Lee Wiggers wrote:
Such comments as Mandrake 'don't try to make money' or 'shoot itself in the foot over and over again' are not, to my mind, particularly kind, productive, or even accurate. In the 08/01/2003 Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #82, there is a link to the MandrakeSoft Shareholder Newsletter, which contains the following:On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 08:25:05 -0400 Greg Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Saturday 20 September 2003 11:31 pm, Carroll Grigsby wrote:
9.2 is supposed to go final RSN (Monday?), but neither the
Mandrake home
page
nor the Mandrake Store have any mention about accepting orders for it. There's a thread on the Club Forum about this (and yes, I did add my two cents worth), but no response has been forthcoming from anyone at Mandrake.
How's this for marketing skills: I've bought every PowerPack
since 8.1
through
the Store, and I've been a Club member (Silver) since January, 2002. What's wrong the Store sending an email asking if I want to reserve my copy now?
Arghhhh...
Perhaps they have had enough of the criticism from people who pre-order and then get their boxes late or never. Maybe this is their way of fixing the Store.
Another thought, IIRC, one of the main reasons to pre-order was
cash flow. Let us charge your card now and we'll ship later. Perhaps this is a good sign that they do not need the cash flow
from pre-orders.
Or perhaps they are broke because they don't try to make money? Watching Mandrake shoot itself in the foot over and over again,
marketing-wise has been the most unpleasant part of my mdk
experience over the past 3 years.
The corporate "they" sure have big feet.
Lee
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/newsletter/sn030724
"For the first half year of the current fiscal year, MandrakeSoft's consolidated revenue decreased by 10% to 2.10 million euros over the same period of the previous year. This decrease is mainly due to the weakness of the US dollar, which is the main currency of MandrakeSoft's revenue. With last year's USD/euro exchange rate, consolidated revenue would have remained mostly stable (-2%).
Consolidated gross margins for the first half year increased by 24%. This significant increase reflects an important change in revenue sources:
# Increase in high margin revenue lines such as OEM, on-line sales and subscriptions to MandrakeLinux Users Club (from 40% to 63% of consolidated revenue),
# Decrease in retail sales (from 51% to 27% of consolidated revenue).
For the first half year of the current fiscal year, MandrakeSoft reported a consolidated operating loss of 1.27 million euros which is an improvement of 2.4 million euros compared to last year's same period. This improvement is mainly due to an increase in gross margin plus savings from the ongoing cost reduction plan."
The lack of brick-and-mortar presence and hard-copy infrastructure is, probably, part of the cost-cutting realities with which Mandrake must cope in order to dig out of the hole, in order to survive. It is not difficult to toss out facile criticisms of Mandrake's business performance and postulate simplistic strategies that, if only Mandrake would follow them, all the problems would be solved. That none of these critics and dreamers has yet provided the world with a comparable, more profitable linux distribution suggests that, notwithstanding the possibilities of a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards for a million years, these lists are not the likely source of the proper tough decisions Mandrake must make in order to continue in the challenging, sometimes hostile, unpredictable corporate environment.
To paraphrase Vincent Danen [1], the more pragmatic course for those who would consider themselves Mandrake supporters would be "... to put their money where their mouth is, get on board, do the right thing to ensure their OS of choice sticks around, and when the cash starts to surplus a little more, then I think you have an honest argument to say "listen, we did what we had to do to keep you guys around, now you do what you have to do to keep us around"."
As one of the minority [2] who supports Mandrake the company, the developers, the physical infrastructure, these lists, et al with the cash purchase of a Club membership, I would like it known how much it displeases me that freeloaders will seize upon such easly-constructed negative characterizations as a rationalization for not spending any money for what they download. Yet, they never seem to go away :p
Rolf
[1] http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/expert/2003-09/msg01607.php [2] http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg122507.html
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