Robert Pogson

The GNU/Linux distro with 9 lives, Mandrake, now Mandriva, has found new investors. Unlike many distros which do not attempt to make money but rely on donations of money, resources and manpower, Mandriva has tried to operate as a tech business. This is difficult because there is a lot of competition, other distros, and that other OS. They have done reasonably well in France and South America but it is difficult to be viable while keeping costs down while giving a product away… Selling licences is barely viable and drumming up support subscriptions is a lot of work. Just ask RedHat who have been at it long before Mandriva and still have a long way to go.

Mandriva has reorganized before. We shall see if they can develop a better plan this time around. The new investors likely have some ideas. Let us hope it is not a sell-out to M$ or some such silliness. Anything is possible amongst wheeler-dealers. Servers/services seems fairly doable for many businesses. They are also looking at education which loves low-cost solutions. Mandrake was my second or third distro in my years of exploring GNU/Linux and I remember the utility of lots of their packages in the day, Linneighbourhood and a graphing calculator (I have forgotten the name) were useful in the world in which I lived in those days.