Shareholder Fight Threatens Mandriva SA

LinuxScribe writes "A shareholder fight (French [Google translation]) has put one of the oldest commercial Linux vendors at risk of shuttering on January 16. If Mandriva can't raise 4 million euro in capital by then, it will have no choice but to cease operations."

Re:It's a damn shame

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Same here. In addition to being user friendly, it was, in my opinion, rock solid stable. Mandrake is what got me using Linux not just playing with it. It was never right at the cutting edge; always one back from the latest release of KDE or Gnome or what have you. I stuck with it through the change to Mandriva and still use it on a couple of machines. I'll miss it if it folds.

Re:It's a damn shame

[formfeed]

Mandrake has a tradition of problems, basically since they were Mandrake. Back then, they used to be the more desktop friendly redhat. Being French, they had good i18n support before redhat did, switched to utf early one, provided international packages, and also multimedia. But at that time their community was registered users only, if you didn't have the current version purchased: no soup for you.

Mandrake was always reluctant to share documentation. As a result, they cut themselves off from the larger community. Good innovations like a metapackager, that got users out of rpm-dependency hell long before redhat moved in that direction, or also mandrakes system of setting security level never made it back to a wider audience.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that as awesome as Debian is, it's initial release was in 1996, whereas Red Hat's was in 1993, right?. Considering Mandrake was originally based off of it, I'd say that if anything's the grand-daddy - it's Red Hat.

Re:Linux vendor?

[msobkow]

And you just hit the nail on the head on why there aren't any Linux desktops that can compete with the polish and intuitiveness of OSX and Windows.

And that's the fundamental flaw of your whole argument. Gnome 2 and KDE 3 are DIFFERENT, but they are DEFINITELY "polished" and very usable, even if you don't PERSONALLY like them. To claim otherwise is such biased claptrap it's sickening.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Registered Coward v2]

And you just hit the nail on the head on why there aren't any Linux desktops that can compete with the polish and intuitiveness of OSX and Windows.

And that's the fundamental flaw of your whole argument. Gnome 2 and KDE 3 are DIFFERENT, but they are DEFINITELY "polished" and very usable, even if you don't PERSONALLY like them. To claim otherwise is such biased claptrap it's sickening.

I think you missed his point - successful desktop OS are successful because they just work - Linux is not there yet; and there is very little interest in fixing things that keep that from happening. Linux is very much a hobbyist OS for people who ilk ego tinker - but most computer users don't ant to tinker, or as the OP put it:

Home users don't care about freedom or CLI or DIY they care about "its just works and keeps working and is easy to use"

Ad to that there is no money in making it just work - why should a Dell, for example, turn it into a viable alternative when any competitor can take their work for free? And so Linux languishes on the desktop; and finds its niche in areas where companies can make money.

I'd add to his argument that there is no "killer app" for Linux that makes switching from WIN/OSX necessary. Much of the effort goes to building free "me too" apps to replicate apps on those platforms., and in many cases those same me too apps are available for them, so why bother switching?

Re:hahahahahahah

[icebraining]

Correlation, causation, etc. When exactly did the Ubuntu project contribute to X.org?

The reason you don't have to spend 20 hours fucking with X configuration files is because the X project improved, not because of Ubuntu.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[ultranova]

Your point is wrong, because my original 50% ownership entitles me to 50% of the company, regardless of worth - so if you invest $1 to make the companies worth $2, then my share becomes $1.

No, because your original 50 cents investment entitled you to 50% of the company at the time it was made. If the rest of the shareholders hold sufficient power to override your will and accept more investment, your percentage of ownership will drop (and your investment stays valued at 50 cents). To do it otherwise would make it impossible for companies to rise more capital after the initial forming, because what would the new shares be backed by?

So yes, someone is stealing here because the issue is not that of original investment, its one of ownership of the company. You gave me 50% of the company in return for whatever my original investment was - that doesn't limit my entitlement to 50c of the company, it limits my entitlement to 50% of the company whatever that may be. If you cause my entitlement to drop below 50% without recompense, then you have stolen some of the company from me.

No. Your entitlement is limited to the shares you hold. These may represent 50%, 25% or even 1% ownership of the company at various times. This dilution of ownership is no more stealing than other companies taking market share from yours is, but rather a normal part of how the stock system works. Calling it stealing means that either you didn't bother making sufficient research before investing, and have no one but yourself to blame, or did, invested anyway, and are now whining because you didn't think the rules would really apply to you.

So yes, dilution is happening.

What's happening is that partial ownership of the company is being sold to a new investor in exchange for capital through a majority decision, which might not suite all old shareholders; however, that's the price they pay for being mere partial rather than sole owners.

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