i have emailed mandrakesoft MULTIPLE times will different accounts and still haven't received a answer yet (never will) . i asked them why is 10.1 official not publically released ? and is there a new policy (thingy) that's says they will only release community public releases and not the official download public releases. The delaying or not releasesing of the official releases to the public is pissing me off and if they continue this .......well........... they will lose LOTS of business and ppl will move to different destroys like fedora,suse,gentoo,slackware and so on. . . . . . . does anybody know what is going on???????????????????????????

thankyou

No offence, but how is this loosing buisness having one version of a release for the general public and another for the commercial market. Especially when it is a matter of packaging the release in a version for each to meet a set of criteria. The community edition is to follow the open source movement criteria filling the need of the linux community for a free version. The official version is a release who's packaging is designed to make it a marketable commodity. A lot of that packaging is just third party utilities, modules / drivers that you can download yourself! There might be an application or two but who cares when you are getting more then what you are paying for with the community which nothing. Community is a LOT more then NOTHING. Mandrake isn't the only linux distributor to do this you know.

Look at Red Hat. They only release their distro commercially now and placed the open source community in the hands of Fedora. Allowing them to pick what they want out of it to improve a now closed distro from all apearences. Atleast mandrake is keeping their community edition in house and the whole distro open with cooker and such. Plus they need to be a viable company.

Here you are saying that people will go to other distros = loss of buisness. No only cheap users and abusers who claim to support Mandrake will leave, oh wait a second community fills that void of these trying to get something for nothing individuals . Which we get to the bottom line about this whole post.

1. Should Mandrake be able to and do what they are doing from this point foward. HELL YES! It doesn't violate one bit of the GNU. They haven't short changed the Mandrake lover looking for a free version of a release, community is very robust. Where as Red Hat left their followers to the wolves. Mandrake is keeping their user in mind and at heart by providing community in as robust a version as it is for FREE.

2. Am I just going off and not supported in the past or present Mandrake by buying anything from them. I have supported them in the past by buying 3 versions which were worth every penny in my eyes. On the note ofthe present I am pruchasing myself for Christmas a silver level membership at Mandrake Club.