so, and MandrakeSoft is a nice company, but folks like you make me wonder...
MandrakeLinux will remain free as a bird if and only if we can afford it. No money no show, so we have following possible scenarios:
1) Enough MandrakeLinux users understand the fact that producing the distribution costs, and join the Club/buy products form us so that MandrakeSoft can be a profitable and triving business.
The more $$ we get this way, the more important Club will become, and eventually we come to a point where MandrakeSoft primarly produces a distribution for Club members (i.e. collects requests of all types from Club members, and fullfills them as good as possible).
That's the one I would like to see..-)
2) MandrakeSoft gets much more money from B2B type of deals (OEM, professional training, high level services for companies, custom-made distributions) than it does from end users, and decides to "forget" about end-users. You can still download the distro, but nobody really cares about you anymore...
This may sound good at first (it saves you some money, no?), but in the end YOU will have to use the distribution which was made for busines customers - for better or for worse, and have no influence on its development anymore.
RedHat built their busines on this model. Nothing bad with it (I've used RH for years), but I prefer a distribution which is built to fit my needs...
3) Someone with a different vision takes over MandrakeSoft, and we put a special non-free licence on all the software which has been produced by MandrakeSoft. No more free downloads, no more Mandrake CDs from cheapbytes either...
SuSE managed to build their busines on this model, Caldera and TurboLinux failed. Personally i simply don't like it, even when it works.
4) Finally, there is also a possibility that MandrakeSoft may go bancrupt and disapear. This is definitively NOT the scenario I'm interested in..-)
In case that wasn't clear enough: I can't stand beggars, and they stand no chance to get any money from me. On the other hand, I'm handing out a lot of money to street musicians. So, what's the difference?
BEGGAR: this guy attempts to get money from me by showing how miserable he is. For many of them, begging is a profession of choice. Others really end up being beggars out of misery, but I live in supposedly "social state", pay high taxes, and demand from my goverment to take care of people who can't take care of themselves. Begging is a shame.
MUSICIAN (anod other street performers): These guys entertain me, make my kid happy, and generally "make my day". I WANT to give them some money, because I WANT to see them again. Beeing a street performer is not very lucrative job (they can only reach very small public), but there is no shame in doing it. On the contrary, a town withouth street performers would IMO be a very sad place.
I'm the guy who came with idea of the MandrakeClub in the first place, and I'm the one who developed it from "idea" into the status you can see today, and I can tell you one thing: MandrakeClub is NOT a charity. It's a busines model which has been used in various sectors for a long time, with more-or-less success, and which can work well for Linux because of the internet. Let me name a few sectors which have similar financing schemas:
- churches - public radio stations - Non-governmental organisations
Last but not the least important, there is a long tradition of "street music", which happens to be very strong in Paris, and which has given a name to this type of busines model ("Street performer").
The fact that this model has not been used in software busines until recently is completely irrelevant, unless you want to apply for a "bussines patent" in US. But, I'm transgressing, let's go back to Club...
You are right in one aspect: benefits one gets with MandrakeClub are peanuts compared to the value of MandrakeLinux distribution - which everyone can download free of charge.
This isn't a secret, nor have we ever tried to hide this fact - In fact, this is clearly written on the front page of MandrakeClub site:
As explained in the announcement, your membership in MandrakeClub is, above all, a sign of your financial support. Membership fees are directly used to cover the costs of developing the distribution and the various services that are offered free of charge to all Mandrake Linux users. The Club isn't meant as a replacement for paid support or similar services -- you are here because you want to help make Mandrake Linux become even better in the future.
Nevertheless, Club members do receive certain privileges and benefits.
etc.
However, you are also wrong: MandrakeClub is NOT a charity, and even the direct/short term benefits are getting quite interesting with a time. Indirect and long-term benefits (most notably the influence club members have on future of MandrakeLinux) on the other hand are enormous, and yet many people tend to dissmiss them as not interesting, like you did.
Let's take just the example of "RPM-voting" system which you were so quick to dismiss: this system gives you a chance to get new RPMs built because you asked for them. There is a testing stage, in which the folks who asked for a new pack are supposed to report problems, and in the end the system produces higher quality RPMs than what you'll usually find outside of the main distribution. RPM-voting system is now about one month old, and there are still some rough edges to streighten out, but it's quite clear that it's quickly developing in a right direction.
That's a direct/immediate benefit. There is also an indirect benefit, which may be even more important: RPMs Club members ask for will eventually be given higher importance than those noone asks for, and thus the Distribution will change...
The problem is...
Now the problem is: You say that you don't feel ripped off, although you don't find the direct/short-term benefits attractive, so I assume that you actually understood the value of the long-term/indirect benefits, and that you may in fact be ready to remain in the club next year. At the same time, you discourage others to join the club by writing a comment which will be interpreted as "MandrakeSoft is lying about MadnrakeClub, don't join".
This is sad.:-(
We are not lying to anyone, and Club idea is clearly presented everywhere withouth any exaguration (on the contrary, I'm from Central europe, and can't stand false advertising - therefore Club benefits are rather deemphasised than emphasised), so why do you have this urge to present it in such a bad light?
Don't you know that marketing folks generally can't count over 9? Even Apple folks had to be forced into counting in roman numbers before givin up...
So, you either shot all marketing folks, or find a way to avoid numbers bigger than 9.x.
Suse already solved this problem by starting the distribution name change. So, there will be "Suse 9.x" and "United linux 1.x", and then they'll gratiously drop the Suse 10 distro in favor of "United Linux" 1.x+1 or 2.x. Wonder how Mandrake will solve this problem?;-)
And the reason why Mandrake went for 2.96 was very simple: once RehHat eat all the shit for releasing with somewhat unstable compiler, and fixed it gcc 2.96 became the best of all the available choices.
gcc 3.0 was too broken to replace it, but 3.1 looks better, and will be replaced with 3.2 by the time Mandrake Linux 9.0 hits the road. Time to switch...
Btw, 9.0beta1 doesn't really ship with gcc 3.1 - it's in fact a CVS version of what's going to be 3.2 in a few months.
Both RH and Mandrake used this compiler, and between the two of them these distros hold >50% of the world Linux market - no matter how you define "linux market" in the first place.
So, you have two major players who are incompatible with.. what exactly?;-)
Oh, quite a few people have noticed this in the meantime. One doesn't have to be a newbie to appreciate te confort, you know!.-)
Just for ilustration, take a look at the way how number of "apache advanced-extranet" servers is growing with >100%/year, in spite of the fact that "the web" as a whole practically stopped with the growth, and all will be clear. "Mandrakebizcases.com" is also worth a visit...
In fact, LSB has been seen as a "Good Thing" for ages at MandrakeSoft, but we didn't want to kill the idea by advertising LSB-compliance too early (ages-old buggy libs, "media" directory fiasco, no test suite, etc..).
For Mandrake 8.x, the goal was to make the distro "mostly LSB compliant", and that's what it is. First distro which is really supposed to be fully LSB-compliant is 9.0.
SuSE Yast is not closed source, but it isn't "Open Source" either. It's a propriatery licence which gives you somewhat more freedom than usual propriatery licences, but leaves SuSE in control.
This is a fact. Now you may argue that "this isn't a problem" for you, and someone else may argue that "this is a problem" for him...
There is one thing everyone seems to forget about: all Linux companies WERE profitable before investors came in with bags full of money saying:
"hey, folks, looks like you are about to explode! Here are a few milions of dolars, we would like to invest in your company, in order to make a biger bang faster! Please spend the many as fast as you can, there is plenty more where this came from."
So, bang it did, folks expanded like crazy just to get that pile of money going of the table, and then suddenly the same investors realised that income isn't going to be 10x bigger next year as they hoped, and withdrew the support for the "next round of financing".
What's worse, the huge pile of money also attracts the folks who simply want to grab from this pile and don't care about the company, and for some reason really greedy investors seem to LOVE this kind of folks (give me a nice buzzword, and Power point presentation, and I'll eat from your hand)...
In short, the reason why three major Linux companies aren't profitable today is very simple: they were practically forced to overinvest in the past, and they are still paying the bill.
Considering the fact I'm running the MandrakeClub, how come I don't know anything about it?.-)
No, there are no ISO downloads for users (yet?), we simply don't have enough servers to survive that. MandrakeClub members can download the applications which aren't in the "downlaod edition" from MandrakeClub site, but they have to get the ISOs from the same places as everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, what's needed is more $$$, so that we can employ more people in development and QA, and buy more hardware, and get more people in QA to test this, and - have I mentioned more hardware? .-)
I've tried out the 9.0, and it's in fact astonnishingly good distribution, but there is obviously some hardware on which it doesn't run well. More $$$ would not assure that the distro works perfectly on all hardware, but it would assure it works perfectly on more hardware than it does today.
In my opinion the most efficient way of assuring better hardware support in the future were to join the MandrakeClub, and start asking for support for YOUR hardware there.
I said that *OFFICIALLY* these images don't exist. I've even explained the whole thing in details on MandrakeForum:
- why two 700MB ISOs, and one smaller (because we needed 150MB place on third image for commercial packs)
- why no official 650MB ISOs (it's a mess to support more than one set)
- why unoficiall 650MB ISOs for MandrakeClub (few folks really needed it, and so we did it for their convenience)
- why this unoficial set will not be available on mirrors. (again, we don't want the support mess, and besides there are alternative instalation methods too.)
AMEN. :-)
Oh, yes, your experience from the time we just opened up the store, and then bumped in the middle of post Sept. 11 chaos, which made shipping next to impossible (followed by an avalanche of emails which paralised the services dep.) is really VERY relevant to what's going on today.
..." type of stories..
Kind of reminds me of the "Mandrake? that's this RH ripof with KDE, no?", and "Linux? Oh, that's VERY difficult thing. I tried it five years ago, and
Send me an email (denis at mandrake), and we'll clear that up in no time. DVD of course can't ship yet, but if they said that cap will ship first then it should have been at your place long time ago.
kiddy stuff. Developers removed it from the distro because it's not free software/open source, and marketing folks obviously haven't understood the value of the package, so it's not on commercial CDs either.
Rather stupid situation, but not such a catastrophy as some folks would like to present it: There is pine on PLF, and I'll sure as hell get a GPG signed package on MandrakeClub (i have to use email quite a lot, and i happen to do it with pine). Suppose the marketing folks will learn from this, and pine will be on commercial CDs next time...
Not only that - we are in fact sensible enough to understand that RH isn't a big red devil either. .-)
,-)
These games with closed beta testing, NDAs, and such are really bad, because they hamper the development. I'll leave SuSE in peace this time, but let's recal the Correls mistake:
1) Take a KDE as it is, then quietly change it in-house, never releasing anything back, and withouth consulting the KDE team.This pisses up the KDE team.
2) Release the product with "enchanced" version of KDE six months later, and wonder why nobody wants to see your patches anymore, and why the KDE team went on next version of KDE without you.
3) Look at the cost involved to port all of your changes to next KDE version, and shoot yourself.
In short, everyone lost. Now:
* if SuSE and co. want to hide new capabilities of the Yast, more power to them.
* If they start holding back changes/fixes they implemented on 3-rd party GPLed code in-house, in order to be able to ship better versions of free aplications that anyone else could, then we have a real problem.
Think I'll let RMS clear this up, in the meantime I believe they are just hiding the new version of Yast, because they feel too embarassed by it.
Epson is one of the few companies that are really pro-active in Linux support.
I know it for sure as far as printers go: Till is really happy with them, and until recently Epson inkjets were the only devices that produced photo-quality output under Linux.
I got really worried when I saw the title of this article, but I'm convinced that this is just an accident of the "ups, haven't thought of that" type. Guess it's really business as usual - their lawyers are chewing on this now, and some reasonable solution will pop up shortly.
Btw, HP is NOT a willan company either: on the contrary, they put a lot of effort and actually write their own GPL drivers for their printers. Don't know about scanners, but they also wrote Linux drivers (GPL) for their multifunctional devices...
OK, my apologise.
I thought you simply want to troll/FUD, but it seems now you may be really concerned. No need: Mandrake distro including sources is on public servers all over the place (as soon as the distro is done), so we have absolutely no means to do anything along the lines you are worried about.
MandrakeSoft managment doesn't have the will to do anything of that type either (on the contrary), and the same is true to developers. If you want to look for some examples of the company which hesitate to publish the source code of the "derivare works", you are looking in a wrong direction.
Yes but...
Does the Oxford dictionary have a word for
"giving voluntarily, because you will be better off that way"
or such? It would be really cool if we would have such a word to stick to - "charity" unfortunately doesn't say anything about your motives, and there is a BIG difference between:
Giving because "someone" is in need and
1) you are such a good guy
2) he is working on something that is benefitial to you, and you want him to continue with that work.
I don't expect folks to join the Club because "they are such good guys", I want them to join the club because they really appreciate our work and want us to continue with it.
AFAIK, RH has been a very good citizen as far as their policy towards free software goes.
One can easily argue that they don't care as much about "small users" as we do, but that's a completely different thing. Besides, one can't blame a company for maximizing the profits, as long as they adher to the letter and spirit of Free software movement.
In short, RH is a positive player in my book...
Oh, sorry - I haven't noticed that Yast licence has been abandoned...
Get a life. GNU licence doesn't say "you have to put all your work on public FTP servers, in a most convenient form for downloaders, send a letter to every citizen with a list of these FTP servers, and kiss their asses."
As far as GNU licence goes, it would be perfectly OK to send CDs with sources of everything which is in the distribution
Sec 1:
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an
appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee
Got it? No need to make ANYTHING available for download on public servers, no need to provide ANY binaries to freeloaders, and a nominal fee for all the folks who ask for sources. Btw, sending these sources on 5 1/2` floppies by camel-post is (legaly) perfectly acceptable too.
It's even legally acceptable to put a proprietary licence for installer and configuration tools if you feel so...
It isn't NICE to do so, and MandrakeSoft is a nice company, but folks like you make me wonder...
MandrakeLinux will remain free as a bird if and only if we can afford it. No money no show, so we have following possible scenarios:
.-)
.-)
1) Enough MandrakeLinux users understand the fact that producing the distribution costs, and join the Club/buy products form us so that MandrakeSoft can be a profitable and triving business.
The more $$ we get this way, the more important Club will become, and eventually we come to a point where MandrakeSoft primarly produces a distribution for Club members (i.e. collects requests of all types from Club members, and fullfills them as good as possible).
That's the one I would like to see.
2) MandrakeSoft gets much more money from B2B type of deals (OEM, professional training, high level services for companies, custom-made distributions) than it does from end users, and decides to "forget" about end-users. You can still download the distro, but nobody really cares about you anymore...
This may sound good at first (it saves you some money, no?), but in the end YOU will have to use the distribution which was made for busines customers - for better or for worse, and have no influence on its development anymore.
RedHat built their busines on this model. Nothing bad with it (I've used RH for years), but I prefer a distribution which is built to fit my needs...
3) Someone with a different vision takes over MandrakeSoft, and we put a special non-free licence on all the software which has been produced by MandrakeSoft. No more free downloads, no more Mandrake CDs from cheapbytes either...
SuSE managed to build their busines on this model, Caldera and TurboLinux failed. Personally i simply don't like it, even when it works.
4) Finally, there is also a possibility that MandrakeSoft may go bancrupt and disapear. This is definitively NOT the scenario I'm interested in.
In case that wasn't clear enough: I can't stand beggars, and they stand no chance to get any money from me. On the other hand, I'm handing out a lot of money to street musicians. So, what's the difference?
BEGGAR: this guy attempts to get money from me by showing how miserable he is. For many of them, begging is a profession of choice. Others really end up being beggars out of misery, but I live in supposedly "social state", pay high taxes, and demand from my goverment to take care of people who can't take care of themselves. Begging is a shame.
MUSICIAN (anod other street performers): These guys entertain me, make my kid happy, and generally "make my day". I WANT to give them some money, because I WANT to see them again. Beeing a street performer is not very lucrative job (they can only reach very small public), but there is no shame in doing it. On the contrary, a town withouth street performers would IMO be a very sad place.
Raven,
:-(
I'm the guy who came with idea of the MandrakeClub in the first place, and I'm the one who developed it from "idea" into the status you can see today, and I can tell you one thing: MandrakeClub is NOT a charity. It's a busines model which has been used in various sectors for a long time, with more-or-less success, and which can work well for Linux because of the internet. Let me name a few sectors which have similar financing schemas:
- churches
- public radio stations
- Non-governmental organisations
Last but not the least important, there is a long tradition of "street music", which happens to be very strong in Paris, and which has given a name to this type of busines model ("Street performer").
The fact that this model has not been used in software busines until recently is completely irrelevant, unless you want to apply for a "bussines patent" in US. But, I'm transgressing, let's go back to Club...
You are right in one aspect: benefits one gets with MandrakeClub are peanuts compared to the value of MandrakeLinux distribution - which everyone can download free of charge.
This isn't a secret, nor have we ever tried to hide this fact - In fact, this is clearly written on the front page of MandrakeClub site:
As explained in the announcement, your membership in MandrakeClub is, above all, a sign of your financial support. Membership
fees are directly used to cover the costs of developing the distribution and the various services that are offered free of charge to
all Mandrake Linux users. The Club isn't meant as a replacement for paid support or similar services -- you are here because you want to help make Mandrake Linux become even better in the future.
Nevertheless, Club members do receive certain privileges and benefits.
etc.
However, you are also wrong: MandrakeClub is NOT a charity, and even the direct/short term benefits are getting quite interesting with a time. Indirect and long-term benefits (most notably the influence club members have on future of MandrakeLinux) on the other hand are enormous, and yet many people tend to dissmiss them as not interesting, like you did.
Let's take just the example of "RPM-voting" system which you were so quick to dismiss: this system gives you a chance to get new RPMs built because you asked for them. There is a testing stage, in which the folks who asked for a new pack are supposed to report problems, and in the end the system produces higher quality RPMs than what you'll usually find outside of the main distribution. RPM-voting system is now about one month old, and there are still some rough edges to streighten out, but it's quite clear that it's quickly developing in a right direction.
That's a direct/immediate benefit. There is also an indirect benefit, which may be even more important: RPMs Club members ask for will eventually be given higher importance than those noone asks for, and thus the Distribution will change...
The problem is...
Now the problem is: You say that you don't feel ripped off, although you don't find the direct/short-term benefits attractive, so I assume that you actually understood the value of the long-term/indirect benefits, and that you may in fact be ready to remain in the club next year.
At the same time, you discourage others to join the club by writing a comment which will be interpreted as "MandrakeSoft is lying about MadnrakeClub, don't join".
This is sad.
We are not lying to anyone, and Club idea is clearly presented everywhere withouth any exaguration (on the contrary, I'm from Central europe, and can't stand false advertising - therefore Club benefits are rather deemphasised than emphasised), so why do you have this urge to present it in such a bad light?
Don't you know that marketing folks generally can't count over 9? Even Apple folks had to be forced into counting in roman numbers before givin up...
;-)
So, you either shot all marketing folks, or find a way to avoid numbers bigger than 9.x.
Suse already solved this problem by starting the distribution name change. So, there will be "Suse 9.x" and "United linux 1.x", and then they'll gratiously drop the Suse 10 distro in favor of "United Linux" 1.x+1 or 2.x. Wonder how Mandrake will solve this problem?
And the reason why Mandrake went for 2.96 was very simple: once RehHat eat all the shit for releasing with somewhat unstable compiler, and fixed it gcc 2.96 became the best of all the available choices.
gcc 3.0 was too broken to replace it, but 3.1 looks better, and will be replaced with 3.2 by the time Mandrake Linux 9.0 hits the road. Time to switch...
Btw, 9.0beta1 doesn't really ship with gcc 3.1 - it's in fact a CVS version of what's going to be 3.2 in a few months.
Both RH and Mandrake used this compiler, and between the two of them these distros hold >50% of the world Linux market - no matter how you define "linux market" in the first place.
;-)
So, you have two major players who are incompatible with.. what exactly?
Oh, quite a few people have noticed this in the meantime. One doesn't have to be a newbie to appreciate te confort, you know! .-)
Just for ilustration, take a look at the way how number of "apache advanced-extranet" servers is growing with >100%/year, in spite of the fact that "the web" as a whole practically stopped with the growth, and all will be clear. "Mandrakebizcases.com" is also worth a visit...
Well.. Guess some people can't imagine the idea of 200.000 people opting in for a newsletter. So, "it must be spam" .-)
;-)
And I thought geeks have good power of imagination...
In fact, LSB has been seen as a "Good Thing" for ages at MandrakeSoft, but we didn't want to kill the idea by advertising LSB-compliance too early (ages-old buggy libs, "media" directory fiasco, no test suite, etc..).
For Mandrake 8.x, the goal was to make the distro "mostly LSB compliant", and that's what it is. First distro which is really supposed to be fully LSB-compliant is 9.0.
SuSE Yast is not closed source, but it isn't "Open Source" either. It's a propriatery licence which gives you somewhat more freedom than usual propriatery licences, but leaves SuSE in control.
This is a fact. Now you may argue that "this isn't a problem" for you, and someone else may argue that "this is a problem" for him...
There is one thing everyone seems to forget about: all Linux companies WERE profitable before investors came in with bags full of money saying:
"hey, folks, looks like you are about to explode! Here are a few milions of dolars, we would like to invest in your company, in order to make a biger bang faster! Please spend the many as fast as you can, there is plenty more where this came from."
So, bang it did, folks expanded like crazy just to get that pile of money going of the table, and then suddenly the same investors realised that income isn't going to be 10x bigger next year as they hoped, and withdrew the support for the "next round of financing".
What's worse, the huge pile of money also attracts the folks who simply want to grab from this pile and don't care about the company, and for some reason really greedy investors seem to LOVE this kind of folks (give me a nice buzzword, and Power point presentation, and I'll eat from your hand)...
In short, the reason why three major Linux companies aren't profitable today is very simple: they were practically forced to overinvest in the past, and they are still paying the bill.
Considering the fact I'm running the MandrakeClub, how come I don't know anything about it? .-)
No, there are no ISO downloads for users (yet?), we simply don't have enough servers to survive that. MandrakeClub members can download the applications which aren't in the "downlaod edition" from MandrakeClub site, but they have to get the ISOs from the same places as everyone else.