Mandriva
Encyclopedia
Mandriva S.A. is a publicly traded (symbol:MLMAN) Linux
and open source
software company with its headquarters in Paris
, France
and development center in Curitiba
, Brazil
. Mandriva, S.A. is the creator and maintainer of Mandriva Linux
, describing itself as a "project initiator and a skills organizer in the Open Source arena", and a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium
.
, the USA
, and Brazil
. The company sells its products in more than 140 countries and estimates the number of Mandriva Linux
users to be approximately 3 million, according to mandriva.com website.
MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation
over the name Mandrake. The litigation concluded in February 2004, and appeals expired in early 2005. The litigation arose because of Hearst Corporation's claim to the name "Mandrake", inspired by the comic Mandrake the Magician
; forcing MandrakeSoft to change its name. In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris
, and purchased Conectiva
. As a result of the forced name change, the name Mandriva was selected to reflect the combination of MandrakeSoft and Conectiva.
On 2008-01-16, Mandriva and Turbolinux
announced a partnership to create a lab named Manbo-Labs, to share resources and technology to release a common base system for both companies' Linux distributions.
On 2010-09-18, a group of former Mandriva employees and community supporters announced their intention to fork Mandriva Linux
and create the Mageia
Linux distribution and organization in response to the liquidation of "Edge-IT". The liquidation of the Mandriva-owned company resulted in the laying-off of some employees who worked on Mandriva Linux. It was the result of a deep disagreement on the goal and strategy of Mandriva. The direction of the company decided to center the development of the desktop distribution where it was mostly sold : in South America. At the same time, European developments and teams were re-enforced and focused on server operating system and professional software development. This has led to the release of Pulse2 1.3 and MES5.2 in 2011 by these European teams.
On 2011-03-18, Mandriva will officially change its form to Société Anonyme à Directoire et Conseil de Surveillance, with 2 Russian and one French member, Leonid Reiman
, Arthur Akopian, and Bertrand Glineur. The president of the management board ("directoire") stays Arnaud Laprévote. The main shareholder at this date stays LinLux owned by the Ocam fund, itself owned by the French bank Bryan Garnier.
package management tools and the suite of graphical system configuration tools contained in the Mandriva Control Center are probably the most notable.
Another example is transfugdrake, a tool designed for easy migration of documents and settings from Microsoft Windows to Mandriva Linux. It is a front end to Migration Assistant.
270,000 on €1.42 million of revenue during the period between October 2003 and December 2003.
Shares
of Mandrakesoft are again being traded on the Euronext
Marché Libre exchange (ISIN code MLMAN) and on the US OTC Bulletin Board
(Stock symbol MDKFF).
Club members gained access to the Club website, additional mirrors and torrents for downloading, free downloads of its boxed products (depending on membership level), interim releases of the Mandriva Linux distribution, and additional software updates. For example, only Gold-level and higher members could download Powerpack+ editions.
Many Mandriva commercial products came with short-term membership in the club; however, Mandriva Linux was completely usable without a club membership.
When Mandriva Linux 2008.0 was released in October 2007, Mandriva made club membership free of charge to all comers, splitting download subscriptions off into a separate service.
Mandriva also has a Mandriva Corporate Club for larger organizations.
On February 24, 2005, Mandrakesoft acquired Brazil
ian Linux distributor Conectiva
for €1.79 million (2.3 million US dollar
s at the time).
On June 15, 2005, Mandriva acquired Lycoris
(formerly, Redmond Linux Corporation).
On October 5, 2006, Mandriva signed an agreement to acquire Linux enterprise software infrastructure company Linbox. The agreement includes the acquisition of all shares of Linbox for a total of $1.739 million in Mandriva stock, plus an earn out of up to $401,000 based on the 2006 Linbox financials.
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software company with its headquarters in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and development center in Curitiba
Curitiba
Curitiba is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. It is the largest city with the biggest economy of both Paraná and southern Brazil. The population of Curitiba numbers approximately 1.75 million people and the latest GDP figures for the city surpass US$61 billion according to...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. Mandriva, S.A. is the creator and maintainer of Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux is a Linux distribution distributed by Mandriva. It uses the RPM Package Manager...
, describing itself as a "project initiator and a skills organizer in the Open Source arena", and a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium
Desktop Linux Consortium
The Desktop Linux Consortium is a non-profit organization which aims at enhancing and promoting the use of the Linux operating system on desktop computers.It was founded on 4 February 2003.- Members :*ArkLinux*CodeWeavers*Debian*KDE...
.
History
Mandriva, S.A. began as MandrakeSoft in 1998. It currently has about 70 employees (45 of whom are engineers) and has offices in FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. The company sells its products in more than 140 countries and estimates the number of Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux is a Linux distribution distributed by Mandriva. It uses the RPM Package Manager...
users to be approximately 3 million, according to mandriva.com website.
MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
over the name Mandrake. The litigation concluded in February 2004, and appeals expired in early 2005. The litigation arose because of Hearst Corporation's claim to the name "Mandrake", inspired by the comic Mandrake the Magician
Mandrake the Magician
Mandrake the Magician is a syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk , which began June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip was distributed by King Features Syndicate.Davis worked on the strip until his death in 1964,...
; forcing MandrakeSoft to change its name. In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris
Lycoris (company)
Lycoris, , was started in the year 2000 with the intent to make free software easy enough for anyone to use. Redmond Linux was founded by Joseph Cheek, an entrepreneur who had previously worked for Linuxcare. In late 2001 it merged with embedded systems company DeepLinux; the merged entity was...
, and purchased Conectiva
Conectiva
Conectiva was a company founded on August 28, 1995, in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, by a group of friends, among them Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo, who was a pioneer in the distribution of Linux and open source software in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and English for all of Latin America...
. As a result of the forced name change, the name Mandriva was selected to reflect the combination of MandrakeSoft and Conectiva.
On 2008-01-16, Mandriva and Turbolinux
Turbolinux
-Linux distribution:The Turbolinux distribution was created as a rebranded Red Hat distribution by Pacific HiTech employee Scott Stone. Scott was the lead release engineer through version 3.6....
announced a partnership to create a lab named Manbo-Labs, to share resources and technology to release a common base system for both companies' Linux distributions.
On 2010-09-18, a group of former Mandriva employees and community supporters announced their intention to fork Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux is a Linux distribution distributed by Mandriva. It uses the RPM Package Manager...
and create the Mageia
Mageia
Mageia is the name of a non-profit organization and Linux distribution. The first release of the distribution was made on 1 June 2011.-Name:The term "mageia" — μαγεία in Greek — means "magic" in English...
Linux distribution and organization in response to the liquidation of "Edge-IT". The liquidation of the Mandriva-owned company resulted in the laying-off of some employees who worked on Mandriva Linux. It was the result of a deep disagreement on the goal and strategy of Mandriva. The direction of the company decided to center the development of the desktop distribution where it was mostly sold : in South America. At the same time, European developments and teams were re-enforced and focused on server operating system and professional software development. This has led to the release of Pulse2 1.3 and MES5.2 in 2011 by these European teams.
On 2011-03-18, Mandriva will officially change its form to Société Anonyme à Directoire et Conseil de Surveillance, with 2 Russian and one French member, Leonid Reiman
Leonid Reiman
Leonid Dododzhonovich Reiman, in Russian: Леонид Дододжонович Рейман; born July 12, 1957 in Leningrad is a Russian businessman and government official, former Minister of Communications and Information Technologies of the Russian Federation...
, Arthur Akopian, and Bertrand Glineur. The president of the management board ("directoire") stays Arnaud Laprévote. The main shareholder at this date stays LinLux owned by the Ocam fund, itself owned by the French bank Bryan Garnier.
Innovations
Mandriva has, like other Linux distributions, created several applications that give it a distinctive feel. The urpmiUrpmi
urpmi is a Mandriva Linux package management tool for installing, removing, updating and querying software packages of local or remote media. It wraps around the package manager rpm with the aim that the user should not have to suffer the often-encountered dependency hell...
package management tools and the suite of graphical system configuration tools contained in the Mandriva Control Center are probably the most notable.
Another example is transfugdrake, a tool designed for easy migration of documents and settings from Microsoft Windows to Mandriva Linux. It is a front end to Migration Assistant.
Financial state
MandrakeSoft operated under bankruptcy protection from January 27, 2003 to March 30, 2004. The déclaration de cessation de paiement (similar to the US Chapter 11) gave the company protection from its creditors. MandrakeSoft recorded its first quarterly profit since 1999 of €Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
270,000 on €1.42 million of revenue during the period between October 2003 and December 2003.
Shares
Share (finance)
A joint stock company divides its capital into units of equal denomination. Each unit is called a share. These units are offered for sale to raise capital. This is termed as issuing shares. A person who buys share/shares of the company is called a shareholder, and by acquiring share or shares in...
of Mandrakesoft are again being traded on the Euronext
Euronext
Euronext N.V. is a pan-European stock exchange based in Amsterdam and with subsidiaries in Belgium, France, Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom. In addition to equities and derivatives markets, the Euronext group provides clearing and information services...
Marché Libre exchange (ISIN code MLMAN) and on the US OTC Bulletin Board
OTC Bulletin Board
The OTC Bulletin Board or OTCBB is an interdealer electronic quotation system in the United States that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices, and volume information for many over-the-counter equity securities that are not listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange or a national securities exchange...
(Stock symbol MDKFF).
Mandriva Club
In addition to selling Linux distributions through its online store and authorized resellers, Mandriva previously sold subscriptions to the Mandriva Club. There were several levels of membership, at costs ranging from US$66 or 60 € per year (as of 2007) to 600 € per year.Club members gained access to the Club website, additional mirrors and torrents for downloading, free downloads of its boxed products (depending on membership level), interim releases of the Mandriva Linux distribution, and additional software updates. For example, only Gold-level and higher members could download Powerpack+ editions.
Many Mandriva commercial products came with short-term membership in the club; however, Mandriva Linux was completely usable without a club membership.
When Mandriva Linux 2008.0 was released in October 2007, Mandriva made club membership free of charge to all comers, splitting download subscriptions off into a separate service.
Mandriva also has a Mandriva Corporate Club for larger organizations.
Acquisitions
On October 4, 2004, Mandrakesoft acquired the professional support company Edge IT. Edge IT focused on the delivery of services and support to the corporate market in France and had 6 employees.On February 24, 2005, Mandrakesoft acquired Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian Linux distributor Conectiva
Conectiva
Conectiva was a company founded on August 28, 1995, in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, by a group of friends, among them Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo, who was a pioneer in the distribution of Linux and open source software in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and English for all of Latin America...
for €1.79 million (2.3 million US dollar
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
s at the time).
On June 15, 2005, Mandriva acquired Lycoris
Lycoris (company)
Lycoris, , was started in the year 2000 with the intent to make free software easy enough for anyone to use. Redmond Linux was founded by Joseph Cheek, an entrepreneur who had previously worked for Linuxcare. In late 2001 it merged with embedded systems company DeepLinux; the merged entity was...
(formerly, Redmond Linux Corporation).
On October 5, 2006, Mandriva signed an agreement to acquire Linux enterprise software infrastructure company Linbox. The agreement includes the acquisition of all shares of Linbox for a total of $1.739 million in Mandriva stock, plus an earn out of up to $401,000 based on the 2006 Linbox financials.
Products
- Mandriva LinuxMandriva LinuxMandriva Linux is a Linux distribution distributed by Mandriva. It uses the RPM Package Manager...
- Free of cost versions include Mandriva Free (open source version) and Mandriva One (Live CD with some proprietary components). The paid version is called Powerpack and includes licensed codecs for common audio and video file formats, Google applications and 3 months of web support. - Mandriva Directory Server - An open source LDAP server that aims to be easy to administer via a web GUI. Similar in aims to Fedora Directory ServerFedora Directory ServerThe 389 Directory Server is an LDAP server developed by Red Hat, as part of Red Hat's community-supported Fedora Project. 389 Directory Server is identical to the Red Hat Directory Server, just rebranded...
- Pulse 2 - Open Source tool that simplifies application deployment, inventory, and maintenance of an IT network.