Mandrakesoft proved to judges in the Parisian version of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy court earlier this week it had a viable business plan and exit strategy. Now all that remains is for the popular Linux distributor to follow through on its promise.Elsewhere, Mandrake 10.0 final was sent to the manufacturer for printing.
Mandrakesoft Is Out of Court, But Is It Out of Trouble?
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Eugenia Loli
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Can anyone tell a noob when Gnome 2.6 rpms will be released?
How they heck did they prove they have a viable business plan? I think just showing how the company worked over the years would show they don’t have a viable plan.
Has any company that is purely an OSS company, as in income from nothing else, no hardware no nothing, just software. Shown to be truely viable for the long run?
I thought they announced last week or two weeks ago that they are in the black now and out of bankruptcy. This proves their business plan (mandrake club, cd/dvd versions, etc) works.
RedHat, software, support, sales.
And yes, RH is still free, it’s called WhiteBox or Fedora depending on your tastes.
this is the “out of bankruptcy” announcement. A couple of weeks ago they announced they were out of the red, for a fairly generous definition of “red”…
brad: they showed a business plan that the court believes will allow them ultimately to operate profitably. this is how you always get out of a constructive bankruptcy like this.
From today Gnome 2.6 is being mirrored on cooker. No doubt it will be installable on Mandrake 10.
The stocks have gone from 2.1 to 4.1 Euros in the past two weeks, so someone believes in them.
If you had indeed followed the history of MandrakeSoft, you’d know that their financial woes were caused by an ill-conceived attempt to diversify into educative software. Their subsequent rise out of Chapter 11-style bankruptcy is proof that they have a positive cash flow, and therefore a viable business plan.
MDK’s finacial woes had to do with the previous CEO taking MDK from it’s intended target and moving it to something else. MDK has always done well selling software and it only got out of bankruptcy because they have and still are doing well in that area.
mandrake desktop solution isnt as strong as lindows?
even future for redhat doesnt look so good.
How much does a company like Mandrake needs to run?
I don’t know their plan, but I’m running the 10 community release on my laptop and couldn’t be much happier. I’m sure alot of it has to do with KDE’s 3.2. But, I really think it’s because KDE and Mandrake are a good marriage. And, I’ve had a tweak or two to deal with (mostly because this Dell D800 has so much proprietary hardware). But, in 5 years or so, this is the most polished full featured linux distro that I have used. Good luck Mandrake.
Why? Because they still have not addressed quality issues. Therefore it is hard to have confidence in them in the long-term. Also, they need to focus more on quality than marketing.
How can a company whose products ( Word processor, spreadsheet, OS, … ) are competing with free ( gratis ) software can have a viable business plan ?
You see which one I am talking of … 😉
Mandrake needs to get out of the “free” confusion they are in. Of course it is free software, but they don’t have to provide service for free.
Mandrake club should be a real subscription service a la “.Mac” but instead they want you to pay to just support them, for no clear benefit to the subscriber. It’d be a lot more attractive that they provide actual service, like included support calls, some web services with integration to Evolution on Kontact, a bit of web space for photo galleries integrated with Digikam, some kind of web drive that’d be usable with mandrake move, SUPPORTED package upgrades,
They could also do some Mandrake oriented hardware reviews: Don’t you think Wifi cards, webcams, USB pen drives they’d review with Mandrake 10 would sell well in Mandrake store ? I think it would.
They should really license a the css and other proprietary codecs for their Powerpack and deliver the best linux multimedia experience around. They already license proprietary software so I don’t see any philosophical problem here.
That would leverage the large single user base they have and justify by itself distributing the distro for free.
On the corporate market, they have to do like the others: Race for certifications and structure their support solutions and make partnerships. But have they got the funding to chase these 2 targets in the same time? Maybe it is time to sort out their priorities.
what, you call a complete overhaul of the development cycle and the introduction of the Official branch “not addressing quality”? mmmmmhmmm. What more do you want?
The Mandrake Distro is valuable to the community. It is not highly customized (like RedHat) and is not make for idiots (like SUSE).
Like all things Linux, it will survive because it is based on free software. If they go out of business, somebody will pick up where they left off.