[CLUE-Talk] Mandrake news

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffery Cann wrote:

> On Wednesday 15 January 2003 12:17 pm, Bill Gardner wrote:
> > bummer....
> >
> > http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/briefs?n=/mandrakesoft/news/2405
>
> It's only reorganization, so all may not be lost.  Hopefully they will turn it
> around and not lose the company.  I've been using it for the past year and
> have been happy with it.  I really don't want to use Red Hat -- maybe I'll
> have to go to debian...

The real question here is whether Mandrake fans are going to look to
this as a warning sign and dig into their pockets, or simply shrug and
watch the company go under.

I'd wager that the vast majority of Mandrake users aren't people who've
paid for the distro -- either through the subscription or the "Mandrake
Club" -- so will people start paying or just go on to Debian or Red Hat?

Mandrake needs to learn from this as well -- $60 is a bit steep if
they're hoping to get a lot of people to subscribe. That's just too
much money for too few perks over the download version. They need to
have a cheaper membership -- maybe $25 -- I think they'd end up making
much more at that price point.

If MandrakeSoft goes under, I've no doubt that the distro itself would
survive for a few more releases -- but I doubt that it would continue
to be as easy to use and continue to develop at the rapid pace that
it has now. Too many users, too few contributors. That's the problem
that Debian has now. (I've also noticed that very few of the Debian
mirrors are up to date... but that's another situation...)

I hope they can turn it around as well. I've used Mandrake for several
machines for a few years. I think it's a great desktop distro, and
it gets incrementally better every release. I'd like to see that
continue.

Take care,

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
http://www.dissociatedpress.net/