On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 10:58:38PM +0000, Anne Wilson wrote: > On what do you base this statement? I'm a shareholder, too, and I have never > seen anything to suggest that the shareholders are, in fact, on their backs. > The kind of shareholders you are talking about have been too nervy to put > money in, which hasn't helped Mandrake's short-term need, but is probably > better for them in the long term. > > And before I'm accused of talking Mandrake up to safeguard my investment, let > me say that from the start I accepted that Mandrake were not in a strong > financial position and I could lose the lot. I went in because I liked both > the distro and the ethics of Mandrake, and happened to have a sum at that > moment that I could gamble without worry. I chose to spend it on them rather > than an extra holiday or some other unnecessary luxury.
Anne, there is no way the majority of the shareholders are people like you and I. We make up a minute portion of the funding. If you refer to Mandrakesoft's web page about the company you will note rather large venture investors. These are undoubtably the people who installed the executives that got us in this mess... As far as I know those people are still shareholders. Yes this is an assumption. But Mandrake would have to have incurred significant debt to buy out these shareholders. What we know of the debt suggests it was more of contracts not share buybacks. I have no reason to doubt your honest intentions. > You could be right, if they are business investors. We really don't know > enough about this to make judgements. We know some info from here: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/about ABN AMRO, Vivendi... those are definately business investors. I can't say I'm familiar with the rest. I would guess they've made significant investments in order to get their name on that page. I know neither yours nor my name show up on that page. :) > My feeling is that the courts will decide the pace. That is, they will > control the financial decisions. Hopefully this will enable the team to get > on with what they are best at, developing a distro. Despite the struggles > people have with betas, often forgetting that they are in fact betas, we like > what we get. I have no idea really how French bankruptcy works. So I'm not sure. -- Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://ben.reser.org "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own." -- John Quincy Adams, July 4th, 1821
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