Guest duir66 Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 All french jokes aside, they have good cars, damned good wine and a fine Linux distro. But unlike Schlumberger, does Mandrake have a promotion problem? Peugeot surely does. I've heard way to many stabs at frenchmen not wanting to leave France to be successful in overseas exports. The following Business Week article that ran on /. a few days ago has me wondering why there are financial issues with ML. Hopefully 9.1 will start to change this. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conte...22601_tc102.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JaseP Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 Mandrake's financial problems have to do with poor business decisions. They should have stuck with making a fine distro, but they diversified too much. They are under the French equivalent of Chapter 11 reorganization. That means they continue to operate, their debts are assigned levels of importance for repayment, and they have the right to avoid performance in some un-expired contracts. For Mandrake, it is a good thing because they can shed the excess weight they put on with their e-learning contracts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 Basically, the distro part of the business was doing fairly well, but they don't have enough hard cash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Counterspy Posted February 25, 2003 Report Share Posted February 25, 2003 I believe the issue goes beyond running out of cash. They have failed to get adequate distribution in North America in a manner that is timely following the completion of the distro thus failing to capitalize on their reputation in the world's largest market. The Club and the Store are frills in a multi-million dollar business and while they may make people feel good, they can hardly be considered as equivalents to a comprehensive retail strategy that puts product in every big box retailer in North America. They have been keeping their mouths shut for the most part which is a plus since they had a habit of letting senior executives put their foot in it on a regular basis. Their stock was still blocked from trading the last time I looked at Euronext meaning no one knows what it will trade at when the freeze is lifted. Times are not good for them in the present market situation and OTC tech stocks do not fare well. I feel that they shoul post an audited financial statement and the terms of the order of the Bankruptcy Court. Such a move would give everyone who supports them a realistic picture of where they stand and would certainly boost my confidence in their future. Everyone should realize they are a long way from being a successful company even after they are out of bankruptcy protection. They need to rationalize their whole operation much as they have done in the conditions applied to RC-1. Their joint agreements with Walmart, HP and others are never referred to except by Mandrakesoft, not exactly a desirable situation. This has to change showing positive results instead of constant upstaging by competitors. In today's B2B environment, they need to significantly reorganize their web presence which I see as an uncoordinated mess. We seem to spend more time on ours and we'll be here whatever happens. End of rant. Counterspy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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