| Industry | Software industry |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1998 (MandrakeSoft) 1995 (Conectiva) |
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Products | Mandriva Linux |
| Website | www.mandriva.com |
Mandriva S.A. is a publicly traded (symbol:MLMAN) Linux and open source software company with its headquarters in Paris, France and development center in Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. is the creator and maintainer of Mandriva Linux, describing itself as a "project initiator and a skills organizer in the Open Source arena", and a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium.
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Mandriva, S.A. began as MandrakeSoft in 1998.[1] It currently has about 70 employees (45 of whom are engineers) and has offices in France, the USA, and Brazil.[2][3] The company sells its products in more than 140 countries and estimates the number of Mandriva Linux users to be approximately 3 million, according to mandriva.com website.
MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation over the name Mandrake. The litigation concluded in February 2004, and appeals expired in early 2005. The litigation arose because of Hearst Corporation's claim to the name "Mandrake", inspired by the comic Mandrake the Magician; forcing MandrakeSoft to change its name. In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris, and purchased Conectiva. As a result of the forced name change, the name Mandriva was selected to reflect the combination of MandrakeSoft and Conectiva.[4]
On 2008-01-16, Mandriva and Turbolinux announced a partnership to create a lab named Manbo-Labs, to share resources and technology to release a common base system for both companies' Linux distributions.[5]
On 2010-09-18, a group of former Mandriva employees and community supporters announced their intention to fork Mandriva Linux and create the Mageia Linux distribution and organization in response to the liquidation of "Edge-IT". The liquidation of the Mandriva-owned company resulted in the laying-off of some employees who worked on Mandriva Linux. It was the result of a deep disagreement on the goal and strategy of Mandriva. The direction of the company decided to center the development of the desktop distribution where it was mostly sold : in South America. At the same time, European developments and teams were re-enforced and focused on server operating system and professional software development. This has led to the release of Pulse2 1.3 and MES5.2 in 2011 by these European teams.
On 2011-03-18, Mandriva will officially change its form to Société Anonyme à Directoire et Conseil de Surveillance, with 2 Russian and one French member, Leonid Reiman, Arthur Akopian, and Bertrand Glineur. The president of the management board ("directoire") stays Arnaud Laprévote. The main shareholder at this date stays LinLux owned by the Ocam fund, itself owned by the French bank Bryan Garnier.
Mandriva has, like other Linux distributions, created several applications that give it a distinctive feel. The urpmi package management tools and the suite of graphical system configuration tools contained in the Mandriva Control Center are probably the most notable.
Another example is transfugdrake, a tool designed for easy migration of documents and settings from Microsoft Windows to Mandriva Linux.[6][7] It is a front end to Migration Assistant.[8]
MandrakeSoft operated under bankruptcy protection from January 27, 2003 to March 30, 2004.[9][10] 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.[11]
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).[10]
In addition to selling Linux distributions through its online store and authorized resellers, Mandriva previously sold subscriptions to the Mandriva Club. There were several levels of membership, at costs ranging from US$66 or 60 € per year (as of 2007) to 600 € per year.[12]
Club members gained access to the Club website, additional mirrors and torrents for downloading, free downloads of its boxed products (depending on membership level), interim releases of the Mandriva Linux distribution, and additional software updates. For example, only Gold-level and higher members could download Powerpack+ editions.
Many Mandriva commercial products came with short-term membership in the club; however, Mandriva Linux was completely usable without a club membership.
When Mandriva Linux 2008.0 was released in October 2007, Mandriva made club membership free of charge to all comers, splitting download subscriptions off into a separate service.[13]
Mandriva also has a Mandriva Corporate Club for larger organizations.[14]
On October 4, 2004, Mandrakesoft acquired the 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.[15]
On February 24, 2005, Mandrakesoft acquired Brazilian Linux distributor Conectiva for €1.79 million (2.3 million US dollars at the time).[16]
On June 15, 2005, Mandriva acquired Lycoris (formerly, Redmond Linux Corporation).[17]
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.[18]