wobo

I reply to this in an extra answer. I see from your post that you don't know much about Mageia yet. You would have found my name in the founder's group and some other places. 1. Don't judge a project by your personal opinions of one single member. If I'd do that I'd never use KDE (as an example). 2. Don't hesitate to post your opinion about me in the mageia-discuss mailing list - makes no sense to post it here where it may not be read by the majpority of Mageia people. Mageia is a community based project where everybody can raise his voice and say his opinion. If people there agree with you I will have not the slightest problem to let my work be done by others. wobo

I did not want to write here any more but as my account has not been closed I may as well be allowed to correct something. I fully agree to what I quoted from your post. Show me one of my posts where I wrote something negative about mandrivausers.org - you can't! I never denied that it is a success and a very valuable asset for the Mandriva user community worldwide. I don't care much about somebody's personal opinions about myself (except from those who matter to me). But don't judge me by something I never wrote! wobo

That is true. It was necessary because the original name of the forum (mandrakeuser.org) was owned by Tom who vanished without passing the rights on the domain to somebody else. The contents (including forum) of the original was built by Tom after he was brought to Mandrakesoft by me. Ok, I admit I never heard about that NZ jabber server. And I guess there are former members of our forum who are now running websites, who knows, I'd never mark that on my board. Some remarks on that one:Well, I don't know how many members our German forum would have if I did not do a spring cleaning almost every year, I don't count users who registered a couple of years ago and then never came back. BTW: How would you know that all those members will come to your new Mageia forum? But that is irrelevant after all. All I see here is an attempt to have your own instead of cooperate with the Mageia community. I may say I am contributing a lot to the Mageia community. I'm not making people look bad, I let themselves do that if they want to. Ok, you're right, it's boring. I tried to communicate, all I received was a hurt ego. Never mind, will not bother you any more. Oh, pls close my account, I don't want to add to another 20,000 :) wobo

Sorry, forgot to set the followong points right: If you can't think of a reason, how about I am concerned in community. Starting to split a community right from the start is something I do not like. Therefor I tried to get in touch. Anne also mailed me and asked if I knew anything why you had stopped communicating. Then I read your point of view that from your side "conversation evaporated". This did not match with what I learned from Anne. Pls read carefully. I wrote this as an well meant advice from one community leader to the other. Everybody knows you and Mandrivausers.org. You do not need to be boisterous in your announcement and I am sure you did not do that intentionally. But: 1. "Founders of Mandrivausers.org"? Not true, it was founded by Tom, you took over. 2. "other success stories"? Which ones, my I ask? 3. "largest Mageia support forum"? Of couse, because no other is there yet. :) Don't you care how this sounds to others who know the facts? I do not want to insult you but rather help by pointing at such things. If constructive criticism equals insult for you, then it is ok with me. I can live with that although I am disappointed. wobo

Well, that was really not my intention. Give me one reason why I should care about mageiausers.org at all if I was not interested in friendly connections between communities? Are you really thinking I'd waste one minute only to insult you? Why on earth should I do that? If you are not interested, ok then, that's up to you. At least I tried. All the best. wobo

Sorry Paul, but the first part of this is true but has to be commented: Yes, conversation evaporated, but only because you did not answer. 1. Anne said she sent a mail about the whole issue and never received a reply. I believe her, she has no reason to contact me and ask if I knew anything about that. 2. I commented in the thread on mandrivausers.org where you wrote some very single minded things like "They don't want us", etc. I tried to explain the reasons but that was never replied to. Don't get me wrong, I do not say that you are obliged to communicate, but telling people that "conversation evaporated" is only half of the story. And it was only the final conclusion because you seized to communicate. One more thing, an unwanted advise from one community guy to the other: Do yourself a favor and remove this ridiculous part in the announcement, claiming mageiausers.org to be "the largest english speaking Mageia Linux support forum in the world.". Yes, at the moment it is but only because the official forum is not set up yet. This is only unnecessary boasting - everybody knows that you don't need such "advertising". There are more such parts in there (like the one about "and other success stories") :) Made me chuckle and others laugh out loud.

Sorry, I must correct soem things here It seems that the forum decisions were made, I can only guess the reasons, also taking my own thoughts in count: The second and third (maybe also the fourth) points of the quoted part of my previous posting may have been the main reasons plus the plan to widen the Mageia forum to other language parts as well where other people already have their set of rules, way to communicate with each other, etc. Maybe that one of the positive points of this forum was also one of the reasons that Mageia decided different: this forum here is a grown forum with a past, its own rules and administration/moderation, its own style how members behave, etc. - something all long existing forums have (like MandrivaUser.de) and which is accepted by the users who communicate here. Now imagine adding new admin, moderators and rules which may very well be different to what you all are used to but are the rules of the new people coming in. Would this work easily without any misunderstandings or even "This is not my forum anymore"? To avoid this a fresh start may be a better solution than to try to change something which has been working good in the previous situation. At mandrivaUser.de we also have a history and a way to do things and opinions about what is ok and what is not. That is accepted by the users and many users are staying because of this. So we decided to open a new forum for German Mageia users while keeping the forum for users of Mandriva Linux in place. Mageia users can easily benefit from all the 300K postings and the wiki, so the gathered knowledge will not be lost and the remaining German users of Mandriva will not be left out in the rain. One thing I can say for sure: the ex-employees will not stick to Mandriva ways of thinking, as has been written in this thread, rather the opposite they are trying to avoid the mistakes they all see in Mandriva, they would not have started a fork otherwise. And I would not be part of this, then :)

As somebody personally involved in the mandrakeuser.org/mandrakeusers.org story I may correct a little bit here: Tom Berger maintained the english Mandrakelinux FAQ, I did the German translation, we worked together. We met several times in Berlin and we also participated in the great Mandrakesoft appearance at German Linuxtag 2000 where we succeeded in 2 ways: Another German, Kurt Pfeifle asked if he could display a new printer management on our stand - that was the first time CUPS was shown in public and Mandrakelinux was the first distro to implement CUPS in the next release. Another German, Stefan, and I used the social event to talk Till Kamppeter into working for Mandrakesoft. Within 2 weeks Till moved to his new office in Paris. But this is only a nice side story :) When Tom and I met for the first time in Berlin he was looking for a job and I suggested he could ask Mandrakesoft (with a little help from my side). As contractor of Mandrakesoft (and with their money) he created a website with all the FAQ items, improving it to a legendary collection, where many users sent documents, howtos and even simple solutions to. As a side effect there was a forum as well. After a while the Mandrake Club was created to gather money (donations), a part of this was a forum for those clubbies. It was in no way a competition to the forum on Tom's website mandrakeuser.org. Then Tom simply disappeared. I did not receive a reply to my last mail, he did not answer many phone calls, I even received a call from Mandrakesoft asking about Tom. Mandrakesoft did NOT fire Tom, they stopped sending money when his last cheque came back to Mandrakesoft undeliverable. I even went to Berlin to his house but he had moved without leaving any information. Up to today I do not know what became of him, neither do other people I am still in contact with. So, Tom was not fired or rebuffed or whatever by Mandrakesoft. Well, at least not that I (or any of my old time aquaintances) know about. Now for the website: As Tom registered the website mandrakeuser.org on his name, nobody could jump in and continue the work until some users of that old forum created a new one (mandrakeusers.org) and transferred the valuable documents to their new site. These documents still exist here. Later Mandrakesoft used them as a basis to build their Knowledge Base for the Mandrake Club (I remember my discussions with Gaël Duval about the open status of the documents and the closed status of the club). When the club opened up to non-paying users, first opening access to the forum for everybody, this situation happened: there were 2 free english language forums. The main difference was that one was the official user support forum, maintained and ruled by the company, the other one was a free and independent community project (like MandrivaUser.de, which was also founded without strings to the company and without beeing the official German support forum). This is still the situation as it is. In other words, the "competition" is not really there, there are many people posting in both forums. As an outsider I never saw a real competition, more 2 alternatives for the users which could be used side by side. A competition may only have existed in some minds, as we saw in the discussions when a merge of both was proposed by somebody in the MUGs group. Now with Mageia we do have a different situation. Of course Mageia wants to have an official forum under the lead and maintained by Mageia.org. This could well be this forum here, - welcoming the international crowd which before preferred to go to forum.mandriva.com and any new people - adding to the admin/moderator group other experienced people who are volunteering for admins and moderators in the mageia wiki - applying rules for the forum which will be discussed in public and then set by the Community Council and/or Mageia board. - handing over the domain name of the website to mageia.org to avoid any disturbances based on individual opinions and fate (see the first website's story above). Paul, I talked with Anne and there really seems to be a misunderstanding between you both, as someone with some experience in this area I'd rather see this misunderstanding be cleared up. I would not like any situation which is bound to split a community at its very start. I'm ready to talk any time. Well, long post and for those who are exhausted I promise to keep the next one extra short! wobo

Ah, you must be much better informed than me about everything related that you see something "obvious from the first moment". I don't. And I repeat arctic's question: Who do you mean with "we"?

This dividion was not made by me originally, I had to learn this the hard way in the cooker mailinglist and in discussions with various developers and other members of the cooker <whatever>. The division is there, no use to deny it. Read the relevant mails in the cooker mailinglist - they do emphasize the difference. But in my posting this is only semantics, if you prefer you can easily exchange "cooker community" with "cooker part of the community" and "user community" likewise (which is my preferred POV anyway). Joining forces with PCLOS or Unity are ideas which I'd rather discuss if we realize that a fork / branch of Mandriva Linux is not working. Why try other things before you not even tried to keep alive what we have and what we regard as good?

The text of LuismaGo has been posted on many platforms, it was also mentioned in a mail from Olivier Mejean to many people who are known as admins or leaders of user communities. Here's my reply: ---- Of course such kind of discussions have been going on for weeks now in most forums I've seen (and the other addressees will surely agree). These discussions were unavoidable given the situation and the reactions of the Mandriva management to the situation wrt the user community. At MandrivaUser.de we had a similar discussions being triggered by an article I wrote in our community magazine. As for the blogdrake posting you are referring to, I do not agree to some of the opinions in the first part of the posting (about all the "wrong" things) but the general assessment is clear and from the discussions in MandrivaUser.de I get the impression that there is an agreement on the following points at MandrivaUser.de: 1. As it seems there is not much interest in the Mandriva leading powers to continue the Mandriva Linux distribution in the way we knew it. Even if there was: the people who actually designed and formed and "made" the distribution during the previous years are all gone by now. So, a continued "Mandriva Linux" under the reign of the Mandriva management seems to be a no-go at this point. 2. A user community based fork seems to be a first class choice at first sight. But then, at closer look, we should recognize that these "combined forces of the user communities" are not really there. Each user community has their packagers who are working in their way, which has been in compliance with the Mandriva Linux rules, but sometimes not. Opinions about that are very different and there have been some discussions in the past as well. So I think there will be no real collaboration (in the meaning of the blogdrake posting) unless there is a organisational leading group who decides on such discussions and individual opinions. Who would that be, who would be accepted as such leaders and will their decisions be accepted by all others? We have seen some unpleasant proof of the very difficult nature of this issue. This issue is important, it is not trivial by all means, but the solution is not impossible. A solution, in other words: organising a "User Community Union" where the organisations are equal partners is essential. 3. The second problem of a user community based fork is the expertise. Packagers are not developpers (in most cases), they have no real experience nor expertise how to build a distribution. Most people in my organisation are quite aware that maintaining the distribution means to have at least a large part of the cooker community aboard. They could bring in the expertise which the user community has not. And they could bring in the knowledge and developing skills to continue the distribution including security updates and innovations which are also essential for a living distribution. 4. The third problem of a user community based fork is the technical infrastructure. The distribution can not be continued without the necessary infrastructure (svn, mailing lists, rules, documentation, committing rules, buildnodes, etc.). Adding to this the experience of organising the development and roll-out of a distribution. All this is not available in the user community. But it is available in the cooker community. So, as a conclusion: A fork is the way to go, no doubt about that. But it has to be done by a common project, standing on 2 strong legs: - the cooker community for developing improvements, maintaining the distribution, and roll out the release, - the user community for support, spreading, media relations, documentation, etc. - in short: everything non-technical. All this has to be organized and led by a "steering group" which has the necessary experience in that field and is accepted by all. In general I would see a good chance for a project of such kind, adding a strong commercial partner (in the style of Novell/openSUSE or Red Hat / Fedora) would be a perfect solution and a solution which would be able to stay, even through unavoidable discussions about different opinions. All the above is a mix of the German discussions at MandrivaUser.de as well as private discussions with leading members of the German organisation. Thx for your time. wobo MandrivaUser.de

Wow! What an informed and well thought over statement! No small wonder.I have no other choice than to bend over... and go.

We already are over it, don't you see that? We discussed the matter, everybody could follow and participate in this discussion. We decided to react and how to react, done. In our forum we are discussing plans to expand our website and future actions here in Germany. Nobody there talks about this issue any more.But I could not get that guy get away with such a ridiculous and almost offensive accusation that I was only out for a free ride. That's all.

Well, to each his own opinion, no problem. But you close your eyes and pretend, open them and see the facts and what I wrote. I took the example of the financial part, I could have also taken each other part of the whole thing. Besides, you should care what you write about somebody you do not know anything about. Assuming I was out for a free ride is just ridiculous. Over the last 10 years I spent many times the money out of my own pocket on promoting Mandriva in Germany, I am not out for a free ride. After the cancellation I did not say "WTF!" and let it be, I did go to Berlin, paid all my expenses myself and still showed the Mandriva brand, talked to people about Mandriva Linux (the distribution) and did a radio interview about Mandriva Linux and the community's plans in Germany. Does that sound like someone who is out for a free ride? Stop building your opinion on assumptions without knowing anything. wobo

Maybe you did not read the timeline of events. A logical thought, if not all facts speak against this thought. 1. They promised to cover costs right from the beginning and told me that it was decided. If they lied to me then and the CEO said "no" later, they could have told me during the many weeks following, without any bad feelings on either side. But instead they kept telling me that everything was ok and the assistant even sent me a mail 1 day before the cancellation that they ordered the hotel for me - which obviously was a straight lie. 2. Anne could have told me "no" in that phone call on Friday before the event. She did not say no, she said she will inquire and call/mail back the next day - which she did not nor anybody else. wobo