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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">Linux in France: Guess MandrakeSoft's Next Move</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:frc@linuxsolutions.com.br">Fernando Ribeiro Corrêa</a></H4>
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<H4><EM>Originally published at <A HREF="http://www.olinux.com.br/interviews/11/en">
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www.olinux.com.br/interviews/10/en</A><BR>
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A Portuguese version is at <A HREF="http://www.olinux.com.br/entrevistas/11">
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http://www.olinux.com.br/entrevistas/10</A></EM></H4>
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<P> <EM>Linux in France: ideas and plans of a MandrakeSoft company and it<69>s
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comercial operation. Mandrake<6B>s co-founder and Vice-President Gael Duval
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describes talks to OLinux about how he managed to make an international and top
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seller company as the world number two Linux distribuiton in boxes sold in 1999
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in less than two years and also Mandrake plans for an IPO. Will you
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invest?</EM>
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<P> <b>OLinux: Say something about your professional and personal background? Where
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did you graduated? Brief us about your Linux career?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: I'm 26 years old. So no need to tell you that I didn't do much before!
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I just studied computer sciences for 5 years at University in France.
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In my last year I specialized in Networking & Electronic Documents.
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After having used UNIX a lot (Solaris/SunOS) I discovered Linux in
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1995. My first Linux distribution was taking 50 diskettes!
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<P> <b>OLinux: As founder of Mandrake, how the idea of a distribution came to your
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mind? Were you inspired by other distributions success?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: This is quite easy. In 1997 I had a need of a Linux distribution which
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would be easy to install and very easy to use. Red Hat was quite easy
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to install, but not easy to use. So I put KDE in Red Hat, added a few
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things for simplifying the users life and I released. This wouldn't
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have been possible in the proprietary software world! Since that,
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Mandrake has evolved on its own way and it's good that we can invent
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many new concepts.
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<P> <b>OLinux: When Mandrake was created officially as a company?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: MandrakeSoft was founded in the end of 1998.
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<P> <b>OLinux: What is Mandrakes mission and strategy?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: We want to provide Linux to the biggest number of users. Personal
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users as well as corporates. The strategy is quite clear: we want to
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improve as much as possible, release the best quality possible, and
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offer the largest possible variety of products on as many plateforms
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as possible. That's why we will soon have an offer for the
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enterprises, and that we don't limit to x86 architecture. The force of
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Linux is that it runs in x86, SPARC, Alpha, PPC, Mips, 68k... That's
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not the case for any other proprietary OS!
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<P> <b>OLinux: Is Mandrake an internacional company? How many affiliates, distributors
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and resellers Mandrake works with? By this moment, international
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revenues are already significant?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: MandrakeSoft has been an international company from the beginning
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because before it was founded, I already had many contacts all around
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the world, in Europe, America, Asia, Russia... We have two main
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offices: one in Europe (Paris), one in the USA (Los Angeles). We have
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many online resellers (about 50 for south+north America) and two major
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distributors: MacMillan Software Publishing (we have a 5 years
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agreement with them), and Kasper. Of course our international revenues
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are significant, especially from America.
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<P> <b>OLinux: What it's your position and responsibilities at Mandrake today?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Well... My official title is "Vice-President & Co-Founder - Open
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Source Development".
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<P> <b>OLinux: How much Mandrake has grow since then? How much revenues have grown and
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what is the projection for 2000? How many Mandrake's boxes were sold
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last year and will be sold in 2000? Where is located Mandrake HeadQuarters?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>:We had a fantastic growth! In the end of 1998 we were 3 people in
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MandrakeSoft. In the end of 1999 we were 40, and right now we are 70.
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The first Mandrake officially shipped by MandrakeSoft was 5.3. It's
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been sold at around 3000 items. Then we sold more than 200,000 6.0 +
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6.1 packs. The revenues have grown consequently.
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: MandrakeSoft headquarters are located in Paris, France.
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<P> <b>OLinux: Can you give us an idea, how hard the work is ahead of a Linux company?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: 16 hours a day, from Monday to Sunday. Several hundreds emails fall in
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my mailbox everyday!
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<P> <b>OLinux: How profitable is Linux business in France, German and Europe?</b>
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<P> It's ok but not very reactive. The big Linux hype is just starting
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here. Not any Linux company is on a public market in Europe yet.
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<P> <b>OLinux: Give us a panorama of Linux effective and potential growth in these locations?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: It's quite hard to say: we do 70% of revenues in the USA. It seems
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that it's just beginning in fact.
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<P> <b>OLinux:Is Mandrake planning an IPO for his year?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Yes.
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<P> <b>OLinux: Do you have examples of companies that have deployed Linux in a large scale?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Do you mean in Europe? Do you mean Mandrake Linux? If it's Mandrake
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Linux, we have official contacts with 180 companies that are already
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using Mandrake.
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<P> <b>OLinux: Give us cases of study about Mandrake usage inside important companies.</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: There are several listed on our website. There is for example a
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manufacturing aerospace company with 400 employees which uses Mandrake
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for most its intranet servers. Of this big hotel in Poland with 450
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employees which uses Mandrake for its internal servers databases...
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<P> But the biggest userbase of Mandrake users are individual users
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because we don't have a real offer yet for enterprises (that will come
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in two months).
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<P> <b>OLinux: How Mandrakes supports OpenSource/Free Software organizations
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around the world?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Firstly we give back all our code to the community: everything is
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published under the General Public License. Secondly, we often sponsor
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some events (such as a big Gnome meeting recently), we give web server
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space on demand, we pay some people for working on free-software (for
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example, we pay a KDE developpers and a KOffice developper) etc.
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<P> <b>OLinux: Nowadays, companies as Oracle are saying future of business is ecommerce
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through the Internet. Do you see it this way? is Linux Mandrake
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developing any products or have any plans for ecommerce? What the main
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bets and guidelines?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Ecommerce is effectively a big thing. We already provide many tools
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that can be used to build some ecommerce services (Postgres, MySQL,
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Apache, PHP...). Furthermore, a complete solution for ecommerce has
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been envisaged.
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<P> <b>OLinux: What Linux hasn't achieved yet in your opinion?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Large recognition. This leads to a lack of end-users applications. It
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will change.
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<P> <b>OLinux: What is the relation between Mandrake and Redhat?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Do you mean official contacts or the relation between the two products?In the very beginning, Mandrake was based in RedHat work?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Yes. Mandrake 5.1 was basically RH+updates+KDE+several improvements. Nowdays, RedHat uses Mandrake many new features?</b>
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<P> RH has taken several ideas from Mandrake. The biggest one is certainly
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the remote update tool (which permits to update packages that have
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security holes etc.) but they have rewritten it. However in 6.2, they
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directly put one of our package ("rpmlint" which can make some checks
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on RPM packages). Maybe one day they'll adopt our installation
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procedure which is the best installation procedure recognized in the
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Linux world.
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<P> <b>OLinux: How do you see this crossing relation?</b>
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<P> <b>Gael Duval</b>: Great. It's not competition it's co-petition! Moreover, some of our
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developers have personal contacts with RH and they work together on
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improving RPM for example. Greets, Gael
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<H5 ALIGN=center>
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Copyright © 2000, Fernando Ribeiro Corrêa<BR>
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Published in Issue 53 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 2000</H5>
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