Backgrounder

Company

Mandriva is one of the few worldwide Linux providers.

The company serves both the corporate market (enterprises, government organizations and educational institutions) and the consumer market.


On the consumer side, Mandriva developS and distributes Linux distributions: Mandriva One, the light, easy to use and safe free distro, Mandriva Free, the pure GPL free Linux distro, Mandriva Powerpack, the complete and customizable distro for the power user and Mandriva Flash, the mobile desktop USB key. Free products are available for download from the Mandriva site. Commercial products are available through Mandriva's electronic store, in retail stores and through partners worldwide. The company provides a number of electronic services through its web site. It evaluates its number of users to a few millions.


On the corporate side, Mandriva helps large and medium size organizations to migrate to Linux, thanks to its Corporate Desktop and Corporate Server products and helps them administer large number of machines thanks to its system administration tool, Pulse. The company provides to its corporate customers technology, products and services (consulting, training and support). It has about 100 corporate customers.


The company is fully committed to Free and Open Source Software. Part of its commitment, it develops, maintains and distributes two free-of-charge distributions: Mandriva One, a light, easy to use, live-and-install distro and Mandriva Free a pure GPL distro, it contributes to major open source projects such as Gnome and KDE and it puts under GPL all the software it develops and distributes.
The company invests heavily in innovation and is part of several pre-competitive cooperative R&D projects partially funded either by the French government or by the European Union. Technologies developed in these projects are then included in Mandriva's products and tools.
Mandriva has acquired several companies through its existence: Edge-IT, a Paris, France based corporate support company, which now forms the backbone of its corporate support organization; Conectiva, a Curitiba, Brazil based company, the South American Leader of Linux; and more recently Linbox, a Metz, France based company focusing on open source infrastructure tools.


The company has about 80 employees, 50 of them engineers and has offices in France, Brazil and the US. It sells its products in more than 140 countries.
Mandriva is a public company listed on the Paris Euronext Marché Libre (Euroclear code: 4477PA).

History


  • 1998: First Mandrake Linux Distro created by Gael Duval; Mandrakesoft created by Jacques Le Marois, Gaël Duval and Frédéric Bastok.
  • 1999: Distribution agreement signed with MacMillan for the US and Canada, round of funding by VCs.
  • 2000: New management team of US professionals put in place by the financial investors.
  • 2001: Mandrakesoft listed on the Euronext Marché Libre. Departure of the US management team and return to the helm of the founders. Mandrake Expert and Mandrake Club created.
  • 2003: Beginning of Chapt 11 observation period; introduction of Mandriva Move the first USB based Linux desktop.
  • 2004: Exit of Chapter 11 observation period through a continuation plan and new round of financing. Edge IT acquisition. Introduction of a corporate product line with Corporate Server. French Defense Agency grants contract to develop an EAL5 rated desktop to a consortium including Mandrakesoft. EU Commission funds r&d EDOS project to develop new software engineering tools for Linux Distributions.
  • 2005: Conectiva acquisition. Mandrakesoft + Conectiva becomes Mandriva thus solving a long standing legal fight with Hearst Publication about the Mandrakesoft name. Introduction of the system administration tool Pulse, the first open source tele-distribution tool.
  • 2006: Introduction of Mandriva One, OEM agreement with HP in Latin America making Mandriva their preferred partner in that region, introduction of Mandriva Flash, the first commercial Linux distribution booting from a USB key. EU Commission funds r&d NEPOMUK project to develop new semantic desktop technology.
  • 2007: 3M€ raised in a round led by European VC fund Occam, Linbox acquisition.