Adam's Leaving

[agendelman]

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.

[mindwave]

Adam,

 

IF for whatever reason, you just so happen to move to another distro, please let us know.

 

as you suggested in your reply the average desktop user will suffer IMMENSELY and unfortunately I think it means the way of Xabdros, you know a new update every 3 or 4 years whether you need one or not.

 

you did excellent work. I hope you are able to keep moving with linux in general.

 

j

[adamw]

Thanks again for all the support, guys.

[theYinYeti]

There's a petition :)

 

http://linuxfr.org/2008/12/02/24753.html

 

Yves.

[Greg2]

There's a petition :)

I've signed it. :)

 

Thanks for pointing it out to us.

[SilverSurfer60]

Unfortunately I am not bilingual so is there a translation of the page available? I would hate to put my foot in it and place a wrong vote or something.

[Greg2]

Here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/qws589/petition.html

[SilverSurfer60]

Thank you both YinYeti and Greg2 I have now signed.

Edited December 2, 2008 by SilverSurfer60

[David Batson]

Emmet Curran posted this quote from DistroWatch Weekly on forum.mandriva.com in the "Leaving" thread.

 

Mandriva, on the other hand, continues to struggle financially. This week, new CEO Hervé Yahi decided that the contracts of most remote employees would be terminated in what appears to be a cost cutting measure. The news was originally broken by Vincent Danen in his Linsec blog. The post was later amended to report that Danen would be retained by Mandriva, but Adam Williamson was not so fortunate. "Well, I was rather expecting this after reading Vincent’s blog this morning (and to be honest, doing some basic mental arithmetic on our recent financial results), but I have been told that as of December 31st, I’ll no longer be working for Mandriva, as all external contractors are being canned."

 

Reaction across the Linux blogosphere and in the Mandriva community forums was quick and, with the notable exception of a couple of posts in the comments section of last week's DistroWatch Weekly, nearly unanimous in support of Adam Williamson and critical of Hervé Yahi. Perhaps the harshest and most colorful criticism of Yahi came from Planète Béranger who responded to Vincent Danen's original post by saying "Hervé Yahi, le couillon du siècle. (Translation: Hervé Yahi, the schmuck of the century.) To the revised news that Vincent Danen was staying but Adam Williamson was out, Béranger added: "Hervé Yahi, le plus couillon de tous les couillons du monde. (Translation: Hervé Yahi, the biggest schmuck of all the schmucks in the world.) While others were more temperate in their comments, the sentiment was essentially the same.

 

Adam Williamson moderates the Mandriva community forum and has effectively been the voice of the company and the distribution for the English speaking world. He posts regularly to the comments section of DistroWatch Weekly. Adam frequently explained the rationale behind what was included in the distribution and staunchly defended Mandriva in response to critics, always doing so in a polite, respectful, and informed manner. Mandriva's relationship with the Linux community will definitely suffer with Adam's departure at the end of the year.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081201#feature

 

BTW, I also have signed the petition.

[David Batson]

On a more optimistic note, Per Øyvind had this to say at forum.mandriva.com:

 

Hi folks!

It's sure been a long while since my last visit here! :o)

 

While I'm reluctant to disclose much details right now, I'll try share some since Adam already has spilled some. ;)

 

February last year I initiated a talk at FOSDEM which revived attempts at the foundation idea which dates all the way back to 2001 where it was proposed by Gaël.

 

So a lot of talks and with near exclusive positive interest (including management) took place over the next months.

Unfortunately, despite of ~50-100 ex-employees, employees and people in the community giving the full support on this idea, few people had the time, skills and dedication to put into this project. The lack of resources ended up being the biggest showstopper and myself I hit the wall with burnout, so things kinda died out back then.

 

So the reason for this on Mandriva side weren't actually due to management any desires to control such a foundation, but rather lack of resources and the ability to provide funding, on the community side it's been difficulties organizing such a project from scratch. Sorry for any misunderstandings made on this one.

 

I basically reached the conclusion that with previous attempted approach, it was just way too hard to organize things of not a pure technical nature in a community where the most active people mainly have interest in making contributing contributions.

 

Reaching that conclusion I decided for a quite different and (hopefully) far better approach which I've worked on over the last year. While some considerable progress has been made on this one, there's some key details left that I'm waiting for being decided before announcing anything.

I also don't want to repeat the same mistakes again by trying to involve a whole lot of parties and expect for their immediate efforts without being able to properly organize them..

 

 

But things ARE happening on this one and Mandriva DOES actually have a positive, non-evil interest in an indepedent foundation.

 

Sorry for not providing any details yet, I kinda didn't want to go public with anything quite yet, but I guess in such tough times there's need for some hope. :)

 

I'll try have something to announce in a month or two!

 

PS: It's really cool that you people want to make donations to help out on these things, funding is one of the biggest initial concerns for a foundation. Your interest in helping out is *greatly* appreciated!

 

I'll try and keep an eye out on this thread, I see some interesting ideas of yours already, keep 'em coming! :)

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=...70&start=25

[ianw1974]

Signed also.

[Kieth]

I just signed, too.

[daniewicz]

me too

[Chris H]

As above

[dude67]

ditto