San Francisco – November 14, 2000 – MandrakeSoft today announced that it is joining the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation, which aims to promote the GNOME graphical desktop. Linux-Mandrake operating system has included GNOME since early versions and the GNOME has recently become the desktop of choice for many Linux-Mandrake users.
“We are delighted that MandrakeSoft is joining the Foundation’s Advisory Board and extending its commitment to GNOME “, said Miguel De Icaza, co-founder of GNOME. “MandrakeSoft’s market leadership role in the European Linux market and its strong retail presence in the US will allow GNOME to reach a much broader audience worldwide.”
MandrakeSoft has long recognized the great value offered by the GNOME environment and its ability to attract new users from the Windows world. MandrakeSoft also credits the numerous innovations introduced by the GNOME project as one of the key reasons for the worldwide success of Linux and the Open Source model.
“MandrakeSoft has always been committed to support Free Software and Linux in particular. Our entrance in the GNOME Foundation proves once again our commitment to killer free-software projects”, said Gaël Duval – VP & Co-Founder of MandrakeSoft.
MandrakeSoft affirms its commitment to the Foundation and to GNOME’s bright future by also announcing to financially sponsor several GNOME developers so that they may focus on developing GNOME Office/OpenOffice for the benefit of the entire community.
In a related announcement, Borland-Inprise today announced that it, too, will be joining the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board.
About MandrakeSoft
MandrakeSoft publishes the Linux-Mandrake operating system, based on open-source development (which provides free access to source code published in accordance with a General Public License, or GPL). Several hundred developers throughout the world contribute to the constant improvement of the product directly over the Internet. This international developer community has given Linux-Mandrake a product that is available in over 40 languages.
Linux-Mandrake is a very complete system with a choice of several powerful, pre-configured graphic interfaces (notably the leaders KDE and GNOME), as well as more than 2,300 applications including Netscape Communicator, the StarOffice suite, and the Apache Web server.
In a testament to its success, MandrakeSoft received the awards for “Best Product of the Year” and “Best Linux-Distribution/Server” at LinuxWorld Expo 99, as well as the PC Answers Platinum Award in April 2000 and the Linux Magazine Editor’s Choice Award in September 2000. The company has signed a strategic partnership with the American publisher Macmillan USA and held the number one spot in Linux North American sales for Macmillan USA in July & August 2000 (Source : PC Data).
“Born on the Internet”, MandrakeSoft established headquarters in Pasadena (U.S.) and Paris (Europe). Please visit the web site, http://www.linux-mandrake.com for more information.
About GNOME and the GNOME Foundation
The GNOME project has built a completely free and easy-to-use desktop environment, as well as a powerful application framework for software developers on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. GNOME is part of the GNU project, an effort to build a completely free Unix-like operating system better known as GNU/Linux or Linux.
The GNOME Foundation will provide organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project, and help determine its vision and roadmap. The Foundation is governed by a board of directors elected by the members of the foundation: individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the development of GNOME through participation in the development, documentation and promotion of GNOME. An Advisory Board provides a vehicle for organizations and companies to communicate with the GNOME community and support GNOME.
Advisory Board members include Hewlett Packard, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Turbo Linux and other leading technology companies.
Additional information is available at http://www.gnome.org/. You are invited to participate in GNOME, which provides many opportunities for individuals and companies to contribute.