Mandriva ventures into unknown teritory

[viking60]

Some news on ITwire here. It is a bit funny to se it commented from "outside" but this is how it stands in the news these days:

The decision taken by Mandriva SA, the French company that produces the Mandriva GNU/Linux distribution, to base its workstation and server products on two different codebases is a pragmatic one, based on the state of the two codebases.
But it is also a political decision because by deciding to have two upstreams, it is trying to humour those who split away nearly two years ago and keep them inside the tent.

Mandriva has been in the wars for many years. The most recent turn of events saw the company being put up for sale and then, after some effort, desperately trying to turn things around so that it could start to pull itself out of bankruptcy.

It made a start to resolving the mess by deciding to hand over responsibility for development to the community

More here...

[viking60]

Interview with the new Mandriva management here. I almost feel sorry for them because they are trying to make a soup out of nails as we say in Valhalla.

They have no resources - but they will be moving forward. On the business side with a Mageia based server (It is very good so why not?) and somehow the community will take care of the innovative desktop. At this point they get very unclear, but that is only natural since no community alternative is consolidated yet. But that kind of means that if the community initiative fails, then Mandriva SA will be left with the Mageia server.
That again would mean that Mageia, the community distro, would have a business branch - what an ironic world...

[rolf]

I read Grimm's Fairy Tales as a tow-headed berserk. "Nail Soup" is in there, isn't it?

Mandriva Community is in about the same financial position as Mageia was, it seems. Charles Schultz seems a competent leader but Wobo sure is a thorn in the side.

Then, there is Rosa. MIB is active with Rosa support and it gives me some comfort that something of Mandriva will be there for my future.

[viking60]

It is an old Folk story. I dunno if the Grims collected that one. But Marcia Brown did.
It is often referred to as Stone Soup by foreigners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_soup
And Yes Rosa works just fine - even the sound