[Smoketoomuch]

Linux maker Mandrake: We need cash
Linux seller MandrakeSoft issued a plea for cash Friday, encouraging people to buy products, MandrakeClub memberships or company stock. The company, based in Paris but drawing much of its revenue from North America, needs $4 million to pay debts and cover expenses in order to attain profitability. It's the second time this year the company has sought help from its customers. "A very difficult time has arrived for us: We have a very big short-term cash issue," co-founder Gael Duval said in a statement. MandrakeSoft isn't the only company to struggle with the business prospects of Linux, an open-source clone of the Unix operating system and one of several technologies once popular with investors.

Oh well, I wanted to buy my first Mandrake Power Pack edition when 9.1 comes out, but I guess I will order it in january. It will be my first OS to pay for, but they deserve the money, being one of the most cutting edge and innovative distribution (urpmi package management is the best package manager for rpm based distributions around, one that for the first time makes RPM on par with Debian's apt-get). I also decided to buy it since no one forces me to do so - MDK is free and will remain so - the choice to pay or not to pay depends on the user's own conscience. I nice and passionate post on the old mandrakeuser board describes very well what free software is about: http://www.club-nihil.net/mub/viewto...?p=17029#17029

Mandrake is on a 6-month release cycle ... this release isn't being "pushed" at all, no more than 8.2 ... 8.1 ...

I do recall that 8.2 was somewhat criticized for having a less than thorough run through the beta stages, and everyone was screaming it was because of the IPO (and god knows what other conspiracy theories!)

Personally, I think it's just because Mandrake is the closest thing to a "bleeding edge" distro you're going to find outside SourceMage or Gentoo. Mandrake is sort of like, um, the Anti-Debian.

Mandrake is possibly the most open commercial Linux distro in existence. EVERY single tool Mandrake has created to make it easy to use (drakconf and all the associated tools, the Mandrake installer, the partitioning tools, and LOTS of other goodies) are GPL'd. Ever read the Mandrake End-User-License-Agreement? You should. It only takes a few seconds. "Everything is GPL. No Warranty. Have fun." At any time anyone in the world is welcome to view the next, unreleased version of Mandrake (via the Cooker). Oddly enough, the UnitedLinux companies seem to be suffering. Arguably, without Big Blue keeping SuSE afloat, it'd be a lost cause. And Caldera hasn't been relevant in years.

RedHat and Mandrake are totally open (Rawhide = RedHat Cooker) and they happen to be at the top of the list of "major" distributions. Companies like Lindows will come and go (and not quickly enough) but RedHat and Mandrake, by virtue of being accessible to everyone, will endure. People often say "RedHat doesn't have a community" -- and that's simply not true. It has a large community, just a different -sort- of community than, say, this one.

My point? If everyone who comes to this board whining about Mandrake having this bug or that bug or missing some wonderful, terrific app (that no one else has probably ever heard of) or not supporting x piece of hardware (that, again, no one else has probably ever heard of) -- if all of those people had bought a Mandrake boxed set, imagine how much better Mandrake 9.2 or 10.0 would be? Maybe now that Microsoft is cracking down on pirates (again), interest in Linux will see another swell. Unfortunately, former XP pirate refugees aren't likely to come to the community to give ANYthing, since Mandrake (and Linux in general) makes it so damned easy to take and take and take ... somehow, along the way, the original ideals of what Free Software is all about have been perverted.

I think it's way too easy to forget that a great deal of people, maybe even a majority, have never bought ANYthing from Mandrake. They haven't contributed. So I find it hard to envision Mandrake in any way, in any context, as "money hungry" ... In the Linux community it often seems that end users (a great many of whom have contributed nothing) have this weird notion that because Mandrake (or KDE, or GNOME, or whatever) is free then somehow the developers OWE the users a new, better version that, surprise surprise, costs $0. So, Mandrake is dragging around a great deal of baggage in the form of freeloaders, yes, and it might NEED the money -- but it simply isn't a greedy company (such as Microsoft or, IMO the even more despicable Lindows).

Imagine extending this philosophy onto another topic:

Waiter: Have you made your selections?

Patron: Yes. We'll have ... the best you have. All of it. And we want it now.

Waiter: Very good, sir. We'll do our best. Will you be paying today?

Patron: Of course I'm not paying! Now snap to it!

Waiter: Very good, sir. Your food will be out shortly. We are a bit understaffed, but we'll do our best.

Patron: HURRY!

---Later---(but not much)

Patron: WAITER! Where is our food! DAMNIT, we've been waiting 10 minutes!

Waiter: Sorry, sir. We're doing the best we can. Our kitchen staff is 90% volunteer, since, like yourself, most of our patrons elect not to pay for our services. We are doing the best we can and humbly ask you to be patient.

Patron: I can't believe this. How hard can it be to cook a 7 course meal with all the trimmings and serve it up to us for free on a silver platter (and we're damn well keeping the platter, too)? If we don't get it NOW we're going to that other restaurant down the street. They make us cook all our own food, but at least we'll get it the way we like it! Or maybe we'll go back to the SuperMegaMonopoly Restaurant. They're rediculously expensive and we often get food poisoning or at least terrible indigestion, but we know a secret, underhanded, illegal trick to get it for free anyway!

Waiter: <weary sigh> Very good, sir. It will be only a bit longer now. The chef is horribly overworked and, even though he doesn't actually get paid most of the time, he's applying the finishing touches even as we speak.

Patron: The wine IS imported, right? And all the ingredients are fresh and hand-selected for flavor? We only want the very best, the cream of the crop. Nothing else will do.

Waiter: Ah, here it is. Bon apetit. Enjoy, sirs. May I get you anything else?

Patron: Oh my god! This is awful! We waited that long for this?? And you even wanted us to PAY FOR IT? What kind of a con job are you people running here??

It never ceases to amaze me the number of Linux users I see who say something like, "I just downloaded <whatever free program> and it sucks! What the hell is this? Why would <project authors> create something like this? This is why Linux will never be better than Windows!" As if Mandrake, or anyone else who creates free (in all senses of the word) software, OWES them something ...

Before anyone says anything derogative about Mandrake, perform a simple experiment:

Visit Linux From Scratch. Assemble, by hand, a running Linux system equal in functionality to your current Mandrake installation. Then come back to the board (from inside KDE 3.0.2 or GNOME 2 on your new hand-built system) and let everyone know what a terrible job Mandrake has done in putting together their distribution and what a silly notion it is to actually PAY them for such a trivial amount of work.

Okay, my rant is over now. Let me put on my flame retardent armor ...