Adam
Thank you for all you've done for a very appreciative community. You'll land on your feet, and you'll be supported by friends, and supporters that you've made along the way.
It's apparent that Mandriva can't make money on the desktop, and so will concentrate on the server and corporate products. Resources that were devoted to desktop users will be pared back (that's what's happening now), and the company will use any desktop product the way Novell and Red Hat use theirs. The desktop user will be in the same bind with Mandriva that he is in with Fedora or OpenSuse, a tester for the corporate product. Lip service will be paid to the concept of community, but users will be nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop at any time. The "open" edition will be around as long as it makes money for and supports the corporate edition.
Those of us who really like the distro want to keep it around, but with more predictability and stability. The distro itself is more than good enough to stand on its own merits. What's lacking is community, not corporate, control. Why not a non-profit foundation like Mozilla, that could start with the free open source edition, and take it from there. Offer an entirely free product, and a product with codecs. Let the community decide what it wants.
I would gladly send the money I am paying for the pwp download service to such a foundation. I wonder how many other would as well.