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Gartner: Customers Shouldn't Worry as MandrakeSoft Seeks Creditor Protection

[Posted January 21, 2003 by corbet]

Here's a Gartner Group pronouncement on MandrakeSoft's bankruptcy filing. "However, MandrakeSoft customers should not worry as the high portability of Linux distributions should make it easy to transition to a new supplier. Nevertheless, MandrakeSoft's woes underline the challenge of selecting Linux distributors in a consolidating market. To reduce their risk, enterprises should use distributions and features that align with the Linux Standards Base, one industry effort at coalescing around standard application programming interfaces." Gartner is figuring out that the relative vendor independence provided by Linux is a good thing.

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Posted Jan 22, 2003 17:05 UTC (Wed) by afriedel (guest, #5472) [Link]

I want to point out one problem with Gartner's statement.

Mandrake never intended to join united linux. Mandrake gave a statement about why it would not be joining United Linux and price was not one of the reasons listed. Their reasons seemed to be a difference in philosophy rather than a lack of resources.

Gartner: Customers Shouldn't Worry as MandrakeSoft Seeks Creditor Protection

Posted Jan 23, 2003 21:34 UTC (Thu) by torsten (guest, #4137) [Link]

You cannot deny that the > $1million USD fee to join the UnitedLinux effort may have had a serious effect on their choice of "philosophy," especially seeing that they are tremendously in debt.