Mandrake Policy Change Angers Users

phalse phace writes "Yahoo! News is carrying a ZDNet News article which reveals that Mandrake has decided to change its policy regarding its Mandrake Club. Previously, Mandrake stated that all membership levels would enjoy the same benefits. But since Mandrake Linux 8.2 will include StarOffice 6.0 and Sun is charging for it, they decided to only allow the download of SO 6.0 to Silver members and higher."

OpenOffice?

[zapfie]

Instead of bothering with licencing fees related to StarOffice, why not just include OpenOffice? They're the same codebase, right?

Seems Logical

[Rushuru]

I heard SO 6.0 will be sold for approximately 100 (like $112), so Mandrake can't give it to the $5 a month / $60 a year members.

The people who subscibed to Mandrake club did it because they want to support the distro, so I guess they'll do the math and understand that it just isn't possible to give them StarOffice.

Anyway, OpenOffice is not very different from StarOffice, and it's available for free, so what's the big deal?

Re:OpenOffice?

[goldid]

Indeed. The question is important to ask: why support StarOffice? If you're an open source firm, and your revenue base is fragile, why would you start including other people's software which costs? If peple want StarOffice, let them go get it. Mandrake can include OpenOffice, KOffice, or many different individual products/projects such as AbiWord. There is no reason to have StarOffice in the distro.

Fair Enough

[ackthpt]

The only thing I'd question is the short notice. They should take better care to avoid such a gaffe in the future. If they had announced, before 8.2 was released, that Star Office 6.0 would be at a premium due to Sun's charging, members would have less to gripe about.

Dirty Marketing Trick was Long-Planned

[heretic108]

I strongly suspect that early in the development cycle, Sun planned to charge for StarOffice. All they needed to do was get a few stable releases out the door, win some acceptance for the product and, above all, get users accustomed to it and reluctant to learn yet another office suite.

I wonder how many people would have downloaded and invested the time to learn Star Office if they had known from the outset that Sun was planning to charge for it.

Sun, you are a pretty good company in most respects, but I don't think this tactic will benefit your reputation. It would have been better if you kept the basic Star Office suite free, and offered some corporate-targeted optional add-ons (that private users and small companies don't need) at a price. Similar to your Forte Java IDE suite (Free 'Community Edition' through to pricey 'Enterprise Edition'). That would have kept people's trust in your company.

Hopefully, you'll write this off as a mistake, and offer 'Community Editions' of SO 6 and beyond.

Re:Given the choices

[ackthpt]

I suppose that they could just go and suck it up, and absorb all of the costs of the license fees and distribute it free.

Perhaps you're congusing Mandrake with Microsoft, GE, IBM or some other company with lots of liquid assets they can absorb losses. In case you haven't noticed, Mandrake is suffering from low revenues, hence the membership drive.

Re:OpenOffice?

[blkros]

Exactly. Plus, I feel, if you pay more, you should get more, anyways. So you can still download open office no matter what level you are, and if you gave the company more money, you can get Star office, personally I feel this is quite fair, and will probably cost less than buying Star from Sun.

Re:Seems Logical

[HanzoSan]

Silver and Gold members subscribe for incentives, people who want to just support mandrake can pay 60 bucks a year

Thats a logical business plan, make people pay more money by offering incentives.

Businesses want open office.

Amateur Hour

[mr_organic]

The basic problem is one of credibility. Mandrake stated unequivocally that all club members would have the same privileges (which included access to Star Office). Now, they are going back on their contract and saying, "Whoops, sorry, we screwed up. I know you already laid your money down, but we can't give you what you paid for." The proper thing to do would have been either to offer refunds to club members who had already paid, or grandfather Star Office to everyone who had already paid.

This just makes Mandrake look both foolish and amateurish. If they wish to be taken seriously as a business, they can't go whining to their users for welfare payments one minute, then renege on promises the next. Mandrake produces a fine distro, but their business acumen leaves a lot to be desired.

Here's a free hint, guys: pissing off your loyal user base to save a few bucks in the short-term is a great way to doom your company.

Free doesnt make money

[HanzoSan]

Of course Mandrake isnt going to be free. People have to pay for the development. The clubs are just the way mandrake is going to make their money

Re:OpenOffice?

[bero-rh]

People who want a GUI.
While PostgreSQL and MySQL may be technically superior, none of them
provides an easy to use database editor yet, especially not if
you don't have a privileged account in the db ("create database").
(Think of M$ converts looking for a replacement to M$ Access).
There are some projects to provide an easier frontend for PostgreSQL and/or MySQL,
but none of them are really ready for prime time yet.

Re:OpenOffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the download additions of Mandrake *are* bundled with OpenOffice. I'm not sure if it installs as a part of the "recommended" install, but under the "expert" install, it must manually be selected. I believe the reasons that Mandrake is offering StarOffice are twofold:

1. A "brand name" suite with corporate backing.

2. The "extras" that weren't included in OpenOffice, particularly the Adabas database, which offers GUI functionality.

You can talk all you want about how great Postgres is (and it is great), but in the real world, are you going to be able to get some 50-something year old administrative assistant to keep an SQL database. Not likely. Unless/until the OSS community comes up with a decent GUI front end for Postgres (which has had the same lousy GUI frontend -- Postgres Access -- for as long as I've been messing with it), businesses are going to stick with Microsoft Office and similar products. It's as simple as that.

That's not the issue...

[Leomania]

Users who joined at $60 per month did so under the explicit statement that "all members enjoy the same benefits". Now that's been changed to include the word "almost". If Mandrake chooses to make this change, I hope that they keep existing users who joined prior to the rule change with the same benefits.

The club is a reasonable idea to attempt to increase revenue at a time they really need it [linux-mandrake.com] and to simultaneously provide something unique and useful to their enthusiast user base. I can understand this change, but it needs to be communicated clearly to existing members. I hope it won't affect those members who already joined at the lowest rate.

I joined the Mandrake club at the Silver level and I also purchased the discounted ProSuite (which I would not normally have done) in order to support Mandrake. The users who joined at the standard level deserve to receive what they were promised, plain and simple. It's just a matter of principle.

- Leo

Yes! Reality Check People!

[BitMan]

I'm not a Mandrake fan, nor do I use it. But I've gotta side with Mandrake in this one, because it's obvious some of you are taking their goodwill too far. I pay RedHat the similar $60/year, the lowest level, for priority downloads and other services. I don't expect anything more, nor should you Mandrake $60/yearers after reading their agreement.

Reality check people! $60/year does NOT entitle you to a product that is almost $100 on the retail shelf. I don't care about OEM licensing, Mandrake has got to make money! Furthermore, that $60 probably barely covers all the other services and benefits provided. Lastly, the statement of "receive the same benefits" would most likely extend to only Mandrake products and services, and NOT 3rd party products and/or services. Otherwise, Mandrake would go "belly up" (actually all distros seem to have a constant loss after all expense considerations, even RedHat).

Frankly, Mandrake should be commended on allowing StarOffice to be downloaded as an .iso thanx to membership, and Sun for licensing it to Linux distributors so they can do so. Man, I'm really getting sick of this "whining" crap. Some of you "whiney" Linux users need to go! At least before most of the good, GPL-focused commercial organizations cannot sustain your selfishness!

The issue isn't Mandrake, but Sun.

[hateddamntruth]

Sun decided to start charging for Star Office (which I don't understand since it doesn't seem to me like they have such a huge market share yet). Of all Linux distributors, Mandrake probably ranks on top of my list for features, liberty, advancement, stability, and overall beauty, and, over time, they have come to earn my trust and respect. With their financial difficulties lately (hey, face it, it's very difficult to make money off free, though with Free Software, money is less of a priority than liberty and advancement), and with Sun now charging for Star Office, Mandrake has been stuck between a rock and a hard place. So I can't blame them. I would rather they stick to the liberty they have stood for all along, than follow the flock and become more proprietary. If you want non-free, no problem whatsoever, pay for it. If you REALLY want proprietary and non-Free, no problem, buy into Redmond and get shafted by code no one can check. I guess the best option for Mandrake would be to offer Open Office freely, and charge for Star Office, something I suspect they are on their way to doing. Other alternatives (KOffice, Gnome Office, Abiword, ...) should also be promoted and given more support. For our own part, the best thing we can do is to directly support (by donation, purchase, or code) the cause of companies like Mandrake.

So don't be hard on Mandrake. They are on our side.

Re:subscriptions, microsoft, support OT

[bruns]

because with linux distros, its not being forced. You dont have to pay to continue using Linux. You pay if you want to get new features that are not part of the download.

Microsoft's idea is forced paying. You dont have a choice.

To be or not to be - a level platform that is

[Anonymous Bullard]

I gave Mandrake my $60 in return for a club membership after their recent and rather desperate appeal for funds (to build the free Linux platform) so I feel that I'm entitled to an opinion, whether you agree with me or not.

There are two reasons why I don't like this StarOffice license deal:

1) People who in essense donated money to Mandrake in order to promote the development of the free platform now find some of that money going into Sun's coffers, regardless whether they wished to buy a license for the proprietary StarOffice or not.

I welcome any kind of Linux software support by independent developers and commercial ISVs but how does this kind of deal encourage choice? Should the vendors of WordPerfect Office, SmartSuite or god forbid MS-Office, or any other commercial applications, begin to sell pre-paid licenses to users/supporters of particular platforms? If you had effectively paid for one (as part of your platform support) would you still be interested in paying for the one that might really interest you? How is Mandrake's paying for StarOffice really different from hardware OEM's paying for Windows + MS-Office "on your behalf" when you go out and buy that new beige box? Shouldn't both the OEM's and Mandrake let the customer decide if they want the extras? Just negotiate the bulk discounts for your customers and let them decide.

2)"All members are entitled to same benefits"

I simply can't see how any vendor should be allowed to change such terms unilaterally and without due warning, let alone a Linux vendor who had just appealed to people's goodwill and financial help.

I've supported Linux (various flavours, bought boxes, converted and helped Windows converts etc.) for many years and one of the main attractions of Linux for me personally was the moral high ground it offered. I still like Mandrake's distro and appreciate their efforts at promoting Linux use on the desktop but I'm not happy with the way they handled this issue. Did something happen to Mandrake's soul when they became a publically-traded company?

It will be interesting to see whether the Mandrake Club staff will ever answer my email or not...

Now go ahead and burn me at stake for not approving with everything that some free software company does. I'm strong enough to take (actually deflect) any crap without the urge to join some militaristic boot camps. So there.

Re:Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but the sort of people who've decided that they don't want to use Microsoft products, and they haven't chosen a proprietary alternative they've chosen Linux, and they haven't chosen Red Hat they've chosen Mandrake... these people don't seem to me to be ones who are going to run screaming from Open Office and insist on Star Office instead. Just based on my experiences in life and no more supported than your view but it makes sense to me.

A member speaks

[Aging_Newbie]

As a member of the club, I joined because the money would go to help support programmers who are writing open source code that everybody (even the people who whine) shares. Since I am not a Linux expert, I figured contributing to somebody who could help was a good idea. I think the majority of the Mandrake Club members share my opinion. When I joined (early) they said they were going to figure out what club benefits were, other than the warm hearted feeling that the members had done something for the world of Linux.

Further, I have installed Mandrake 8.1 on lots of my machines and have been able to abandon windoze to one underpowered box that I use when I absolutely need some app. That, in my mind, is the value I received from the club membership and from Mandrake. I am free of windoze and free to have a well designed good performing machine.

Lots of Slashdotters say they want an open software environment with sharing of assets but when somebody makes a reasonable business decision they cry and whine.