The company behind Linux distribution Mandriva is bankrupt
Mandriva, the company that became known for the Linux distribution of the same name, is bankrupt. In its seventeen-year existence, the company often had to deal with financial problems, as a result of which it almost went bankrupt several times.
The French business information website Societe states that Mandriva has been in bankruptcy proceedings since May 22. The Parisian software company is best known for its Linux distribution Mandriva, which was previously called Mandrake. Mandriva was founded in 1998 under the name Mandrakesoft by Gaël Duval. He and his development team managed to develop an easy-to-use distribution, which for a while was considered one of the more popular variants of Linux. Now those heydays are over: other Linux distros have significantly more users these days.
The company has often faced financial difficulties during its 17-year existence. At the end of 2002, the company begged for money from users because it had to pay off 4 million dollars, about 3.5 million euros, in debt. A month later, the company had to request a deferment of payment. By cutting costs, the company recovered financially.
In 2005, Mandriva took over the Brazilian distributor and software developer Conectiva for 1.79 million euros. After the acquisition, the company changed its name and the name of its Linux distribution to Mandriva, partly because Hearst Corporation won a lawsuit in 2004 over the use of the old name. A year later, founder Duval was fired, according to himself because he disagreed with management about the course to follow.
In 2010, the company again ran into financial difficulties. Investors helped the company get back on its feet, although the company also had to fire developers because of the problems. A number of them started the fork Mageia out of dissatisfaction, of which the fifth version is due to be released soon.
Two years later, Mandriva struck again, although the company again managed to attract fresh capital. CEO Jean-Manuel Croset stated at the time that the ‘most turbulent times’ in Mandriva’s existence would now be over. To avert bankruptcy, the company discontinued further development of Mandriva; from then on, users had to continue developing the distribution under the name OpenMandriva Lx. Since then, the company has focused on enterprise software products. In addition, it continued to contribute to the development of OpenMandriva and Mageia. According to Societe, the company had about 10 to 20 employees left; turnover in 2013 amounted to half a million euros.