On this note a comment if I may... I've seen a lot of talk about free as in beer. Well don't know where you come from but in my neck of the woods beer that is free today requires that I buy a round later. In my business I'm trying to Sell software management. To many of the VAR's (Value Added Resellers) I see just buy a single copy of RH or Mandrake and then install it on box after box, after box. To make matters worse they expect RH and Mandrake to support it. Partially this is in my opinion the distro's own fault, because in the past they have supported it. I've bought every box set since 7.0 and one per box I install it on. Why because I don't expect MD or anyone else to support software that I didn't buy. From my view Mandrake needs the following.
1. DON'T even think about supporting users who don't buy the copy. Free support in the e-mail groups ok... but if they call........ sell em a support contract. 2. Improve the ability to upgrade a running system. I've got several 7.1 and 7,2 systems that I'd love to upgrade but can't afford the time to rebuild them after a wipe and install. Data gets in the way. (One box has over 5 gigs of Twiki pages alone.) This costs Mandrake money because I'm not buying box sets, but rather upgrading manually a piece at a time. 3. CO-OP advertising. SuSe RH and Mandrake are all in a bit of a bind. Why not pool the funds so to speak and do Linux adds... Scene opens a guy asleep in bed. Words appear on the screen. This is your IT dept at 1am.... thanks to Linux. Just my 2 cents.... James *** Amazon.com save 17 million last quarter by switching to Linux..... why is your company still running that other OS? On 12 Mar 2002 21:13:12 -0500 Lyvim Xaphir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 2002-03-12 at 10:55, Dave Salovesh wrote: > > First, my apologies to any here who may have already heard this through > > other channels, and I also ask your forgiveness if I've missed a thread here > > where this is being discussed. And lastly, I hope you don't worry that it > > might not be most inappropriate for a part-time Mandrake nobody and > > full-time NT/2000/MS-SQL/IIS admin to bring this up. > > Unfortunately I did not see your post, and posted an alternative story > on The Register to the list. But I'm glad that others are taking note > of this and taking it to heart. I too think it would be very bad for > everybody as a whole and especially bad for the members of this list if > MandrakeSoft hit a wall. I think it's time for anybody that cares to > become active in their support of MandrakeSoft. > > Loki bit the dust recently, with some employees not having gotten a > paycheck since sometime in 2000. Can anyone say "loyalty?" Mission > Critical Linux went down, with the loss of 55 employees. The financial > burden is a cross that the Linux world needs to learn how to bear; and > fast; it's not too late. MandrakeSoft itself is now activating it's > warning lights to give everyone a heads up. > > The now-unemployed people loved their companies. Their dedication was > plain to see. How dedicated are you when you cut back on your groceries > for two years just to keep working? For free? > > I feel that the people of MandrakeSoft are no different with respect for > the love they have both for their distribution and their company; it > shines through in the product that they produce. If we want to preserve > this corporate identity in our marketplace, and continue to enjoy the > Mandrake releases, then I personally believe it's time for those of us > that care enough to show our support for Mandrake by joining the club. > > At one time, Windows sold for 200 US$ a copy. For that much money, you > could have a 3.3 year subscription to the Mandrake club. It's only 5$ a > month; less than the cost of alot of magazine subscriptions. > > See: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/mdkfuture.php3 > > > It seems Mandrake is coming into a financially rough stretch. From their > > announcement: > > > > "Even though all of us here at MandrakeSoft are excited about the upcoming > > release, we've also been distracted by financial concerns. Despite > > continuous good reviews in the press; despite having millions of users > > throughout the world; despite producing an award-winning Linux distribution > > that is a solid competitor to both UNIX and Window$, the Mandrake Linux > > distribution's short-term future is in jeopardy due to a simple factor: > > money." > > > > _________________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com > > >
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