About Eazel and Mandrake

[Jean Francois Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

Last week we heard of Eazel demise, today there is an unconfirmed report of 
layoffs at Mandrake.  This is bad.  It also illustrates the fact  that the 
model for financiing free software through support could work on mission 
critical applications but it is dificult (at least with current maket size) 
to make money from support when it is for desktop or private user oriented 
applications.    I hope Mandrake survives since they have done a lot for
improving Linux usability but they will have to reorient towards servers and 
business applications.   

Since there will be no commercail desktop oriented distrib and teh present 
free ones don't care then there is a need for a free desktop-oriented distrib 
.

			JFM