Interview with Mandrake's Head Honchos

Shipud writes "Newsforge has an interview with MandrakeSoft CEO François Bancilhon, and Mandrakelinux co-founders Jacques Le Marois and Gaël Duval. Among the issues discussed are a the business model for a GPL-based public company, Mandrakesoft's shares, the role of user subscription in funding, the bankruptcy, Xfree 4.4's new non-GPL license, and more."

Bigger than that

[wombatmobile]

I think the value of the tale goes significantly beyond Linux. It's a business story with some template lessons for how to manage venture funding (and how not to).

Easy lessons. Hard to learn.

Re:sc0wned!

[TWX]

OpenLinux being an example of a badly assembled distribution had nothing to do with it...

At least Slackware, even with its problems has a long history and has an avid base of followers. Debian has ease post-install administration and maintains a good place with their different versions. Gentoo has a lot of fans of the "bleeding edge". RedHat and SuSE both have good corporate and community support for those who want something pretty right out of the box.

I didn't see Caldera OpenLinux having any of these, and there were forces resistant to fully accept the GPL as well. The only surprise is that they lasted long enough to turn into SCOX.

Re:They're french?

[Anonymous Coward]

France was opposed to the US invasion of Iraq, and since then, they have been declared "unamerican".

Which is okay, because, as far as I know, they're not American anway

Yes, but that comes as a huge shock to some Americans.

I'm joking, of course, but only in part. Americans are particularly good at assuming that people in other countries think just like they do. This probably has something to do with the relative lack of other countries nearby compared to much of the world. In the U.S. one can live hundreds of miles (600? 800?) from the nearest foreign nation. Very little of their media gets into the U.S. either (the BBC and Telemundo are about it). And of course, foreign language (and thus foreign cultural) education are not emphasized in schools here in the U.S. In other words, there's a lack of experience with that sort of thing.

more than just opposed

[asv108]

The main French government action that caused the Bush administration and others on the far right to promote anti-french behavior was the French government's opposition to a second UN resolution, authorizing the use of force in Iraq. There were plenty of other countries that were against the resolution, but France was the only member of the UN security counsel that said it would veto any attempt at a second resolution outright.

Personally, I think what France did was a brave a noble act that should be applauded.

Club membership...

[linuxlover]

I have been a Mandrake Club member for last 2 years. My membership expires in a few days and I am re-thinking my committment.

One thing I was dissappointed was the 'rpm voting of members'. When KDE 3.2 was released, there were no MDK packages any where in MDK website (or I couldn't find with thier search). Not even in club area. In the voting area, there were numerous requests for KDe3.2-mdk.rpms for MDK 9.2. But weeks went by without no response from MDK team. Finally I was so sick of waiting and installed through 'konstruct' (what a nice piece of software!).

So now that MDK is making some money and they are not as 'needy' as they were couple of years back, I'll probably skip renewing my membership.

Are there any other 'tangible' benefits for club members that I am not aware of?

Tone of interview

[Laxitive]

This interview was actually very refreshing, a large part due to the way in which the questions were answered:

The bankruptcy issue loomed over MandrakeSoft for a long time. What led to the bankruptcy filing?
FB: At the time, we had to seek protection for a simple reason: There was no more cash in bank, and our revenues were still lower than our expenses. It was a matter of a few months, but it was needed.

Short answer: "we were broke". No doubletalk, no spin.

MandrakeSoft made posting asking the community to help them with their financial woes. Some have said that MandrakeSoft essentially begged for money. Any truth to that?
FB: Yes, the community of Mandrakelinux users helped us, but they get something in return: We're still here, we improved much, and we keep on providing products that fit their needs.

Translation: yeah, we begged, but we had to, and it paid off in the end. Now we're stronger for it.

What about the problems with NTFS in the Community Edition?
FB: This was something that never should have made it into the CE. This should have been caught in our developmental process. We have some definite improving to do.

I'm not pulling these quotes out to make fun of Mandrake or anything. The thing is, it's easy for companies and representatives to talk straight when they're speaking about their successes. What's hard is to acknowledge failures, and acknowledge them directly. The fact that the responders didn't try to beat around the bush, and actually answered the questions posed is extremely promising. I'm not a Mandrake user, but the fact that these guys seem to talk straight makes me trust them quite a bit more than other companies.

If I ever have to choose a distribution to recommend to someone who is not too familiar with Linux, I think I have a pretty good idea of who I'll go with now.

-Laxitive