François Bancilhon joins MandrakeSoft as new CEO

TITLE: François Bancilhon joins MandrakeSoft as new CEO

BODY:

Altadena, CA - November 25th, 2002 - MandrakeSoft, a worldwide leading 
supplier of Linux technology and producer of the popular Mandrake 
Linux distribution, announced today that former founder and CEO of O2 
Technology François Bancilhon has been appointed new Chief Executive 
Officer of MandrakeSoft. Co-Founder Jacques Le Marois remains Chairman 
and President of MandrakeSoft.

François Bancilhon's main focus will be to increase MandrakeSoft's 
business and profitability while maintaining a high-level of 
technology commitment in the Linux and Open Source arena. François 
Bancilhon is 54.

Prior to joining MandrakeSoft, François Bancilhon gained extensive 
experience in successfully managing software companies as well as 
developing businesses in the information technologies sector. He was a 
founder and CEO of O2 Technology -- an object database company that he 
successfully merged with Unidata in 1997. In 1999, he was a founder 
and CEO of Arioso, an ASP company that provides Human Resource and 
benefit management services to small and medium-sized businesses in 
the US. More recently, he was Chief Technology Officer of SomaLogic, a 
Biotech company based in Boulder, Colorado. He is also a founder and 
Chairman of the Board of Xyleme -- an XML tools company based in 
Saint-Cloud, France. François's career began in the academic world, 
both in Europe and in the US, in the field of relational and 
object-oriented databases.

After eighteen months of intensive restructuring, MandrakeSoft is 
showing extremely positive results: Revenue is up, while expenses have 
been drastically reduced. The company is now at the stage where it 
needs an experienced manager capable of taking it to the next level of 
development, while keeping the Open Source spirit which has always 
been one of MandrakeSoft's main strengths.

"We all feel that François is an excellent match with our company due 
to his strong business experience in the USA and in Europe. We also 
highly value his academic background, which is very close to the open 
source spirit." said Jacques Le Marois, Chairman and President of 
MandrakeSoft. He added: "We're all very excited that François has 
agreed to join MandrakeSoft as new CEO."

François Bancilhon stated: "Joining MandrakeSoft and the Linux world 
has already been an outstanding experience during my first weeks of 
presence. This was a new world for me, with an incredible level of 
energy and vision. Mandrake Linux is much more than just an operating 
system, it is a complete information system solution. The potential of 
Free Software and the Linux community are so powerful that I'm certain 
we're about to experience a radical visible movement within the 
computing industry. In the meantime, much can be done at MandrakeSoft 
to increase the business side of the company. I'm very excited to help 
MandrakeSoft become a major player in the IT field, and look forward 
to working with Jacques and the entire MandrakeSoft team."

MandrakeSoft recently released a new range of Mandrake Linux 9.0 
products and services. Mandrake Linux 9.0 has been warmly welcomed by 
the press as a new step in making Linux easier and more accessible for 
all users.

About MandrakeSoft

MandrakeSoft provides a trusted interface between users of information 
technology and Open Source developers. The company offers its 
enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of 
GNU/Linux and OpenSource software and related services, plus 
user-friendly and highly competitive information technologies. 
Additionally, MandrakeSoft offers technologists committed to Open 
Source software and courseware a trusted channel to offer their services.

MandrakeSoft has technologists in over 20 countries, and is traded on 
Paris Euronext Marche Libre (Euroclear code: 4477.PA; Reuters code: 
MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF). "Born on the 
Internet" in late 1998, MandrakeSoft has established headquarters in 
the U.S.A., Montreal and France. Please visit the website: 
http://www.mandrakesoft.com for more information.