> At the risk of offending some, I will give my thoughts, which will > probably be unpopular (dons flame-retardant suit).
Yes what you had to say will probably offend some, but honestly a free-flow of ideas, expressed in a thoughtful manner such as you presented your ideas, should never offend. > 1. This whole situation leaves me with an "unsettled" feeling. I am not > comfortable with "begging" as a business strategy and this is the second > time this year. From other comments I have seen, this is already > starting to get old for many. I don't necessarily like begging either, but what makes me even more uneasy is the though that Mandrake might fold in the not too distant future, or than Mandrake 9.1 might be held up for lack of money. That is to say that a release should never go gold for purely monetary reasons, but rather when it's genuinely ready. I was strictly a Redhat user until a few months ago, when I converted to Mandrake. I absolutely hated Mandrake 8.2, but really liked 9. And now because I didn't like the path Redhat was taking I have converted my laptop and two servers to Mandrake linux and would seriously hate to see their services impacted in any way! > 2. Mandrake is one of the most popular distros. See > http://www.distrowatch.com/ Of all the distros listed, why does > Mandrake keep begging for cash? It looks to me like they are still > suffering from some _very bad_ business decisions, mostly unrelated to > Linux (the "repositioning as an e-learning company" fiasco). Are current > Mandrake users supposed to bail out the company for the sins of the > previous managment? Perhaps....if Mandrake is to prosper (which is > different from survival). Well unfortunately we all don't seem to have much of a choice. They are in the position and it's either sink or swim, and philosophy has nothing to do with it truly. > 3. It appears that current management is under tremendous pressure from > their venture capital investors to become profitable so their > investments will pay off. I am not sure that it is my responsibility to > contribute to this. It would probably help us all to understand this a bit better to know exactly what is drawing down revenue still. Contracts? Would just be nice to know. > 4. I use Mandrake, like it, and have purchased boxed sets. I wish them > well and hope they develop a viable business plan, but frankly, begging > is an embarrassment to the entire community. M$ must laughing its ass off. Well I also purchased, or rather ordered a boxed set of Mandrake 9 months ago, but never received it and despite many contacts, both by phone and via email I never found out what happened to my order, until I received an email from one of their marketing people. I vented on her and my email quickly got passed to someone up their marketing chain who promised to cancel my order and refund my credit card... which still hasn't been done after quite some time. Recent emails to the person who personally promised me they would refund my credit card have gone unanswered and I finally wrote a letter to my credit card issuer refuting the charges. They're now looking into it and can handle this for me. Despite Mandrake's money problems, they blew this whole roll out in a major fashion. I think too few people are talking about their problems getting the software they purchased and it's that experience, in my mind which causes me to now be a little more careful about how I give them my money. I'll wait from now on until the boxed sets are on store shelves before I purchase. At least that way I can guarantee I get what I paid for! > 5. If Mandrake dies the torch will be picked up by others and the Linux > community will survive. Those who support Mandrake now will move to > another distro and help it become stronger. The future of Linux is > bright, but there will be shakeouts along the way. Remember, that which > does not kill us makes us stronger. Will Mandrake still be standing at > the end of the day? I don't know, but the Linux community will be stronger. > Honestly I think that's terrible, and reeks too much of scavenging. Mandrake has produced a great product but got itself in a bind by bad business decisions, unrelated to their product. For them to fail based on unrelated business matters would be a terrible waste of time and effort. The object should be to make this thrive and succeed. We should help where we can, but we should also insist that Mandrake divest itself of whatever is holding it down. Anthony
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