Re: [Cooker] Saving Mandrake - a Users Perspective

[George Mitchell]

I heartily agree with the concept that Mandrake should charge for ISOs until they can extract themselves from their current problems. I also suggest the following:

1) Move Mandrake Club membership to sliding scale roughly in line with typical anual income of member's country of residence. This is not easy, but it COULD be done with a little effort.

2) Allow for payment by check or money order. Some countries simply don't support the sophisticated credit card infrastructure we have in the west.

3) Allow for monthly payments, but require six months of membership before certain benifits begin to become available. That would allow the user to commit and begin to enjoy some benefits while protecting Mandrake from unethical users who pay one month's membership, grab all the goodies and disappear.

4) Right now a major attraction of the club is the RPM request venue. This enables users to vote on new packages they would like to see for Mandrake. Those items that are popular and can attract a developer become available quickly to members. This is a GREAT attraction and benefit. What needs to be added to this is a parallel Bugzilla fast track for Club members. Members having problems with Mandrake deserve to be able to vote on which fixes they want prioritized and deserve to know what the status is on features that don't work (ie supermount, etc.). This would be a great and attractive feature. Some of us are getting so tired of the bugs that we no longer appreciate the new features. The bugs need to be addressed better than they are now.

5) ISOs should be removed from download availability and the current ISO should be distributable only by Mandrake. Mandrake club membership should include a complementary GPL ISO. I currently reproduce and sell Mandrake ISOs, but I would gladly give up this practice if it would benefit Mandrake. The other option would be for Mandrake to license ISO resellers and collect a small but reasonable amount for each ISO sold. The point is not to make a lot of money on each sale, but rather to make sure each user must contribute something if they want to use the product. All this can be done while maintaining fairness. Bonafide developers, for example, should receive complementary basic club membership, etc. I do think that at some point Mandrake is going to have to restrict ISOs in order to have the financial health necessary to move forward. And remember that firming up the business plan will bring in investors as well. There is a snowball effect and a negative snowball effect the way things are now.

6) Last but not least, it goes without saying, Mandrake Store needs to be fixed. AND every user who has been screwed by the Mandrake store debacle should be sent a gratis GPL Mandrake set and a formal letter of appology.

Just my sentiments,

George Mitchell