Whoa, I'm amazed of this objective coverage and insight going on by dedanna, you've surely earned your twitter account name, DedannaRocks!
)
But you misinterpreted me on one thing, which I understand because of not using names:
proyvind wrote:Some other members of the french user community organization AUFML wanted to try pick up the efforts again at the beginning of 2010, so I was invited to Solutions Linux (this especially because the french user community probably had a worse relations with the cliqué than the rest of us) in Paris for a meeting to take place there. The meeting wasn't all that well planned, I myself was disappointed, especially since they had invited the CEO back then to the meeting, which said he'd come, but didn't, while the most important person in management and CTO of that time that I took for granted was invited, wasn not. I only ran into him the next day when he actually was at SL (when most of the other participant in the meeting previous day had already left Paris) and discussed things with him, he was very in support of this and had always supported the idea since before he became CTO as well, which said that he totally thought that the distribution should be turned over to the community, but Mandriva had a difficult time then and would not be able to participate in efforts, but encouraged it and for them to join later.The following week that CTO became CEO btw.
dedanna1029 wrote:So, you're saying that Mandriva wanted to turn the distribution over to the community before everyone started screaming for it to be (those like me, who saw the lack of relations with the community, and were screaming about it). Mandriva fired their CEO, and put the CTO in its place? This is all beginning to, as I stated earlier, sound like self-sabotage to me, on the company's part. From our end as well, we were seeing Mandriva SA go through so many CEOs, it wasn't funny, seemingly every month! So, when it does go under, the people who saw it was about to go under, jumped ship. I myself heard rumors of mismanagement of funds on the part of the company Mandriva SA. It would be interesting to see if this part is true or not, and on who's part it was, if it did indeed happen. I saw it in news articles, I saw hints of it from the company itself. Again, if this was going on, they were doing nothing but sabotaging themselves, and those who contributed to the company (PWP sales, Rolf's energies to get the ability to accept credit cards, the works. They screwed ALL of us, again, IF this is true. There are all kinds of things at play, to which the community may have been quite a bit more aware of than most think, and they did scream about it - for a time, until they realized that all the screaming in the world would do nothing to help matters (again, I liken this to the U.S. vs. GWB). Mandriva SA had fired their only good public figure, that being Adam Williamson, so they didn't have backing like that any more, they'd run them all off (deliberately).
The CEO (Herve Yahi) at that time which didn't participate at the meeting he'd said to at Solutions Linux never showed up at all, it was the then CTO (Arnaud Laprevote) who did the next day and who was very intended on this and saw it as the only reasonable solution, and he became the CEO next.
During this time back in 2010 you might remember Mandriva being on the brink of bankrupcy again and it was about to have to be sold to Linaro, but in the last minute Arnaud managed to find a new investor to save the company.
So when you take this into consideration and the context of who and why was provided from the start, it was obvious that the company wasn't gonna die, it had just been saved by a new Russian oligarch investor which you all know about the intentions of, it would be certainly absurd if it were to acquire the company, sack it, then trying to win Linux government contracts..?
You certainly should see the obviousness of what's wrong with the picture here.
Anne and her cliqué was unhappy about this, as they really wanted the company to die immediately, as a bankrupcy would've meant that they would get secured with three months pay and all outstanding salaries paid out right away as well. Also in addition to this, they wanted the company to die for another reason as well, they knew their time was up as soon as Arnaud became CEO, as he was not happy with her incompetence and unprofessional behaviour (which you might imagine with her in a management position, wasn't limited to only affecting the distro).
So here they were expecting and hoping for the company to die, then it didn't, and then a couple of those weren't offered a new contract to stay (most notably Anne, most of the remaining at Edge-IT chose to decline new contract offered as a result, not because of being fired), so this would mean their loss of control on the distro and all.
So they disliked our work on trying to get the foundation going, Anne even had some fallout with one of the participatants shortly after as a result!
When I had gotten the local exclusive Mandriva partner in Norway trademark licensed to, "Mandriva Norway" willing to create and fund the foundation here in Norway (as Arnaud encouraged) and I shared the news with others, I then head of people at Edge-IT considered me as a threat and was when I got confused.
I didn't immediately connect the dots with what I heard of at same time about some employees already making backups of svn repos etc. in case of company dying, but I started suspecting when communication with people involved in our efforts started revolving most around slander and attempts from some of us to dismiss, then they started posting the slander in public and the communication with them fading out.
So there was hijacking of our efforts happened going on with AUFML people being manipulated into believing things which were bad about the company and the distributions future..
I started connecting the dots and suspecting a fork in progress and tried warning the CEO about the need to get some reassuring news out ASAP, but most details were internal, in progress and hadn't been approved at the GA yet, and he underestimated the possible consequences of this and what damage could be done in time before they could officially announce news about their new strategy.
You might imagine why things happened in secrecy, with the announcement of Mageia happening right before Mandriva announced it's new strategy and ambitious plans which certainly strongly contradicted and totally dismissed claims from the disgruntled ex-employees made in their announcement of Mageia.
So you had employees finishing their three months notice and about to leave the Mandriva, which also meant loosing the control of Mandriva Linux as well, not happy with, need I explain more..?
dedanna1029 wrote:I see W. Bornath as not even in this. His comments don't matter to me. mandrivauser.de was shut down, offered to others, who (again) did not take over to use it to contribute. Pity, as it could have been used for OpenMandriva in a positive way, but no one took the bait. So what. It doesn't make him part of, in any way, what has been happening with OpenMandriva, other than maybe fuel flames from those who delusionally think he was. I dismiss his comments anywhere about OpenMandriva, because he himself has (and has had) nothing to do with it. I do see your animosity towards him (and have several times in more than one place), and even understand it to a certain degree, but I do not see something that has really nothing to do with him, being "something to do with him." It's not an opportunity to slam him, so I dismiss this comment of your post.
I also think on Charles Schulz, having seen several things over the time since he self-named himself as leader of this "association", this "thing", and having done things to literally dictate to everyone else "how it will be, at his command," this is part of the reason I do not have much respect for him; he at one time thought he could be the sole one to dictate the name of the organization, and of the distro, when an "association" and "council" hadn't even come into being yet. From things I'm seeing on his twitter, he still thinks the same. "I am the one who will dictate the direction this thing's going in, I'm the leader, and screw those who don't like it" when he hasn't even established the means to do so yet, and appears to have no clue, in full, of what's going on all 'round.
For wobo you unfortunately lack the insight of his role in all this, but the following you write is totally related.
I had convinced and brought in wobo to our workgroup that had the kickoff meeting back in June, but then the first isssues with Charles started to take place..
The very first thing we had a discussion over within the workgroup was about the name, and in the voting Charles included both "OpenMandriva" and "Mandala" which we both had rejected at the Paris meeting, and we had disputes over this right away after seeing the voting published.
Charles refused to take down or change the voting and insisted on it finishing, despite everyone but Matthew was against the name.
With discussions following, and the attitude you've seen from Charles, wobo chose to leave the group as he noticed immediately as some of the old issues he feared with bad politics coming from Mandriva. A as a pensionist that has survived cancer, multiple heart attacks etc. and other problems coming with old age over the last years, he simply didn't have the health anymore to waste on this, which I totally and absolutely understood wobo for. In his post announcing his resignation, he promised not to go public about any these things as to not hurt the initiative.
Wobo was one of MandrakeSoft's first employees, and was with the company all untill 2007, when all contractors were laid off as part of cost savings to prove itself on for new investor (Marc Goldberg of Occam/LinLux) saving the company back then (something investor hadn't requested to be done as part of btw.).
While few of the people who's left Mandriva over the years has stuck around and kept any relations or contributed to, wobo always did, so don't speak ill of him in any way, he certainly does not deserve this.
As wobo actually was the only other one loudly objecting to things, with him not being worried about being critical, I invited him to FOSDEM this year in hope of someone with good insight and also to support me in the discussions (I was exhausted and fed up of being alone in all this crap). Unfortunately he couldn't afford to attend, so I offered to pay for his train tickets and promised to pay for his accomodation as well if the association wouldn't, fortunately it would and wobo got to still attend meetings with us. So as you see, he did actually have a part in this, and it being on the "good" side, which I greatly valued him for, and I really think you all should do as well!
Fortunately Guilherme Moro got available back online after having had to leave a while ago due to same money problems I had, and has certainly been of great help and assistance to me, as out of all the people contributing to distro, he's the only other one who takes on responsibilities and isn't afraid to voice his opinions in public. And for his attitude towards Charles, they're of the same reason as to mine and wobo's.
After wobo left the group, things only escalated (revolving around much more than the name) with me only left and actively trying to prevent crap from happening, and after having worn myself out on discussions moving nowhere with him, I didn't have the health and energy left, especially as my work situation started to get fscked at the same time, I chose to give up on trying to discuss the issues further with him on the mailing lists and just focus on getting the distro developed as it already had delayed the first alpha by a month (the only outcome of the workgroup ended up being the naming dispute and further conflicts following btw.).
For a couple of months after as you might remember before Kate came in, there wasn't much activity taking place for a couple of motnhs, while Mandriva said that they would take care of setting the association up, and the failure at actually getting anywhere with this is why she was brought in by the investor, and not employed by either of the companies to take over responsibility for what Mandriva failed at..
So here I explain why you haven't seen that much of me on the mailing lists, except for when trying to intervene on things going wrong, as while several of the others share my views, I'm the only one daring to speak up (I've always received a several emails in support privately), making me look like purely difficult, and you might imagine how exhausting it is to always having to be that only guy on the list being critical, which when gmoro got involved with and helping me in discussions surely got to experience himself as well..
For Bruce, I met him when he held a talk in Oslo back in 2007, this was during the time we had started the initial efforts on getting a foundation up and running, and I asked him if he'd have any interest in possibly helping us out, which he said that he certainly would, but unfortunately I didn't get around to include him before the discussions had pretty much died out already..
I tried pinging him again again last summer when the issues with Charles were acting up, when he said that he'd still have interest in helping us out, for which I requested him to be added to the new internal workgroup, which Charles refused.
Ever since I've had varying amounts of motivation and energy to try spend on these politics as they're so *INCREDIBLY* exhausting, so while I've been meaning to get more involved and also for a proper way to include Bruce, where simply the thought of trying to explain all the politics and conflicts we were at felt rather exhausting, and I really thought of it as being an appropriate thing for starters at least..
So when as I was going to FOSDEM this year and knew it was time for political quarrels again, I called him again and intended to try follow up on this time, which I had difficulties to, and a 2-3 weeks ago I asked if we could have an IRC meeting to discuss the situation, but all the stress and crap of the situation has made me very procastinating and I didn't get around to prepare for such a meeting either as things were only escalating..
So it was only earlier this week when I kinda already had decided on leaving over the political crap and economic situation, I thought that I'd just make a last chance and ask if he could subscribe on the mailing list and participate in the discussions as I felt like as the deeper and more general issues at stake were totally up for discussion for real and I felt like I wouldn't even have to bring him up to date..
And he did, and no private mails, phone calls or IRC conversations between him and me discussing the details of the situation has ever taken place neither in advance or following him subscribing, so rolf's assumptions of me pushing my own bias on in advance are so incredibly wrong, my problem has been with all the social and performance anxiety that I've gotten from and just growing and growing with long term stress..
Some background on this, I had a burnout in 2007 and when I rejoined Mandriva in 2011, I was only employed 60% by own will over not having fully recovered yet.
It was only after switching contract to ROSA and shit hit the fan at same time that I changed to a 100% position. With Mandriva I was employed through a local consulting company with an office desk, colleagues, rights, benefits, equipment, etcetcetc. as regular employees enjoy, and a contract which specified my job responsibilities.
Now currently I'm not an employee of ROSA, but rather a contractor and no employment through local company nor office to work at, and no responsibilities specified in my contract. The idea was still that I'd continue my work as with Mandriva on RPM development etc., but with everything going on, I've had to take initiative and responsibilitiy for of a lot more (actually every responsibility not being just packaging) without any changes to contract (& salary), while putting in 150-250% on regular basis per week.
So that should explain more of my current job situation and actual role in all of this in answer to rolf's speculations regarding.
This is again an unusually long post from me (making me very tired), so I'm not going to proof read it or anything, so please excuse any potential incoherence or what not that might be. :p