Mandriva
Mandriva (formerly Mandrakesoft) is a French software company, and creator of Mandriva Linux. Describing itself as a "project initiator and a skills organizer in the Open Source arena", Mandriva is also founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium.
Mandriva was created in 1998, and has offices in the USA and France. The management team consists of:
- Jacques Le Marois, Chairman, Co-founder
- François Bancilhon, Chief Executive Officer
- Paul Guillet, Sales
- Thierry Bossut, Administration & Finance
- Gaël Duval, Communication, Co-founder, Creator of Mandrake Linux
- Frédéric Lepied, Chief Technical Officer
- Régis Wira, QA & support
Mandrakesoft operated under bankruptcy protection from January 27, 2003 to March 30, 2004. Despite its efforts to cut losses and improve profits, Mandrakesoft was forced to file for protection due to a series of quarterly losses. 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 EUR on 1.42M EUR of revenue during the period between October 2003 and December 2003.
Shares of Mandrakesoft are again being traded on the Euronext Marché Libre exchange (ISIN code MLMAN) and on the US OTC market (Stock symbol MDKFF).
On 24 January 2005 Mandrakesoft announced that it would acquire Brazilian Linux distributor Conectiva for the amount of 1.79 million euros (2.3 million U.S. dollars at the time). On 7 April 2005 Mandrakesoft announced the decision to change name of the company to Mandriva and their distribution name to Mandriva Linux.