Mandriva S.A. is a publicly traded (symbol:MDKFF) Linux and open source software company with its headquarters in Paris, France and development center in Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. is the creato... More

Mandriva S.A. is a publicly traded (symbol:MDKFF) Linux and open source software company with its headquarters in Paris, France and development center in Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. is the creator and maintainer of Mandriva Linux, describing itself as a project initiator and a skills organizer in the Open Source arena, and a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium.Mandriva, S.A. began as MandrakeSoft in 1998. It currently has about 130 employees (80 of whom are engineers) and has offices in France, the USA, and Brazil. The company sells its products in more than 140 countries and estimates the number of Mandriva Linux users to be in the 6-to-8 million range.MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation over the name Mandrake. The litigation concluded in February 2004, and appeals expired in early 2005. The litigation arose because of Hearst Corporation's claim to the name Mandrake, inspired by the comic Mandrake the Magician; forcing MandrakeSoft to change its name. In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris, and purchased Conectiva. As a result of the forced name change, the name Mandriva was selected to reflect the combination of MandrakeSoft and Conectiva. In 2007, Mandriva concluded its acquisition of Linbox.On 16 January 2008, Mandriva and Turbolinux announced a partnership to create a lab named Manbo-Labs, to share resources and technology to release a common base system for both companies Linux distributions  [edit]  Less