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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28895.html
Summary: Mandrake files for the frenchie equivelent of Chapter 11 .
I bet Wong (does he use mandrake?) won't be happy, since he despises Redhat's packaging system.

OSS companies need to stop touting their products as free. I mean they put FTP servers up where anyone can get the distro for free. Why not just sell CDs only, and let users put FTP up themselves. If Evian can sell water which is free Mandrake and other OSS software companies can. The only distribution I can think of that makes a decent amount of money is Red Hat, and I hate their software.

Fuck, I don't want to have to switch to RedHat.

No surprise. Trying to make money off something you give away for free has never seemed like a particularly good idea to me.

Wong, you ever tried Debian? I've heard that has a good packaging system.

Does Mandrake sell support like Red Hat does?

phongn wrote:Does Mandrake sell support like Red Hat does?

I think most major Linux distributors do, that's the only real way they can make cash much like unlimited ISPs.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:

phongn wrote:Does Mandrake sell support like Red Hat does?

I think most major Linux distributors do, that's the only real way they can make cash much like unlimited ISPs.

Well, it seems like Red Hat has been the only Linux distributor with any success in the support area - it didn't seem like they offered the level of support that RH does.

Crazy_Vasey wrote:No surprise. Trying to make money off something you give away for free has never seemed like a particularly good idea to me.

Wong, you ever tried Debian? I've heard that has a good packaging system.

Yeah for debian you use apt-get, which downloads the program you want and all dependencies.

And yeah Mandrake does sell support but really hasn't attempted to market this as much as RH.

BTW, why does everyone hate the french?

For Wong: If you are getting Debian, the so-called "unstable" version is the one you want to get. "Stable" is sorely out of date. From what I've heard unstable is actually pretty stable.

Mandrake is trying (too late) to get clever by putting some important stuff on the second CD, increasing download time to encourage people to buy a CD.

Pu-239 wrote:For Wong: If you are getting Debian, the so-called "unstable" version is the one you want to get. "Stable" is sorely out of date. From what I've heard unstable is actually pretty stable.

Mandrake is trying (too late) to get clever by putting some important stuff on the second CD, increasing download time to encourage people to buy a CD.

They aren't going to save themselves just by getting more people to buy the CD rather than download it, IMO.

well yeah 40-something percent of their income comes from people pitying them joining the Mandrake club.

Pu-239 wrote:well yeah 40-something percent of their income comes from people pitying them joining the Mandrake club.

And they're still losing money. There will still be people (a lot of people) who'll simply download it for free, and if they revoke the free downloads they'll lose marketshare to competitors that do offer it.

If they could get serious support contracts going they'd be taking in a lot more revenue. Look at IBM, RH, Cisco or Oracle - sure, they make money selling software and hardware, but they make even more with support contracts (which can be a continuous source of revenue).