OpenMandriva

[dedanna1029]

Above quote is edited to include the link.

I just can not believe that this is how they treat someone who has worked so tirelessly and hard, at the risk of his health, without pay for four months, where he was told he'd be paid!!!

I'm very very saddened by this, mostly because I've lost the respect that I once had, both for the community, and for the distro itself. Yes, OpenMandriva is an attempt to revive Mandriva, I get that. The thing is, they're doing it absolutely NO justice with the way they're doing (or not doing, as the case may be) to the thing they're attempting to revive, or the revival itself. For this, I have zero respect, and wish they'd just let it die. Period. Let it go out in a blaze of glory, and be done.

[rolf]

It's one side of many.

Other sides can be seen in this thread: https://listes.lautre.net/pipermail/oma ... hread.html
and here: https://ml.mandriva.com/wws/arc/foundat ... 00158.html

[dedanna1029]

Yeah, I've not gotten to those yet. Been busy reading this, and just came back in now to say that I have things to do. Will do some thinking while I'm doing them, and return to the discussion here. For now, everyone else can take off with it. My own side is just that this is too sad, and that there is too much lack of justice to a distro that served well, from all sides, but to Per in particular, because he's worked so much and hard for it without pay (which in itself, to me, is extortion - for anyone to work without pay).

Edit: The fact that there are "sides" alone says how desperate they've all become, IMO.

[viking60]

meaning that the majority of the work will still be done by
just me and bero as we're the only one employed to work on it, where only
I'm employed full time..

I guess he is not working for free....

This is in the tradition of the French revolution - always entertaining . but I doubt if a good distro will come out of it. That new "community" is not exactly huge.
I think the distro "died" when it became impossible to upgrade from 2010 - then comes Mageia and it is possible to upgrade from Mandriva 2010 to Mageia but not to Mandriva 2011.

That is really bad business and I think Per is partly to "blame" since he probably is behind that new and fancy stuff that made the upgrade impossible.
But the one that has done the most work should have the biggest say - Per Øyvind is right about that.

In any case I think they could wait with the fighting until there is something to fight about - like a distro....

[dedanna1029]

Bingo.

But then, then came Mageia because they "laid off", or fired Anne, another blow to the distro itself. They not only screwed her, but screwed themselves doing it. What was she supposed to do? Sit on her arse and do nothing the rest of her life, or do what she loves most? They said bye-bye to her themselves; she was free from there to do what she wanted, far as I'm concerned.

Currently, it's the same as it was with Mandriva SA; a house divided against itself can not stand.

[jkerr82508]

It's one side of many.

That's what I find confusing. I've been following the foundation ML, but am mystified as to what is going on. I suspect that a lot has happened or been said off-list.

We have people leaving (or threatening to do so) because of some slight, real or imagined.
We were told that the Foundation would be called OpenMandriva, but that the distro would be called something else, although there seems to have been no real attempt to define what "something else" would be.
We have people designing "artwork", which seems to be limited so far to a logo for the Foundation. We were told at one point that this would not be the logo of the distro. Nevertheless it is apparently being argued that this logo must be used in the distro, even though the "designers" have no idea how it will be packaged for inclusion.
There are people pontificating about the distro who appear to have no experience of building a linux distro.
At one point someone suggested that it didn't matter if a distro was ever released since OpenMandriva would also sponsor "other open source projects", without giving any hint as to what these might be.
And, of course, there is POK whose emotional diatribes sometimes make him his own worst enemy.

Meanwhile a handful of devs are working hard to get the cooker repos into a shape that will support the release of a distro.

Every human endeavour has its share of personality conflicts, but what is going on here seems to be something more fundamental.

Of course I may have totally misunderstood what I thought I had read.

Jim

[dedanna1029]

But can you not see, man, that what Per himself says is true, that he is so exhausted, to the point of ill health? I'd be emotional too, if I'd done all that just to be dissed! In particular, if I'd done it so much out of heart and good will of wanting to see the distro move on (and yes, if told I'd get a salary too)???

He didn't do it out of some misguided anything. He took the initiative where no one else would, and went with it.

No one can fault him for that.

What they can do, is fault themselves for not even doing anything real on it, giving it absolutely NO direction to go in.

Again, a house that's divided against itself, just like Mandriva/Mandriva SA was.

[proyvind]

meaning that the majority of the work will still be done by
just me and bero as we're the only one employed to work on it, where only
I'm employed full time..

I guess he is not working for free....

This is in the tradition of the French revolution - always entertaining . but I doubt if a good distro will come out of it. That new "community" is not exactly huge.
I think the distro "died" when it became impossible to upgrade from 2010 - then comes Mageia and it is possible to upgrade from Mandriva 2010 to Mageia but not to Mandriva 2011.

That is really bad business and I think Per is partly to "blame" since he probably is behind that new and fancy stuff that made the upgrade impossible.
But the one that has done the most work should have the biggest say - Per Øyvind is right about that.

In any case I think they could wait with the fighting until there is something to fight about - like a distro....

Nonsense, an upgrade is fully possible, but it requires the updated perl-URPM package that was released for all all three previous release in advance of the 2011 release.
We had similar situation earlier as well with when we switched from gzip to lzma compression of packages, for which an update of rpm package released was required.

[viking60]

Ok I might give it a go again then; I still have 2010 on my main box. My main problem is an old Oracle RC VB Version where I have done a lot of Windows work - no Oracle update can fix it either so I just hang on to that installation. The rest can be fixed.
And the Alpha works just fine with the ROSA cooker - even the sound! And I loved the game, so if we can get that out with only a small body count -it might be a big thing

I see the Mandriva "owners" are giving you a hard time acting as the creators of your work? Gimme the juicy gossip (it will stay among Berserks):

[rolf]

I've read all the document foundation/open mandriva list mails.
I've read all the posts in the linked oma-council thread. Here's a comment from Per's employer,

Hi Per Oyvind,

I noticed this discussion and don't quite understand what you stand up
for in the constructive sense? What is the discussion point if we free
the discussion from ego?

Everybody respects your contribution and expertise but we all had agreed
that the project is done by the Association per the rules defined by the
Association. Why do you oposite yourself to the Association? You're a
part of the Association. And as your employer I can affirm that your
task for the recent 1.5 years is to help the Association to emerge
(done) and then work for the Association.

If there is disagreement about some technical things let's discuss them
at the TC, see pros and cons and take a decision. There are competent
and smart people at the TC who want the project to succeed. You might
think that you're the only man in the world who knows how to act right.
If it's so then you underestimate the value of discussing things with
colleagues. If your ideas and reasoning on a particular issue is good no
one will object you. People will easily admit your expertise in "your"
areas but it doesn't mean you should judge in all technical areas. Other
people can see other facets of a problem and if the common goal is to
elaborate a good decision rather than clash egos then it works great.
Don't you agree?

Vladimir.

https://listes.lautre.net/pipermail/oma ... 00216.html

Per is employed by ROSA. Clearly, they have been slow to pay him, with some claims of financial hardship, which is not an incredible theory. For whatever reason, no one holds a gun to Per's head. If his work situation is making him sick, only he can change the situation. We (working people) are all in the same boat.

From the beginning of the association that was put in place as the means of transferring the community branch of Mandriva from the company to the community, Per has shown hostility toward Charles Schultz, a Mandriva employee assigned to facilitate the transfer. It appears G. Moro, another developer, shares the animosity and refusal to cooperate with this process. Whenever there is an opportunity for W. Bornath to vent his disdain of Mandriva and its representatives, he pops over from Mageia to do so.

Mandriva made some conditions and provided some resources to effect the change of ownership of this branch of the distribution. It seems to me certain of the luminaries, most notably Per, have dug in their heels and only throw insults, sabotaging the process in order to grind personal axes. I'm not impressed.

What's sad is that many have invested time and energy to make the foundation. Per, whatever sacrifice he claims, will not do this on his own, beyond what he has already been paid to do. Virtually all his arguments are passive-aggressive trolls with no clear point other than to flame and complain. His complaints might have merit but he need not sacrifice any further on my account. Move on down the road to a better job.

Bernhard Rosenkränzer, a developer since the time of Red Hat - Mandrake with at least the stones of POK, writes this side:

Hi,
thanks for expressing your views in a way people won't find offending this
time...


On Monday, March 04, 2013 07:48:56 PM Per Øyvind Karlsen wrote:
> 2013/3/4 Jean-Claude Vanier <jclvanier at gmail.com>
>
> > The discussion started with the question of the logo contest for the
> > association.
> > Is that all we have to solved in order to get the next release ?
>
> No, a lot more remains for doing the next release, logo is unfortunately
> one of the less concerning issues..

This is true, and we all need to work together to get it done.
Your work on DrakX is really important, so is other people's work on getting
the packages to pass the mass build again.
The best set of packages are no good without a way to install them, and the
best installer isn't useful if it installs packages that are a load of crap
that don't even compile.

We can't split the project, we need everything to come together.

> > If I understand well, this means there cannot be any link between the name
> > "openmandriva" and the next distro, whatever its name ?
>
> Yupp (thanks for actually taking me seriously btw., and this isn't
> something new and something that we've agreed on more than once earlier and
> that's been made quite clear all along.

I think we need some clarification here.
We (sort of) agreed that OpenMandriva isn't a good distro name.
This doesn't necessarily mean any logo that has the words on it can't go into
the distro. It just means it can't be the logo of the distro.

If you look at what our competition is doing, you'll see "Microsoft" labeled
logos while the "distribution" is called "Windows", and you'll see Apple logos
even though the distribution is called "OS X".

In the same way, there's no reason why we can't display a logo saying
OpenMandriva anywhere in the distribution, just as long as it's clear that
this is neither the distribution's logo nor its name.

As for the remaining artwork, I think we need to provide several options for
people to choose from.
Some people really like the penguin theming of the previous alpha, and some
really hate it, and to some extent that comes down to different usage types
and different cultures (e.g. it tends to be more acceptable in Europe to have
"fun" bits in use in business than it is in the US).
So just provide both a "fun" and a "professional" theme and let the user pick.
Technically it's just a matter of having 2 or more branding packages...

> > The official goal of the association is the support of different
> > projects. For you, it is not the release of the association but only one
> > of the projects that are (will be) supported by the association ?
>
> Hm, well, that's actually a good question and something possibly putting
> things in perspective, as I see it is a release done by the project that
> the association will support and enjoy, despite not having been involved
> with it.

I wouldn't say the association hasn't been involved with it - maybe not the
association in itself because it simply hasn't existed for long enough, but it
is made up of people who have contributed and are contributing in some way
(sometimes ways outside of development - not everyone who is valuable to the
project is a developer. We do need people who answer newbie questions on the
forum etc. so that workload is kept off the devs...)

> > In other words, do you say: well, I'm responsible of a distro which name
> > is "xxx" and I'd like the association supports it by doing something ?
>
> Well, it's more like that it's a bit too late for the association to do
> much as the release is almost done and is asking for it to not interfere
> and disrupt the development and delivery of as I don't see the association
> as ready to take over full responsibility of.

We're all on the same page in terms of what we want -- make a release that is
as good as possible while sticking to the timeline.

It looks like there's some disagreement over how to get there that we need to
solve.

I think we all agree that in the longer term, the association (or rather some
subgroup like the TC (of which you're an important part) or even a subgroup of
that, let's say a release group defined by the TC) should be responsible?
You've been doing a great job at keeping things alive while everything was
being built up, but I don't think we should have a single point of failure -
it makes more sense to distribute the job among several people to make things
easier if someone goes on vacation/dies/leaves/whatever.

I can see the point that the association may not be fully ready to take on
everything - but shouldn't we get started?

> But individual people involved with the associaton also getting involved
> with cooker on testing etc. like those who already are active with
> certainly would be something that would help support the development of
> the upcoming release.
> Ie. we're especially in desperate need for more people to get involved with
> QA, and someone to help organize a triage team is certainly something I've
> been hoping to get help on and that would only help and not be at risk of
> interfering with other aspects of development that I'm already responsible
> and in full progress on.

I fully agree on that -- can we get everyone involved with the association to
install alpha3 somewhere (even if it's only in a VM) to hunt for bugs?

This should also give people a more realistic view of where we are.

> Question : if so, what do you expect from the association ?
>
> To not take charge of the next release as it's almost done already and the
> association isn't really ready for it.

I see the point, but keep in mind that the first release after the creation of
the association will pretty much be an identifying part of the association -
this will show the world where we're headed.
So I think it's legit that the association wants to have *some* say over it.

Yes, that does mean getting active and actually doing things -- obviously the
association can't assign nonsense tasks to people who can't fulfill them (such
as telling me to take care of artwork) - but if there's people doing something
and the council thinks their work should go in, it shouldn't be blocked...

ttyl
bero

https://listes.lautre.net/pipermail/oma ... 00247.html

I'd say that's a pretty sane side, taking all the contributors and all the realities under consideration.

[dedanna1029]

Yes, I saw that post, too, and think it as well makes sense. The thing is, with the association, as Per said, not having been 'round for the development of the distro, taking over the distro as it's just being finished, when it (the "association") in itself isn't even really "established" yet.

If he moves on down the road to another job, then fine, that's his prerogative, and I myself would do that. Keep in mind though, the consequences of this (which is probably why he stayed) - there won't be a distro for quite some time.

In particular, when he's not the only one who is in there fighting. Others are taking their own offenses too, not even related to him. It goes on and on, and to this day hasn't stopped. It probably won't.

[rolf]

I don't see it in the black and white of OMA "ripping off Per". There are many aspects of this transition and formation, with not-yet-formed channels of communication only getting burned down. I see many non-devs contributing their heartfelt time and non-dev skills only to get dissed as 'amateurs' by the almighty devs. I've been supporting this distro since early 2000, paying for my first version and the first to bring up the idea to Deno on the mandrake forum to enable credit card contributions, which I've done since. When G. Cottenceau asked for extra donations at one of the several nadirs of Mandrakes financial roller-coaster, I sent in a few dollars. I made, probably, tens of thousands of forum and list posts to help with user issues. I brought marketing materials to Lindependence Day
Many, many other non-devs have made similar or greater contributions to community and I, for one, don't appreciated being discounted as unworthy by any member of the distro.
I'm not buying the divisive characterization of Foundation as conspiring to seize anything. Communication has been very lacking and I think that's due to all the chips on shoulders wrt Mandriva's past sins and perceived sins. It's time to get over it and move on.