Some good (and a little not-so-good) comments on the previous Mandriva post. I wanted to point out just a few things…
A few folks made some assumptions about my choice of distros, or experiences with Mandriva. I’ve used Mandriva, though I admit it’s been a few years. I used Mandrake before it for quite a while. It never really caught my fancy, sorry. That doesn’t mean Mandriva isn’t the bee’s knees for a lot of other people, but it never really grabbed me as spectacular.
I often say that distributions are like underwear: No one can tell you what will make your butt comfortable. Some people dig on boxers, other people wear briefs, and some folks go commando. There’s no a right or wrong, but just what works for you. Unfortunately, Mandriva skivvies just haven’t caught on with enough people willing to part with cash to make it a working business. It happens.
Back in the day, long before there was an Ubuntu, there was Stormix — a nifty and easy to use (at the time) distro based on Debian. (Sound familiar?) They didn’t catch on, the company failed — and Linux as a whole survived. Sad for the company and its users, but life went on and I don’t know too many people still pining away for Stormix. I’ve been using Linux a very long time and have long since gotten over the idea of “one true distro” or even getting too attached to any specific way of doing things.
A couple of folks asserted that I must be an Ubuntu user to suggest that it would be OK for Mandriva to go away. Well, yes and no. I use Ubuntu on one of my laptops, one of my netbooks, and I’ve got plenty of Ubuntu VMs around for testing. I also use Fedora on one of my testing workstations, and in plenty of VMs, and I’m getting ready to put openSUSE 11.3 m6 on another machine. My job these days is largely writing about Linux and open source, and I don’t find it a good practice to use only one. I also see some good and bad things about each distro — but none are perfect, or right for all users. See the underwear metaphor above. So, no, I’m not an Ubuntu fanatic.
I respect each distro and its community for different reasons. I draw the line, though, at respecting business models. And that’s where, apparently, Mandriva has failed.
This brings me to the next point: I don’t take any particular enjoyment out of that, or mean to say anything unkind to Mandriva’s employees. But sometimes businesses fail. And sometimes that is better for the larger industry. While fewer people being paid to work on Linux is not good, a little less fragmentation is.
But it’s also not a foregone conclusion that Mandriva failing needs to mean the people working on Mandriva are out of jobs. The first suggestion I posed yesterday was for Mandriva to become community owned. Maybe if people felt a greater stake in the running of the company they’d be willing to dip into their pockets and pay for development to continue Mandriva. That is failing to happen in large enough numbers now — or the management is not handling the funds well enough to continue as-is. Either way, the current situation is not working.
To me, it’s market dynamics. Mandriva hasn’t sufficiently differentiated itself through a superior product, fanatical marketing, or B2B deals with companies which have the first two. I hate to see it go–Mandrake was my first non-live-CD distro–but maybe it’s time.
Maybe Canonical or Red Hat or Novell will employ the developers of Mandriva. Maybe some will go that way, and others will stay and keep working on Mandriva on their own time or with the company’s reduced payroll. Who knows.
I guess it’s like hearing the king of an allied country is dying, and his advisors and subjects don’t know what to do. They shouldn’t worry, because another king will take his place, rising from among them or a foreign one benevolently assimilating them into his.
.-= Colin Dean´s last blog ..Spongetech ($SPNG) executives arrested for securities fraud =-.
Hi, I think there are few things about Mandriva. Firstly, that Mandriva is now on the condition it is because it maybe couldn’t addapt to the requeriments of an enterprise-oriented distribution. Secondly, I think that Mandriva has a big luck if they have got a buyer, by the time, I think, recently (and previously) Mandriva hasn’t shown to be a well-going business.
.-= ST´s last blog ..Inkscape: Dibuja vectorialmente =-.
Well said. I was a little harsh on you on your last blog, but this one is much better. That said, I still disagree on some items.
Yes, some say fragmentation of Linux is bad, but I say it’s good. It’s competition. Also, Mandriva’s problems are 4 pronged: First, a complete lack of more lucrative enterprise/server presence in enough areas. I’m sure it’s popular in France (maybe even Europe itself?) and maybe in South America, where it pulled in the Connectiva business. Second, Mandriva was never good at listening to the community. They did some things very right, such as when they were the only big name Linux vendor that offered an easily obtainable ISO of their distro, stripped of all non-free stuff (of course). The also did some things wrong such as when they begain corralling their userbase into a paid-for subscription service and limiting the free stuff, angering their userbase, in the name of profitability. Third, with their business going in and out of dire straits, many users simply went away because the future always looked grim. Lastly, the onslaught of Ubuntu and community distributions, the former undoubtedly gaining a lot of users early on from those that fled Mandriva because of their frustrations with the company, they simply found it hard to compete against competition that was simply giving away the farm.
Mandriva tried to enter the enterprise/server segment more vigorously in recent years, but due to the big money and the head start Novell and Red Hat had over it, it simply is finding that hurdle hard to leap. Cannonical is making strides, but it too, is not profitable.
In the end, I think the market is going to find that it cannot survive soley on a product that is given away so easily. Projects like Fedora and OpenSuse will survive because their parent companies are making money, and they serve as a Beta service for their corporate offerings. Cannonical/Ubuntu’s future has yet to be determined. Mark Shuttleworth has been accused of pulling the rug out from under other distros feet with his free CD effort. Will he be able to make that company profitable and sustainable? Or will he finally tire of footing the bill and simply collapse or sell the assets?
History has shown us one thing: No Linux distro has remained on top for very long. Eventually, the market changes, and someone else comes along to dominate. Red Hat was replaced by Mandrake, who was nearly replaced by Suse until Novell bought them, but was replaced by Ubuntu in enough time. Who’s next?
“The also did some things wrong such as when they begain corralling their userbase into a paid-for subscription service and limiting the free stuff, angering their userbase, in the name of profitability.”
Oh, yeah. Heaven forbid they should ask their users to pay for anything…
Well, it wasn’t really “asked”. That was the problem. It was like, “You’re gonna do this or else” kind of thing. That’s what angered the users.
Personally, many of them complained about the club subscription, but I always viewed it as a way to support their favorite distro. Unfortunatly, people don’t see past the “free” part a lot of time to understand it’s not a bunch of volunteers that do this stuff. I try to contribute to my favorite distro as often as I can. I recommend others do too.
@LinuxLover – you can’t have it both ways. On one hand, you’ve been sniping at Ubuntu because Shuttleworth has funded it out of pocket. On the other hand, you’re complaining about paying for Mandriva because they didn’t ask nicely enough? Please. It’s a business. Sorry if that offends, but they need to pay developers one way or another.
You’re mistaking my feelings about it for the community’s. I was all for it. It was the larger community that had a problem with it. It drove many users away.
I like your underwear analogy….
Cheers from sunny Malaysia.
“going commando” is like “linux from scratch” -> no package management…