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Mandriva founder let go

osnews.com — OSnews is reporting that "Gael Duval Fired From Mandriva" Gael Duval, creator of Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux), has been fired from the company. The information leaked on the Mandriva forums, and Duval later confirmed it on his own webpage.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 15, 2006

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  • dickyducky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15getting fired by your own company?? Steve J..
  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13... not that anything is wrong with that! ;-)
  • Petronski, on 10/12/2007, -11/+20Mandrake was a cool name.


    Mandriva just sounds gay.
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9That's why you retain 51% of the stock. Just ask Bill.
  • altexa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7actually i worked for mandrake for nearly 3 years, and frankly, the only thing most people were waiting for was for the three founders (but especially JLM) to be 'let go'. It was not the easiest place to actually get anything done at. Was much easier (though it nearly killed the company) when the American 'posse' headed by Henri Poole were there.
  • phantomAI, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9best of luck to Duval.

    I remember that Mandrake was the first distro I used.
  • toddbu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Actually, the bad news for Mandriva is that they never got beyond the "every other release is crap" syndrome. I started using it at 8.1, and from there it was like clockwork. 8.2, 9.1, 10.1, and 2006 all stunk. I was really hoping that the yearly release cycle would fix things, but to no avail. So finally we switched to Ubuntu because it seemed to be a nice fit between the Debian "we release when it's ready" mentality and the Mandriva bleeding-edge stuff.

    I wish Gael all the best. As for Mandriva, I can't say the same. When I recently called the company about the ongoing problems with finding a reliable mirror for patches, I was told that I could buy access to a dedicated server for $1,000/year. I thought that this is what my club dollars went towards. It seems insane that they'd even propose this option.
  • eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6So does this mean he will start his own Linux distro now???

    Steve Jobs started NeXT after he left apple....
  • zimm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5hey thanks for the product... now get the F out.

    he should have kept control.
  • cfazzini, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Once a company goes public, it's owned by the stock holders, and ran by the board.

    Thats how you get fired by your own company.
  • keane, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5maybe they should update their "team" page http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/company/about/executives

    oh, and firing the creator/public face of the project is definetly bad karma.
  • orbitalleader, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Gael was basically the crazy aunt in the attic for several years. Not surprised he was let go; we tried doing business with them and were deemed too small a player for them to waste their time on. The real surprise is how long Jacques Le Marois lasted. François Bancilhon is a corporate guy, so you can a) watch for Mandriva to actually make some money and b) the loud, obnoxious community to drift away.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I could never get used to the Mandrake website. Ick.

    The distro looked pretty, though, so . . .

    Sucks for this guy. That's why it's good to keep control over everything on your own projects, lest your helpers kick you out. :)
  • rlgomes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That is bad news for Mandriva...
  • Arbinshire, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Wasn't he like, the founder of this particular company?
  • kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Serious kudos to Mr Duval for making such a ground breaking distro - Mandrake was my first proper introduction to Linux - and for thousands upon thousands of other people.

    but i think it went all pear shaped when they renamed to the horrible "mandriva". At the time, "Mandrake" was a brand - it was well known. Why change all that brand recognition? i could never figure it out.

    The point release schedule worked - but then they changed it to this "2006" release thing, that i couldnt get my head around.

    All in all ,it just seemed as if Mandrake was being hijacked by their marketing department - rather than trying to be a good distro.

    I still use Mandrake on my lappy - 10.1, but for new installs, i've gone with Ubuntu. Mandrake became unpredictable, with the name change, the move from 10.2 to this weird "2005" , "2006" schedule. Ubuntu just seems more , solid. reliable.

    More importantly, Ubuntu is privately backed by Mark Shuttleworth's cash - its not at the behest of "shareholders" or other crap. Thats where the rot sets in.



  • shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5yes @ petronski
    yes @ Arbinshire
  • hollywoodcole, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3good point!
  • koguma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's named Mandrivel now...
  • obscurelyfamous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It has not been officially announced by the company.
  • kenplaysviola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I actually was a Mandrake club user ($125/year) and wanted to support them. I then discovered URPMI and how much it sucked. I stopped with Mandriva 2006 since I couldn't even boot into my system. Now I use SuSE 10.0 and it works like a charm.
  • linx0003, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This happend to Steve Jobs too. Now look!
  • leonbev, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Mandriva's business always seems to be trouble. Hell, just a couple of years ago they stooped to point of begging for donations (They called them Mandrake Club subscriptions, or some such nonsense) from their users in order to keep the company afloat.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19.1 was the first time I ever touched Linux, now I'm with Ubuntu, and loving it
    finally made the switch
  • raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I actually let my Mandrakeclub subscription lapse because with only one stable release per year, it's cheaper to just buy PowerPack when it comes out. I only ever used it to download torrents of Powerpack on DVD and to occasionally download the Java and Acrobat Reader RPM's. The few times I used it to install, say, the Nvidia drivers, I got screwed when there was a kernel update and they didn't provide an updated Nvidia kernel.

    If Ubuntu used KDE (or Kubuntu were stable) I'd have already switched, frankly.
  • Shopko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I started out way back in the Slackware pre-1.0 days. RedHat was a nice development since their package manager solved many of the headaches related to inter-dependencies between various programs. Then Mandrake came around and made everything easy. The early Mandrake releases were great - they were mostly compatible with the RedHat packages, but included more "bleeding-edge" releases and a better package manager.

    It seems many things in Linux have evolved so much since then. It's hard to keep track of developments these days because they happen so fast. That's one nice thing I can say about Microsoft - they release an operating system and then sit on it for 5 or 6 years. ;-)
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What's with this new age disrespect for the founders attitude companies have lately? Is it a total shift in how business schools teach or something?
  • FoxHunter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very interesting, makes you wonder as to how Mandriva is going to pan out after this. Double interesting for me because I just installed Mandriva 2006 as my first taste of Linux.
  • rocu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0kubuntu IS stable. whoever told you it wasn't has issues and/or your hardware sucks. I've been an ubuntu/kubuntu user since almost the beginning and it's always been stable for me on all hardware used.
  • rocu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I do believe that this will prove very positive for Mr. Duval. Working for a public company as a founder is very difficult because you lose control of your own destiny. I think Gael will go on to found something very interesting. I'm sure he will think twice before taking it public. Taking a company public means instant loss of control and usually instant loss of honesty and integrity in order to turn a profit at all costs to please the shareholders.

    If I ever formed a company, I would never take it public. I would want to lead with my own vision and that of my co-founders, not what some greedy capitalist shareholder wants. I likewise would resist all buyouts by public companies. Don't even give me the "sell and retire" crap because not everyone wants to sell out a dream for any amount of money.
  • Crypt1cMayh3m, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Mandrake 8.0 was my first experience with Linux.
  • Tkkt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2What if the other 49% owned all the entrances and hallways? Then you can't get in your house.

    (What does that have to do with owning a company? Nothing.)
  • firehydra2k, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I am remembering something like this happen in Spiderman 2...

    Anyways, that's friggin messed up. How can you get fired from your OWN company?
  • OneZeroZeroOne, on 10/12/2007, -8/+7cfazzini beat me to it.

    Think of it like a really big house.
    You build a house, but realize you want to build the BIGGEST house.

    You can't afford to and so you sell off 49% of your share of the house to 20 other people. You use the money they give you to add on to the house and turn it into a mansion. Then you start leaving your trash on the floor, stinking up the bathroom, not doing the dishes....eventually all the other owners decide it's time for you to move out...you can do what you want with your 51% of the house, you just can't live there ;)
  • godulous, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2ok.. what?!
  • anrivout, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3je suis desole pour gael

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