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Mandriva (merger of Mandrakesoft, Lycoris, and Conectiva) is a French software company and creator of Mandriva Linux. Describing itself as a "project initiator and a skills organizer in the Open Source arena", Mandriva is also a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium.
Mandriva was created (as MandrakeSoft) in 1998. It currently has about 130 employees (80 of whom are engineers) and has offices in France, USA, and Brazil. It sells its products in more than 140 countries and estimates the number of Mandriva Linux users to be in the 6-to-8 million range.
Innovations
Mandriva has, like other Linux distributions, created several applications that give it a distinctive feel. The urpmi tools are probably the most notable, along with nspluginwrapper which allows x86 plugins to be used within a x86_64 browser.
Financial State
Mandrakesoft operated under bankruptcy protection from January 27, 2003 to March 30, 2004. Despite its efforts to cut losses and improve profits, Mandrakesoft was forced to file for protection due to a series of quarterly losses. 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 €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).
One of the sources of income for Mandriva is Mandriva Club. The Club provides its members with a club web site, additional mirrors and torrents for downloading, free downloads of its boxed products, interim releases of the Mandriva Linux distribution, and additional software updates. Mandriva Linux is just as usable without a club membership, however. Some Club members say that they have joined the Club for its services, whereas others say they have joined the Club mostly to support their favorite distribution financially.
Acquisitions
On October 4, 2004, Mandrakesoft acquired 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 January 24, 2005, Mandrakesoft announced that it would acquire Brazilian Linux distributor Conectiva for the amount of €1.79 million (2.3 million US dollars 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.
Controversy
* [http://trends.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=06/03/15/208240 Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing]
* [http://www.indidea.org/gael/en/fired-message.php Fired, simply fired.] - Gael Duval's account of his parting with Mandriva.
* [http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/interview-fbancilhon-2006-03 Interview of François Bancilhon, CEO of Mandriva] - Questions regarding Gael Duval answered by Mandriva's CEO.
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