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发信人: linuxrat (叫我老鼠错不了), 信区: Linux
标  题: 对Mandrake创始人的采访, 了解一些历史吧.
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Thu Dec 30 20:30:06 1999)

喜爱Linux Mandrake的道友可以看看哦. 也是在http://lwn.net/.
看来我也改做GNU/Linux发行套件了. 就象DBPZ以前所说, "能做光盘就能做
发行套件么?". 当然了, Mandrake可是货真价实的发行套件的. 我是想先自
己做一个先, 然后在找个风险投资什么的, 拉一帮人就可以做起来啦.....
(呵....//打了一个哈欠....长长的....呵呵, 我刚才是在做白日梦吧?//grin)
=============Begin of Interview=================
LWN interviews Gael Duval

   Gael Duval is a founder of MandrakeSoft, the producers of the
   fast-rising Linux-Mandrake distribution. Gael was kind enough to take
   some time to answer LWN's questions about where Linux-Mandrake is
   going.

   LWN: What can you tell us about the investment from AXA? What will be
   done with the money?

   GD: Axa is a big investor - they have deep pockets (650 billions USD
   of asset management), they have many different funds and companies in
   the group and are very very reactive. It's been the fastest investor
   to be interested and agree to invest in a Linux company. They made
   their decision before Redhat's successful IPO and are now very happy
   of their decision.

   The money will be used to launch and support more and more innovative
   open source projects and to establish MandrakeSoft offices in several
   countries. Expect a scoop very soon.

   LWN: Does this investment imply that MandrakeSoft intends to go public
   at some point in the future? If so, would you do so in the U.S. or in
   Europe?

   GD: As soon as possible and probably in Nasdaq.

   LWN: How big is MandrakeSoft at this point?

   GD: There are currently about 20 employees in several countries and it
   grows fast.

   LWN: When Linux-Mandrake was launched, it was essentially positioned
   as "Red Hat with KDE." Now Red Hat has KDE. What is the current
   "vision" for Linux-Mandrake? How will you distinguish it from other
   distributions?

   GD: Firstly, while Red Hat is more Gnome-centric, we are more
   KDE-centric. However, we also ship Gnome and other interfaces like
   WindowMaker, AfterStep, IceWM.... We want to provide a real choice to
   users, and it's very easy to switch from one to the others in
   Mandrake.

   Anyways, our distinction comes from the first ideas that I have put in
   Mandrake at the beginning: for example easy CD-ROM, Floppy mounting
   "Redhat is the IBM of the Linux market, we expect to be the new
   Compaq."
   for users that are not "root" etc. It has been called the "Mandrake
   touch" by someone in the press (sorry I don't remember who!). It's a
   set of improvements to make the user's life easier. In the same
   spirit, we have a tool called "MandrakeUpdate" which permits an easy
   upgrade of packages: just click on the "MandrakeUpdate" on your
   desktop and you know what are the new packages to update. Select those
   that you need, it prompts you for the root password, and then download
   and install the new packages from the net.

   And with all those new developers at MandrakeSoft, we now have many
   ideas to put Linux on every PC :) Big projects are currently being
   developed, from which Lothar, Linux for Windows, Panoramix and
   DiskDrake.

   LWN: Will Linux-Mandrake continue as a value-added distribution based
   on Red Hat, or do you plan to split away at some point?

   GD: The split has already occurred from the 6.0 version, although
   nobody seems to have noticed it ;) We were developing Mandrake 6.0 a
   long time before Red Hat released their version and we have just
   synchronized a few things at RH 6.0 release time. So we do not have
   exactly the same packages, nor the same versions: not the same Gnome,
   not the same KDE, not the same Glibc, not the same Bash, not the same
   Linux Kernel etc.

   Nevertheless, one thing is sure: currently we do not want to try
   setting our own standards: Red Hat is the leader, we do not want to
   reinvent the wheel: it's open source software! So we use the best of
   Red Hat and we build in the same direction as them, but faster and
   nicer (IMO of course ;)) Mandrake looks like Red Hat and is compatible
   with it: it means that every RPM made for Red Hat can run on Mandrake.
   This is a very important point because many proprietary applications
   will soon appear for Linux and they will first be designed for the
   leader which is called Red Hat. Other Linux distributions won't
   benefit from it because they use other packages systems or don't have
   the same file hierarchy. However, we are often called a "Red Hat
   better than Red Hat" in the press!

   LWN: Some day some clever person will create a new distribution which
   is a value-added version of Linux-Mandrake. How would that affect
   Linux-Mandrake's sales? What would MandrakeSoft's response, if any,
   be?

   GD: "Some day" has already occured several times. The first time was
   "Guru Linux" (one year ago), the last one is "Phat Linux". But there
   have been many others, like MaTel in Thailand, for example. We have no
   problem at all with that. Sometimes, we just try to convince people to
   join us instead of trying to be a small concurrent: it benefits to the
   both parties.

   Anyways, any other Mandrake/Redhat based player will extend the
   competition, the features and at least the Mandrake/Redhat based
   distribution user base. It's very similar to the success of the IBM
   PC-Compatible market versus Apple market. Redhat and Mandrake are in
   the PC side. Suse and Caldera are in the Apple side: there is no
   Caldera or Suse based distribution because they provide proprietary
   components while Red Hat and Mandrake publish all their work with the
   General Public License. Redhat is the IBM of the Linux market, we
   expect to be the new Compaq.

   LWN: Do you have a release date for 6.1? What can Linux-Mandrake users
   look forward to with that release?

   GD: 6.1 is expected to be released soon - in 6.1 there will be the
   last versions of all the packages that we ship, and everything will be
   completely stabilized. Furthermore, there will certainly one or two
   good surprises in 6.1 !

   LWN: How strong of a response have you gotten to Cooker? Do you expect
   to get a significant amount of developer interest via that release?

   GD: About 200 developers joined Cooker :) They all feed Mandrake with
   ideas, fixes, new packages etc. It's a very nice place for
   free-software. With Cooker (http://www.linux-mandrake.com/cooker/),
   Mandrake is turning into a real open source distribution, just like
   Debian is. Furthermore, we see that many developers and users enjoy
   getting the freshest packages from Cooker!

   LWN: What other interesting news can we expect to see come out of
   MandrakeSoft in the near future?

   GD: From a technical point of view, we plan to release final versions
   of several big projects like Lothar, DiskDrake and Panoramix. We will
   also soon announce a new nice tool called "hwizard" that will make
   user's life under Linux still more fun and easier. But I can't tell
   more :)

   From a commercial point of view, we will soon extend our distribution,
   especially in the USA. Several agreements are being signed but we
   still miss a mainstream distributor in the USA that would ship our
   PowerPacks and other new products in each American store.

   From a financial point of view, there are already new discussions with
   new investors.

   We will also employ more people and soon announce new implantations,
   especially in Asia.

   In my first idea, Mandrake was made to promote Linux as a competitor
   to MS-Windows. I think it could occur sooner than expected :)

   LWN: And where did the name "Mandrake" come from in the first place?

   GD: From my child's head. Mandrake is magic!

   -- J. Corbet.

   Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright 1998 Eklektix, Inc. all rights
   reserved.
   Linux R is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds

=============End of Interview===================
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| 以无法为有法，      |  拳本无法，有法也空；  |  我爱GNU/Linux,    |
|   以无限为有限       |    一法不立，无法不容。|     因为我爱自由！ |
|                      |                        |                    |
|   截拳道宗师-李小龙  |        意拳宗师-王芗斋 |     土人  Linuxrat |
|======================+========================+====================|

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