| Mandriva forks to Mageia Linux |
Sep. 20, 2010
 After major layoffs at Paris-based Mandriva, which is refocusing on the server edition and emerging-nation market, former employees have launched a new distribution called Mageia. The Mandriva Linux fork is being developed by a new community-based Mageia project, and will maintain both KDE and GNOME versions.
The Mageia fork announcement arrives after Mandriva's Edge-IT development subsidiary was liquidated, and most of the developers working on Mandriva Linux were laid off, says the new Mageia.org. This was preceded by numerous resignations over the company's strategy and future, says an OSNews story yesterday on Mageia. Mandriva has continued to struggle despite a fresh infusion of investments in June, says the story.
According to posts on Mandriva's forums, Edge-IT was set to be liquidated last Thursday, Sept. 16. Some comments from developers posted in the days leading up to the liquidation opined that Mandriva chose this path to work around French labor laws that makes layoffs difficult.
Mandriva 2010, GNOME edition
The Mageia announcement, posted on Saturday, states, "We do not trust the plans of Mandriva SA anymore and we don't think the company (or any company) is a safe host for such a project. People working on it just do not want to be dependent on the economic fluctuations and erratic, unexplained strategic moves of the company."
In fairness, Mandriva did offer an explanation of its strategy in a July post by Mandriva CTO Arnaud Laprevote. After acknowledging that Mandriva "lost about 30 million euros" over the last twelve years, Laprevote explained that the company is pushing its desktop development efforts to emerging countries, primarily in Brazil where KDE development will be focused, because "we have nice and real successes there."
He went on to write that the much smaller European team will focus on the server version of Mandriva, which sells better in developed countries.
Noting that many developers had disagreed with the strategy, Laprevote admits that the new hires to replace them will be "people that will not be as talented maybe, but that will like the project."
He concludes, "We had the choice: kill Mandriva with a totally unsecure future on who was going to continue the distribution, or keep Mandriva alive and finding a fast path to economic equilibrium."
According to the Mageia.org post, meanwhile, the decision to fork "was not an impulsive decision," and was made after conferring with former employees, contributors, and users' communities."
Mageia.org plans to soon announce the formation of a not-for-profit organization, presumably based in France, that will be managed by a board of community members. "After the first year this board will be regularly elected by committed community members," says the post.
While Mageia.org plans to release more details soon, basic goals for the new desktop Linux project and distro include the following:- Make Linux and free software straightforward to use for everyone
- Provide integrated system configuration tools
- Keep a high level of integration between the base system, the desktop (KDE/GNOME) and applications
- Especially improve third-parties (be it free or proprietary software) integration
- Target new architectures and form-factors
- Improve our understanding of computers and electronics devices users
The delayed, July release of the biannual Mandriva Linux desktop distro, which shipped in its initial 2010 fall release last November and in a 2009 spring release in April 2009, appeared to stem in part from Mandriva's troubled financial situation.
In May, the Paris, France-based firm, which called itself "the leading European publisher of Linux solutions," announced it was up for sale due to a deteriorating financial situation. On June 23, Mandriva announced it was staying intact with the help of new investments from undisclosed sources.
Availability
The Mageia.org post announcing the new Mageia distribution may be found here.
The Mandriva forum showing some recent posts about the layoffs, as well as, farther below, the July post by Laprevote on the company's new strategy, may be found here.
The OSNews story on Mageia may be found here.
-- Eric Brown
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