>Mandrake has filed for bankruptcy...
>
>Follow this link... :-(
>
>http://lwn.net/Articles/20061/
>
>
>
how much longer will newbie exist I wonder ?
john
It seems to me with my limited insight to the true nature of the situation that the future of Mandrake is one of 2 ways,
It can hope that a rich company will come along and take it over
and offer the company's creditors so much in the pound to go away,
in which case the existing shareholders will have their equity
diluted to nothing.
Such possible suiters are the likes of Macmillans, who after all
have lost a potentially valuable part of their business, or possibly
a rival company like Redhat or Sussie and who have deep
pockets to pick up the pieces , reemploy the staff and put it back
together again. I suspect the open source nature of the business
will be further squeezed out.Who knows.
The second possibliity is the explanation like Ben Reser espouses in ,
http://ben.reser.org/rants/invisible.cgi?month=01&day=15&year=2003&t=00
Inwhich basically Mandrake or whatever it will be called goes back to
it's origins as an open source developement based upon volunteer input
and a small nucleus of staff responsible for administering the final
product in some centrally paid site, funds for which will have to be
found , most likely from offering it's own 3/5 cd sache of pressed
cd's for sale direct to the general public at an affordable price,
perhaps once a year.This will undoubedly maintain the open source
nature of the product. As I understand it any such body, be it a
company, charity, or whatever will have the rights to pick up the pieces
under the GPL licence of what is left of the Mandrake product.
Possibly there might be another middle way that I cannot see.
However what ever happens from now on the strategy for developement
has to be focussed upon building a distro that will install on current
manufacutre equipement and be a real possibility for assemblers of
computer equipement to install and offer to joe public on an
everyday affordable alternative to M$. The days of expecting
joe public to folk out bundles of $ for software are coming to
an end.Whitness the contraction of the software industry around the
world.It is only a passing phase and will come to an end but a return
to the heady days of boom and bust are over , reality is sinking in.
Owning a computer is expensive enough but the sheer cost of all the software to make it run has become it's growth stopper.
Whatever happens from now on I wish Mandrake well.
John
--
John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
