It is a waste of energy at this point. Chapter 11 type bankruptcies does
not mean a company is going under. The debt is restructured so that it
can be paid off without breaking the company. As I understand things,
Mandrake expects to start turning a profit this year. 

If I were to lay a guess, it would be that most of the debt that needs
to be restructered was acquired during the period when Mandrake was
positioning itself for an IPO (along the lines of Redhat's). The
significant money that was available for IPO's at that time made the
debt incurred look fairly minor in comparison. Unfortunately, things
shifted and now they have to restructure those debts. As far as I can
tell, the current structure of Mandrake looks fine.... and if worse came
to worse... they could bankrupt Mandrake, take all of the open source
code and start another company without the debt load. But that has its
risks too. For one, I don't think Mandrake wants to stiff its investors,
that could severely cramp any post-Mandrake company. So my best guess is
that they will bargain some of the debt down to something more realistic
to todays economy and continue to build the business.

On Wed, 2003-01-15 at 23:03, Lyvim Xaphir wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-01-15 at 22:43, OS wrote:
> > > And this is not the place to discuss it.
> > It's as good a place as any, considering how much love, time and money we've 
> > all put into it.
> > 
> > Owen
> 
> I've always said on the Expert list and elsewhere; if Linux goes away,
> so do all the Linux lists.  Same thing for Mandrake.  So I personally
> consider it a salient issue here, as long as trolls don't get involved
> and it stays on a positive note with enthusiasm for the future.
> 
> Often times when a bunch of gearheads start talking with each other
> about a common problem in a convenient location, good things can start
> happening.
> 
> --LX
>  
-- 
SI Reasoning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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