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Farewell to the creator


Reiver_Fluffi
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I'm thinking of ditching Mandriva because of that move. :angry:

The next release I install will probably be SuSE or Fedora Core.

and that's exactly what will kill mandriva. people will stop using it not because it's a bad distro, but because of the companies politics.

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Let's face it: they have not listened to their community in the past. This explains at least in part some of their befuddled marketing. They do not consider their market at all!! :lol:

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Let's face it: they have not listened to their community in the past. This explains at least in part some of their befuddled marketing. They do not consider their market at all!! :lol:

As has been said before, this board is probably their best marketing tool, yet they have no involvement with it!

(excluding adamw, who hasn't been active here in some time).

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If this does happen, and the distro falls completely, I'll have to hunt to find something that will run Lotus Notes under Wine. Neither RHEL/Fedora or anything like that works at all, despite me configuring it all the same. Yet it works perfectly fine under Mandriva. I think I may even have had it running under Gentoo too, so maybe that'll be my cause for complete migration to Gentoo.

 

And that RHEL/Fedora support only ext3 by default, and doesn't give you the option unless you specify running the installer with the parameter for the filesystem of your choice.

 

Of course, I could just use Windows for the Lotus Notes Client, but I really don't want to do that.

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Let's face it: they have not listened to their community in the past. This explains at least in part some of their befuddled marketing. They do not consider their market at all!! :lol:

Well they consider one sector, then a different one then another.

Its like they are waiting for the bus and leave before they give it time and wait for a train for a few minutes before looking for a taxi. While they are finding the taxi the bus has already gone and the train arrived at a destination. When they finally get the taxi they realise they left their wallet at home and need to make a diversion!

 

They simply have no consistency with regards to marketing or who they are targetting and often they seem to be trying to catch the bus while watching the train station and trying to flag down taxi's going in the other direction who are off duty.

 

Its perhaps and understandable reaction given the troubles they had but its still very poor practice and leads to a lot of confusion and alientation in the community.

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Instead, Duval agreed to move from his long-time position as vice president of communication to head a new "community department" intended "to improve Mandriva's image in the open source arena." Now the company has terminated that effort.

great. no more community department, that'll -really- help them. turning away from the open source community is never a good idea, imho.

No the community department is still there. Gael's job has been taken over by a woman Estelle somebody can't remember the surname, read the club forum.

BTW this is Gael Duval's main project now. We'll see what it is cause there's nothing specific on the website (yeah I know it's maybe a Linux distro).

 

Gael's comment on the firing in French. The link to the English version doesn't work so anyone speaking french would be so kind to sum it up in English?

Edited by dexter11
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Funny thing is I just had a look at the Ultieo site and thought I detected a feel of PCLinuxOS. I wonder if my gut feel is correct that this is going to become the new rival to Mandriva. In other words perhaps Ultieo and PCLinuxOS are combining and PCLinuxOS will not be just an improved Mandriva. If it is then there is a chance that this is where I will go also. Have always liked PCLinuxOS and the way it has done so much of the kind of things that should have been done by Mandriva.

I'll be watching closely I can asure you.

 

Cheers. John.

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Ulteo... I am interested in what Duval is up to. Mandriva is slowly digging its own grave imho. Duval seems to be determined to rise from the ashes like a phoenix. I will take a look at his new project, once the beta is available. Maybe Ulteo will succeed, where Mandriva failed miserably.

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This is the text of the NewsForge interview for ease of reference:

 

Mandriva executive Gael Duval today confirmed rumors that he was laid off from the company he co-founded, along with a number of other Mandriva employees. Duval told NewsForge that he is going to bring suit against Mandriva for "abusive layoff."

 

In an exclusive IRC chat this afternoon, Duval said, "I'm very sad since my new role was pretty exciting. Additionally, seven years ago I created my job and some jobs for many other people, and eventually someone, the current boss, tells me, 'Now you leave.' Ouch!"

 

Duval said that last year Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon asked him to leave the company. Instead, Duval agreed to move from his long-time position as vice president of communication to head a new "community department" intended "to improve Mandriva's image in the open source arena." Now the company has terminated that effort.

 

He also said that while he and Bancilhon had "diverging opinions" on corporate direction, there was no animosity between the two. We asked Bancilhon about the situation, and he responded this morning, writing:

 

We announced on March 7 the financial results for Q1 2005-2006 (October-December 2005) and explained the disappointing results of the company and the actions we are taking to fix the situation: cost reduction (including workforce reduction) and new commercial initiatives, both on individual solutions and on enterprise solutions. Gael is part of the positions in the company we have chosen to eliminate. Gael has brought a lot to this company and has been all along a very strong contributor. I am very sorry to see him leave, together with other employees that have worked hard and done their best for Mandriva. We are just at a stage where we need to make difficult decision to improve the company status.

 

So, to answer your questions, Gael has indeed left the company as part of cost reduction plan implemented this quarter.

 

Mandriva remains committed to its mission: bring Linux and open source technology to both individuals and organisations.

 

Duval created Linux-Mandrake in 1998, announcing it on Slashdot.org and elsewhere. The original Mandrake was based on Red Hat Linux and featured a KDE desktop. Mandrake became known as being the easiest-to-use version of Linux. The company flirted with bankruptcy in 2001, but kept hanging on. In 2005, Mandrake merged with Connectiva in an effort by the two distributions to bulk-up against the larger Red Hat and Novell.

 

Of the company's financial pains, Duval said, "My opinion is that the loss is due to the increase of expenses: many people have been hired in 2005 and early 2006.... As far as I know, none of the new employees have been fired." He agreed with a suggestion that the company was undergoing "a changing of the guard."

 

Duval didn't speculate on Mandriva's future. "On the first hand, there is some business (management decisions and expenses are another story). On the other hand, I frankly don't know where the company is going.... It seems that the company is going to address the corporate market more and more.... My opinion is that we should have stuck to the roots (individuals and SOHO)."

 

Duval's future plans -- in addition to the lawsuit -- involve a new open source project called Ulteo. According to Duval, "This project was proposed to Mandriva but not 'selected.' My goal is to provide a new way for people to use operating systems, so they can really concentrate on using it (and not maintaining it)." He also noted that he has received many messages of support from the community.

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