Monday July 11 2005:

Not available in this language

Wednesday June 15 2005:

June 15th 2005 - Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, the publisher of the popular Mandriva Linux distribution, today announced an agreement to purchase several assets from Lycoris, a major North American Linux distribution for home users. As part of this agreement, Lycoris' founder and CEO Joseph Cheek is joining Mandriva to develop a new and advanced Linux desktop product.

Wednesday June 08 2005:

June 8th, 2005 - Further empowering universities, schools and research institutions seeking to build upon Linux for their IT infrastructure, Mandriva launches the Academia program, the all-in-one, single-tier solution for educational institutions.

Thursday April 07 2005:

After spending weeks balancing pros and cons, Mandrakesoft has decided to change its name!

The name change will apply worldwide to both the company and its products. The management team sees two good reasons for this change:

Wednesday March 02 2005:

Paris, March 2nd 2005 - Mandrakesoft today announced an agreement with the French Ministry of Education and Research which allows the distribution of its line of products and services to Higher Education institutions, including universities and research laboratories, throughout France. The agreement also makes it easy for students and workers from these institutions to purchase Mandrakesoft products for their private use.

Thursday February 24 2005:

Paris, France; Curitiba, Brazil; February 24th , 2005 - Mandrakesoft, the number one European Linux company, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Conectiva, the number one Linux company in Brazil and Latin America. This acquisition is expected to increase significantly Mandrakesoft's size and R&D capabilities.

Monday February 07 2005:

Moreno Valley, Ca; Paris, France - February, 7th 2005 - Mandrakesoft today announced that its newly released Mandrakelinux Corporate Server 3.0 server solution has received LSB 2.0 certification, following its longstanding tradition of support for open standards.

Tuesday December 21 2004:

Paris, France; December 21, 2004. Major European research institutions and Open Source software companies today announced the launch of EDOS, a project dealing with complexity management in the field of Open Source software. The participants will collaborate in the development of theoretical and technical solutions to the management of large-scale, modular software projects. EDOS will receive EUR 2.2 million in European Union funding, in a total budget of EUR 3.4 million.

Software projects have grown to unforeseen levels of complexity. For example, most recent Linux operating systems are comprised of thousands of individual packages. This makes putting together such a system a difficult task; and the short release cycles traditionally practiced in Open Source software mean that this task has to be constantly repeated. This is the case, not only for Linux, but for any large, modular software project.

Consortium members are more specifically concerned with the issue as it appears in Open Source projects. As the amount of Open Source software grows, so does the problem of complexity. That does not mean, however, that nothing can be done about it. Today the building and testing processes are only partly automated, leaving much room for improvement in productivity and quality testing. Participants in EDOS, which stands for Environment for the Development and Distribution of Free Software, will research and implement new ways to manage complexity in Open Source software. The team includes 6 research and academic institutions and 4 software and services companies (see full list below).

Two particular applications are planned. The first one deals with the build process: a distributed, peer-to-peer application, designed to aid the integration of the many software parts that make up a Linux system, will be developed. It is expected that the move from a centralized build and storage process to a distributed one will greatly increase efficiency, because storage and computing capabilities will increase exponentially, and so will network throughput. Resources are not the only problem at hand: intricate problems of dependencies between units inevitably arise in large projects, with every part depending on many others for their proper operation. EDOS members intend to find ways to deal with this problem in a systematic way, using the tools of theoretical computer science.

"There's an issue any large project has to deal with at some point, and that's how to manage complex dependencies between parts so as to get an integrated, coherent whole.", said Roberto Di Cosmo of Paris 7. "This is getting crucial for Open Source software projects as well, because more and more time is being wasted on management issues. We will propose a solution to this problem using formal methods from theoretical computer science, a research area which is particularly strong in France".

The second one deals with quality testing. Free software today lacks a test suite that is both automatic and comprehensive. Testing a Linux OS, or indeed any large application built on Free/Open Source software, is a time-consuming and essential operation. Part of EDOS' plan is to develop tools to make testing more efficient and more comprehensive. A unified, computer language-agnostic framework will allow developers to easily create test modules for their software. Overall quality should greatly improve as a result.

"It is next-to-impossible to manually test every single function in a large piece of software", declared Anton Anisimov of SOT. "Having a program do it is only natural. A comprehensive, effective test framework will save developers, testers and users a lot of time and will save organizations a lot of money. We believe this will be a major contribution to future software development".

EDOS will receive European Commission funding in the amount of EUR 2.2 million. The project runs for a period of 30 months. The resulting software will be released under an Open Source license, and theoretical results will be published in scientific journals as advances are made.

"The concrete results EDOS will bring about will benefit everyone, not just Open Source developers. EDOS brings together some of the field's most prominent players, to solve the problem of complex dependencies before it becomes unmanageable and to improve testing processes. This will result, in the short term, in better software. Ultimately, it will also contribute to Europe's competitive edge in the world market", concluded Francois Bancilhon, Mandrakesoft CEO.

Participants

Research and Academic Institutions
- INRIA, France (Project Coordinator)
- University of Paris 7, France
- Tel-Aviv University, Israel
- University of Geneva, Switzerland

Wednesday November 03 2004:

Moreno Valley, CA; Paris, France; November 3 2004. Ucopia, Mandrakesoft and the University of Paris' LIP6 research laboratory have just been granted a ¤1 million research grant to collaborate in advanced mobility research. The project, led by WiFi specialist Ucopia, aims at finding new ways of enabling and managing mobility in IT.

The importance mobility has taken in today's information technologies can hardly be overstressed. Laptops comprise an ever-growing part of the desktop market-share and a new generation of WiFi-enabled portable devices promises to flood the marketplace. Mobile devices are extremely widely-spread, and more and more organizations rely on wireless connectivity - the need for more advanced ways to leverage and manage the possibilities open by Wi-Fi technologies is starting to be felt. This is what GITAN is all about.

GITAN addresses three main areas of research : management, access, and applications. The first area deals with defining and implementing a model for mobility : namely, who can do what, where and how? Tools that allow organizations to define and set up such a general structure for mobility do not yet exist at this point. Access points today work most often on a all-or-nothing basis : either users are allowed access or they aren't, and if they are all services are accessible. GITAN will allow fine-grained model definitions of the type : all users of category such-and-such are allowed access to Intranet services in areas X and Y - a kind of flexibility as yet impossible.

The ever-growing importance of business mobility increases employees needs of being connected to business applications and services anywhere and anytime says Didier Plateau, CEO of Ucopia Communications. With solutions for mobility management, Ucopia contributes to professional mobility development. IDC counts 75 million mobile professionals in Western Europe. The GITAN project will satisfy these demands by developing solutions which answer business mobility needs and requirements.

The second area is concerned with automatic discovery of services and transparent access to them. WiFi access software can currently only detect whole access points for coherence with the project's approach to management, users need to know exactly what services are available to them, and ideally access to those services should be transparent. Mobility software developed within GITAN will let users know, for example, that they have Intranet-only access in certain areas and will permit smooth transition to an Internet-enabled zone without any need to reconfigure access settings. Mandrakesoft, publisher of the Mandrakelinux Operating System, will be in charge of implementing those features under Linux, and will integrate the results in future version of its products.

Mandrakesoft has done a lot in the direction of mobility recently, with the release of products such as Move and GlobeTrotter. We've also managed to strengthen our offer of services to corporate organizations., comments François Bancilhon, Mandrakesoft CEO, GITAN comes in the direct continuity of both efforts. It means our customers can expect a lot of positive developments in terms of mobile technologies, and it also means we're are committed to continued R&D investments.

GITAN's third area of research involves new uses for WiFi technology : Voice-Over-IP, Videoconferencing, and Web-conferencing. Although those are all well-established features of regular networks, getting them to work in an optimal way using WiFi connections is an area that is in need of more research. LIP6, the University Pierre et Marie Curie's Computer Science research laboratory, will be in charge of advancing research in that field. GITAN chose to focus on those particular technologies because their future as a staple of corporate mobility can't be doubted it is a natural extension of their current success in the non-mobile world.

The research grant for GITAN was awarded by French agency ANVAR. The total amount is ¤1.03 million. Ucopia will receive 32% of that amount, and Mandrakesoft 37%. The project runs for a period of 24 months. Public release of the technology and software developed as part of the contract is scheduled at the term of the period.

About Ucopia Communications

Ucopia Communications is the leading vendor of mobility management solution. Ucopia offers solutions to users of wireless networks for secure and trouble-free business mobility. The Ucopia solution enables employees and visitors within an enterprise, a campus or an administration to securely connect to a wireless network and seamlessly access the Internet, Intranet, and Extranet applications and services. Ucopia is a founder of the WLAN SmardCard consortium which is a major new initiative established to define specifications to enable the use of smart cards on Wireless LAN networks. Ucopia has recently won the CIO trophy (CAPITAL IT) for its progressive technology, responding directly to todays big business needs.
http://www.ucopia.com/

About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular MandrakeLinux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marché Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

Press Inquiries

Gaël Duval / Simon Barthelmé
press at mandrakesoft dot com
+ 33 1 40 41 00 41
mandriva.com

Thursday September 23 2004:

Funded by French Ministry of Defense, to be CC-EAL5 Certified

Paris, France September 23rd, 2004 An industrial consortium consisting of Bertin Technologies, Surlog, Jaluna, Mandrakesoft, and Oppida, all major European players in security, operating system, and certification technologies, has been awarded a 7 million euro, 3 year contract by the French Ministry of Defense. Under the contract, the consortium will develop a Linux based multi-level security operating system solution meeting Evaluation Assurance Level 5 of the Common Criteria (CC-EAL5). CC-EAL5 guarantees an outstanding security level for an operating system, and satisfies major security requirements in both commercial as well as defense and government applications.

Security is a major concern in todays embedded and networked computer systems, desktops and servers alike, said Philippe Demigné, chairman, Bertin Technologies. We are very proud to have been chosen by the French Ministry of Defense to manage this challenging project and to enrich operating systems with innovative security features. Our security architecture is the cement of the project. It binds together each partner's expertise. Bertin Technologies will be responsible in particular for CC-EAL5 evaluation.

Consortium partners envision that hardware partitioning and virtualization technology will play a key role in designing future open operating system security solutions.

Jaluna, the operating system experts that recently introduced innovative technology allowing multiple operating system instances to share the same embedded system hardware, is responsible for the system development. Jalunas vision has been validated by the choice of Jaluna/OSware" as the software foundation for the project, said Michel Gien, CEO, Jaluna SA. We are very happy to contribute our well known operating system expertise towards such an ambitious goal.

Mandrakesoft will contribute and adapt its Linux operating system, and manage the Open Source community around the future results of the project. The project will be released under an open-source license following completion. Mandrakesoft's share amounts to 1 million euros. Such a project makes the most of the Open Source development model, commented François Bancilhon, CEO, Mandrakesoft. It will leverage the power of Open Source, first by reusing a good deal of preexisting software, and second, by letting the community survey and improve the code. Mandrakesoft is naturally proud to lend its skills to such a project it is our most important to date and a major milestone for the company, he added.

Surlog will instrument and monitor software development processes to insure that the very high certification level required by the project can be achieved. "The ambitious objective of a certification at CC-EAL5 level for an operating system is a true challenge that can be achieved by expanding approved techniques, methods and tools for dependability and safety with those of security", said Marie Catherine Monégier du Sorbier, CEO, Surlog SA. Our tools and recognized expertise in building, monitoring and auditing complex software development processes in critical systems will be key to achieve such a high level of security certification.

Evaluation against the ISO 15408 Common Criteria standard will be performed by Oppida, one of the very few organizations accredited by the French National Security Agency to perform information technology security evaluation. Certification against a recognized international standard is essential for users to trust the operating system they rely on for their operation, said Hervé Hosy, CEO, Oppida SA. This is precisely Oppidas core expertise. We will perform regular evaluations of project intermediate results until the ultimate CC-EAL5 evaluation.

The scope of the certified Linux-based multi-level security solution that will be developed by the consortium goes far beyond military utilization. It is intended to address the industrial market at large, as well as telecommunication and enterprise systems. Major industry players worldwide will be invited to join the project as associates, and express their requirements and interact with the development team.

This will be a world first for an operating system solution of such a wide scope and we are proud to be at the heart of such a challenge, concluded Philippe Demigné, chairman, Bertin Technologies.

About Bertin Technologies

Bertin Technologies Group formed in 1999, capitalizes on the scientific and technological assets of the former company Bertin & Cie, created more than 45 years ago by the brilliant engineer, Jean Bertin. Today, the group consists of Bertin Technologies Company and its three subsidiaries, a2b technologies, Ellipse Pharmaceuticals, and SPIBIO. The main objective of our Group is to combine creativity, expertise and efficiency in day-to-day activities, in order to serve the interests of our clients with innovative added value.
http://www.bertin.fr

About Surlog

Since 1993, Surlog SA has been an independent laboratory, specializing in the evaluation of system and software dependability and safety. Surlog SA intervenes with industrial clients and safety authorities in the railway, nuclear, space, defense and energy fields.

Based on a set of competencies, methods and tools for the analysis, evaluation and control of system and software dependability, Surlog SA offers its knowledge and its mastery of the various standards in quality and safety of system and software (including CEI 61508, CENELEC 50128, CEI 880, DO 178B, GAMT 17).

In order to optimize its evaluation missions, Surlog SA has developed its own tools: for safety software static analysis (tool APRLS), for identification of the functional paths of a component, evaluation of the test coverage, identification of unit, integration and validation test cases (tool AGFL: Software Analysis by Functional Graph), for the audit of the software integrity level and its development process (tool Audit_Sd).

www.surlog.com
About Jaluna

Jaluna develops and markets value-added software components and solutions that allow multiple application environments, including the operating system to co-exist and interoperate on the same hardware. This brings legacy application migration, real-time, availability and security to Linux-based network equipment and appliances.

Founded by Sun Microsystems Chorus team members, with a wealth of experience in developing and deploying real-time and high availability solutions, Jaluna paves the way for the development of current and next generation network infrastructure and connected devices.

www.jaluna.com
About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular MandrakeLinux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marché Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

mandriva.com
About Oppida

Founded in 1998, Oppida delivers a full range of consulting services in the field of information systems security. From advisory in organization to security audits and application of security controls, through awareness and education of users, Oppida is offering a full set of solutions for securing information and communication systems.

Oppida is officially authorized as an Information Technologies Security Evaluation Facility: laboratory of evaluation for security products (firewall, cryptology tools...) accredited by the COFRAC and authorized by the Central Directorate for Information Systems Security (DCSSI, French National Security Agency) to evaluate security tools and systems

www.oppida.fr

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Press Inquiries
Mandrakesoft
Gaël Duval
Tel: +33 1 40 41 00 41
press at mandrakesoft dot com
Bertin Technologies
Elie Znaty
Tel: +33 1 39 30 62 81
press at bertin dot fr
Surlog
Marie Catherine Monégier
Tel: +33 1 40 83 00 00
press at surlog dot com
Jaluna
Michel Gien
Tel: +33 1 39 44 74 00
info at jaluna dot com
Oppida
Eric Dehais
Tel: +33 1 30 83 27 95
press at oppida dot fr

Monday September 13 2004:

The New Linux Standard will deliver compatibility for Mandrakesofts customers

Moreno Valley, CA; Paris, France September 13, 2004 Mandrakesoft today announced a pledge of support for the newly announced Linux Standards Base (LSB) 2.0. By supporting the LSB, Mandrakesoft announces the intent to certify to the standard, thereby delivering interoperability between its value-added version of Linux and application software written to the standard. Most importantly, it ensures Linux will not fragment and will continue to be the fastest growing operating system in the industry.

The Linux Standard Base is developed and maintained by the Free Standards Group (FSG), a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and promoting open source software standards. The next version of the specification offers an answer to the most pressing issue facing Linux today: fragmentation. A large assortment of industry leaders have pledged their support to the new standard and the Free Standards Group to prevent this from happening. The Standard is supported by major players in the Linux Community including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Dell, Intel, Turbolinux, Progeny, Red Hat, Sun, Novells SUSE LINUX, and Conectiva, as well as Mandrakesoft. The FSG has developed LSB along with a number of tools and test suites to facilitate the creation of a standard Linux.

Francois Bancilhon, Mandrakesoft CEO said, "We are pleased to offer our support to the Linux Standard Base and the Free Standards Group. Given the dire consequences of fragmentation, the standards are a key ingredient to the success of Linux. By supporting the LSB, Mandrakesoft assures its customers that its value-added version of Linux will interoperate with their computing infrastructure and will continue to be open and standards-based. In addition to supporting the efforts of LSB in certifying runtime environments, Mandrakelinux 10.1 will assist ISVs in building LSB certified applications."

"We are pleased to see the support for the LSB from Mandrakesoft," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group. "Their participation is crucial to the standards and ultimately Linuxs success. We applaud their proactive vision and their actions to safeguard the openness and interoperability of Linux."

The Linux Standard Base specification contains a base set of Application Binary Interfaces (ABIs), libraries and interoperability standards. It also includes test suites, development environments, sample implementations and developer documentation. More information on the standard can be found on the FSGs Web site and in a press release announcing the specification issued at LinuxWorld.

LSB 2.0 features the revision of the core specification to support modules that are built on the foundation of the core LSB. This will accommodate future growth, as Linux standards for different vertical markets, for example, are developed as extensions to the core LSB. LSB 2.0 also introduces an ABI for C++ -- a long-awaited feature. The LSB 2.0 also incorporates updates to many of the specifications and implementations underlying the LSB, such as the Single Unix Specification.

Finally, LSB 2.0 introduces support for new architectures, including PPC64 and AMD64. Other CPU architectures supported by LSB 2.0 include IA32 and IA64 architectures, as well as PPC32, S390 and S390X.

In addition to providing a written specification, LSB 2.0 includes a wide range of tools for Linux, such as test suites, a development environment, a sample implementation and developer documentation.

About the Free Standards Group

The Free Standards Group is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the use and acceptance of free and open source software by developing and promoting standards. Key Free Standards Group projects include the Linux Standard Base (LSB), OpenI18N, LANANA and the new Accessibility Workgroup. Supported by leaders in the IT industry as well as the open source development community, the Free Standards Group fulfills a critical need to have common behavioral specifications, tools and ABIs across Linux platforms. More information on the Free Standards Group is available at www.freestandards.org .

About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrakelinux operating system, one of the most fully-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marche Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).
https://mandriva.com
Press Inquiries
Gaël Duval press at mandrakesoft dot com

Thursday July 01 2004:

Mandrakesoft, publisher of the Mandrakelinux distribution, and Edge IT a provider of support and services in the Linux market, reached a definitive agreement by which Mandrakesoft will acquire all outstanding shares of Edge-IT.

Thursday May 27 2004:

Not available in this language

Monday May 17 2004:

As a follow-up to Mandrakesoft's latest flash regarding the upcoming decision of the European Council to legalize software patentability in Europe, here are some fresh news and information on what everyone can do to help.

If nothing changes, tomorrow, Tuesday May 18, the European Council, that is, the European body which represents all the governments of the European Union, will vote in favor of a directive that will legalize software patents in Europe. Last September, faced with a similar choice, the European Parliament voted major amendments to the directive text drafted by the European Commission, actually rejecting software patentability. However, the Council, ignoring all of these amendments, is going to vote in favor of a text that is even worse than the initial version of the Commission.

Why can the Council take a decision which will be so harmful to the European software industry? Unlike the Parliament, which is a place open to the public, where Members of the European Parliament have had time to study the proposal and hear many positions on the issue in order to take a well-thought decision, the Council is a closed body where, due to the alledged complexity of the subject, representatives of the governments have handed out the file to committees of experts.

These experts, who re-drafted the text and wrote position papers on why to vote it, are in fact mostly representatives from the national patent offices, backed by the heads of the legal departments of some big industrial companies, all of whom have a common interest: more patents mean more power for them, irrespective of the harm that will be done to the economy at large, and even to their own companies. In the name of "the Industry" and of "innovation", they manipulated the political decision-makers to make them believe that the new text did not allow to patent pure software, that it was a good compromise between the Commission and Parliament texts, and that not all of the parliamentary amendments could be kept because some of them were illegal with respect to international treaties such as TRIPS. All of this is plain lie.

In fact, if voted, the text of the Council would lead to a situation where big companies with large patent portfolios use these to lock their respective markets and prevent competition from innovative SMEs, and where "intellectual property" companies that do not create any software use their own patent portfolios to collect license fee rents from everybody. This is the situation which is happening in the US, putting at risk its successful software industry. This is what may just happen in Europe in a few months.

However, it is not too late. Because of growing pressure from computer professionals and from the public, and because they get more and more feed-back from the media, political decision-makers begin to get aware of the issues, and to have doubts about the sincerity of the patent lobby. In some countries, they have taken the file back from the patent offices

http://lwn.net/Articles/85379/
http://kwiki.ffii.org/?SwpatcninoEn

and some countries of the Council have just decided to switch from a voting procedure without debate to a voting procedure with debate, as the text gets less and less consensus among the members of the European Union.

More of theme can be convinced even more of them to reject software patentability.

In order to do that, please take some time to read about the issues at stake, and spread the information across your friends and business contacts, the press, your members of the parliament and your government.

It is essential that elected policy makers get back into command of the situation and do not leave the patent offices decide alone.

Here are some texts which can help you to present the issues to the media and to convince policy-makers of all countries of the European Union.

A very readable analysis by François Pellegrini explaining the legal and economic issues of software patentability:
http://www.abul.org/article191.html

A thorough analysis by Jonas Maebe of the difference between the three versions of the directive, and why software patents are indeed illegal with respect to TRIPS:
http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf

Positions of the member countries of the European Union:
http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/ (add "pt", "ie", "fr", "de", "be", "gr", etc to have the positions of the member countries)

The page of the FFII giving some directions for actions:
http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En

A recent paper published in the Washington Post describing the current situation in the United States:

"Patenting Air or Protecting Property? Information Age Invents a New Problem"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer

31 companies sued for using the JPEG image format (the plaintiff filed for a patent while recommending the adoption in international bodies of a standard including its patented technology):
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1

A US company sues companies of on-line content distribution:
http://www.e-data.com/
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html

A well-documented file on the reference site Law.com:
http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC

Thank you very much for your help.

About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrakelinux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marché Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

https://mandriva.com

Thursday May 13 2004:

Mandrakesoft would like to alert all users and the software community at large about a recent clandestine attack by proprietary interest through covert adoption of EU Software Patent Legislation.

In direct contravention of the recent vote by the European Parliament to curtail Software Patents, the Irish Presidency of the European Union has surreptitiously reinstated unlimited software patent language into the text of a statement to be adopted by the European Council of Ministers on Monday May, 17th, without further debate!

The new text, if adopted, will extend Software Patents to every piece of software, including computer programs, data structures, and process descriptions. This will directly harm most software firms and all Open Source projects unable to pay patent licensing tribute, and amounts to an appropriation of the public domain by proprietary interests. A direct beneficiary will be a new class of pure patent companies without any real business or contribution to employment, which will use the threat of litigation to extort payments. Of note is that a sponsor of the Irish Presidency is Microsoft, currently building a large patent portfolio. If the Software Patent text is adopted, Microsoft may use this patent portfolio against Linux and other Open Source projects.

Mandrakesoft would like to forewarn and mobilize its users and the software community about the very real threat of such a law. Please contact the media, your political representatives, and your government, and urge them to vote against unlimited Software Patents and to revert to the previous European Parliament position.

For further information please see the following links:
http://swpat.ffii.org/journal/04/cons0507/index.en.html
http://kwiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn

About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrakelinux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marché Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

https://mandriva.com

Wednesday May 12 2004:

Not available in this language

Tuesday March 30 2004:

Altadena, CA; Paris, France; March 30th, 2004 - The Commerce Court today accepted Mandrakesoft's exit plan from 'redressement judiciaire' (Chapter 11 like protection). The plan was approved as proposed by the company and its court appointed administrator.

The plan provides for the payment of creditors, without recapitalization as a precondition, over a period of nine years. The turnaround was largely made possible by improvements in the company's financial results -- Mandrakesoft recently recorded its first profitable quarter since 1999. This signals the return to normal operations for Mandrakesoft after a 14 month observation period.

Mandrakesoft chose the Chapter 11 like protection status in January 2003. During the observation period, the company normalized its activities by refocusing its core business on Linux, dramatically reducing costs, optimizing business activities, and by developing high margin revenue lines. As a result of restructuring, Mandrakesoft recorded it first quarterly profit since 1999 of 270,000 EUR on 1.42M EUR of revenue during the period between October 2003 and December 2003.

On a related note, 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).

Mandrakesoft will release its new operating system "Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official" in May 2004, and plans to announce in upcoming months several new products for the corporate and individual markets. The company also recently closed several deals with government and corporate clients.

Contact:
Gaël Duval (press at mandriva.com)

About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrakelinux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from MandrakeStore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marché Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

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Wednesday March 03 2004:

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Wednesday February 11 2004:

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Friday December 19 2003:

Altadena, CA; Paris, France; December, 19th 2003 -- Mandrakesoft, a leading producer of Linux desktop and server solutions, today summarized its product-life policy and Open Source commitment.

At a time when some of the established Linux companies are turning away from their Open Source roots and progressively abandoning full-time commitment to Open Source Software, many people have asked MandrakeSoft to clarify its position regarding product-lifetimes and its Open Source development model.

"There will be no change in MandrakeSoft's official product support cycle, and the company remains firmly committed to the Open Source Software model", said François Bancilhon, CEO of MandrakeSoft.

To make the company's position clear, MandrakeSoft has released '8 Golden Rules' which guide the company and illustrate its approach to Product Support & Open Source:

* * * MandrakeSoft's 8 Golden Rules * * *

1) Software updates for all Mandrake products

Official MandrakeSoft software updates -- including bug fixes and security updates -- will remain freely available for all public supported products, according to the official product lifetime table.

2) Product lifetimes are not hidden

A product lifetime table for all major MandrakeSoft products is publicly available on the Mandrake Linux website. For example, the Mandrake Linux 9.2 Download, Discovery, PowerPack and ProSuite editions will be supported with core updates until March 30, 2005.

3) Product lifetimes do not change during a product's lifetime

The support lifetimes are respected, and may sometimes even be extended.

4) Free as in 'Libre' and Free as in 'Beer'!

A download version of Mandrake Linux, consisting entirely of Open Source software, will continue to be released, provided without cost, and supported.

5) MandrakeSoft's code conforms to the GPL

ALL applications created by MandrakeSoft, such as the Mandrake Linux installer and Linux configuration utilities, are released under the General Public License. Our firm commitment to the GPL is the appropriate way to "give back" to the Free Software community.

6) Mandrake Linux -- A true Open Source project

The development of Mandrake Linux is conducted entirely in accordance to the Open Source spirit. Development of Mandrake Linux products are based on "Cooker", which is a publicly available development platform and community. Cooker provides complete access to:

a) Source code -- through a CVS repository
b) Direct communication with developers -- through numerous mailing-lists
c) And a 'Wiki' collaborative website

7) The choice of free support...

All Mandrake Linux users have free access to the community-supported MandrakeExpert.com support platform.

8) MandrakeSoft listens to you...

MandrakeSoft encourages and welcomes feedback and suggestions from its base of users, thereby releasing products that better match the users' needs.

Additional information is located at:

• The home of the Mandrake Linux project.

• The home of the "Cooker" community.

• Mandrake Linux's Wiki for Cooker

• MandrakeSoft products

• Official MandrakeSoft product lifetime table

Press contact:
Gaël Duval (press at mandriva.com)

About MandrakeSoft

MandrakeSoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrake Linux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems available. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source software and related services. MandrakeSoft products are available in more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from MandrakeStore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several countries, MandrakeSoft has been awarded many times for quality and the technical innovation of its products. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, MandrakeSoft has established headquarters in the U.S.A. and in France. MandrakeSoft is traded on Paris Euronext Marche Libre (Euroclear code: 4477.PA; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

Monday November 25 2002:

Altadena, CA - November 25th, 2002 - MandrakeSoft, a worldwide leading supplier of Linux technology and producer of the popular Mandrake Linux distribution, announced today that former founder and CEO of O2 Technology François Bancilhon has been appointed new Chief Executive Officer of MandrakeSoft. Co-Founder Jacques Le Marois remains Chairman and President of MandrakeSoft.

François Bancilhon's main focus will be to increase MandrakeSoft's business and profitability while maintaining a high-level of technology commitment in the Linux and Open Source arena. François Bancilhon is 54.