02.14.07
Posted in English, Mandriva at 7:19 pm by François Bancilhon
I am trying to understand the deal and what it really means.
Quick summary is Linspire is switching from Debian to Ubuntu as its underlying technology and will make its CNR technology run on Ubuntu.
I read the PR announcements: everyone is fine and dandy. Great victory for all, synergy and leverage, bla bla.
Is this a graceful exit for Linspire? Given that Linspire is now based on Ubuntu, I assume the Linspire specificity as a distro is bound to disapear and Linspire will be gone as a distro vendor/editor. But maybe I exagerate. Can a company live on CNR?
It brings convergence: less distros on the market, less confusion.
Of course, it looks like a big win for Ubuntu: a competitor is adopting its core product.
But I am ready to listen to different versions of the story.
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02.13.07
Posted in English, Mandriva at 5:50 pm by François Bancilhon
Warly is leaving Mandriva.
I can talk freely about him, since he’s leaving.
We have a few things in common: we went through the same school and we both spent some time at INRIA. We have a few differences: like we don’t have exactly the same age, nor do we dress the same way.
He was one of those who helped me when I joined Mandrakesoft. At that time I had no clue about open source (I’m still learning, but I know a little more now), he taught me a number of things I know about the open source space, about the community and about Linux technology and about building a distro.
I think he accomplished a tremendous job for the company and the product. He was clearly a major contributor to the many versions of our product, and he should get credit for the success of our distros over the years. He is smart, and friendly and funny.
I read his departure note, his mea culpa is vastly exagerated, only those who do nothing make no mistakes. Clearly, too much depending on him, but this happens often to people ready to help and dedicated to their work.
I really loved his blunders on the Web: he could go out and express his feelings to the entire world, not taking into account corporate communication rules or needs. Even though it did put us in hot water here and there and I got upset about it, I could not help laugh about it and recognize that this is part of life — let not this be a hint or an excuse to others 
I will still get upset –
I will miss him thoroughly and so will many people at Mandriva. Still, I understand he would want to leave and move to something else after all this time.
For 6 years, he has been the Build Manager at Mandrakesoft/Mandriva. When he told us of his intention to leave, he was kind enough to agree to stay the necessary amount of time for us to organize his replacement. David Barth worked on that with him and I’m sure after a few hickups we’ll be fine.
So long, Warly, stay in touch and keep helping us!
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02.12.07
Posted in Products, English, Mandriva at 6:02 pm by François Bancilhon
175,000 is a large number. It’s what you get when you add 130,000, the number of all high school fifth graders (seconde) to 45,000, the number of first year apprentices in Ile de France (the Paris region).
The “conseil général d’Ile de France”, i.e., the body that runs the Paris Region (10 million people) has decided to award a nice present to all of them: they will all receive a USB key with a bunch of open source applications. The news were officially announced …. The budget for the operation, i.e., what it will cost the tax payer is 2.6M€ ($3.38M). The official bid is not out yet, but we know enough to understand what the story is.
It’s a USB key, with a set of open source apps, that operates as a mobile desktop. This means you stick the key into a computer anywhere, you run OpenOffice from the key without actually installing it on the machine, you work on your files, you remove the key and you take the file with you to the next computer you will use. If you’re a student, you work at school in the lab, then you go back home or to a friend’s house or to the library and you keep working with the same environment on your data.
So this is good news: the region is investing in open source. It is doing something usefull for the kids.
The bad news is it all runs on Windows.
This was a great opportunity to get Linux in everybody’s hand. If you look at the problem the other way around: given 2.6M€ to spend, what should you do with it? they had the opportunity to issue bootable USB keys just like the Mandriva Flash, that was the perfect mobile desktop, the perfect opportunity to give a 3D desktop to every kid.
I hear the arguments, I’ve heard them already: “we should move people slowly, give them the opportunity to get use to the application first, then to the OS, not everybody is ready for Linux, we should be careful…”. In this case, I don’t agree, we are talking teenagers here, let us trust them, they are smart, they like technology, they like new stuff and they are versatile.
We need to work on the other regions, to see whether one of them will make a smarter move.
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02.09.07
Posted in English, Mandriva at 12:16 pm by François Bancilhon
The French “Assemblée Nationale” (the lower house of the French parliament) recently announced its intention to move to open source.
It started with some initial political annoucements. I am allways slightly suspicious of these. The beauty of open source for our political leaders is that you can make bold announcements without spending a penny. I won’t be nasty and won’t give any example.
Anyway in this case, they actually delivered: they are doing something serious, have a budget assigned to it and published an official call for proposals. The information is public and the actual call can be found here.
In this case they actually did a pretty good job. They did a proper analysis. They based their call on previous studies that had been done in the administration. They understand that there need to be a customization phase to actually design a desktop adapted to the needs of the user population, they understand they need tools to administer this and manage evolution over time and support.
They took risks and I am sure they had lots of pressure, but they went ahead and did a professional job.
It is not a very large deal: 1,000 desktop and the maximum budget allowed for a deal under such a process is about 130K€, which is not huge for the whole deployment, maintenance, support and administration. But it is a good show case and can be used as an example for the Administration and for other deployments.
In a forum where I am not exactly popular, there are regular questions on whether we answered that bid.
Of course, we answered: it’s the archetype of the deal we want to make. We followed the process, we found partners, we worked very hard and we submitted some very thourough answers. This meant a lot of work for us. Will we win? at this stage the decision is in the hands of the technical services of the assembly, I can only hope we will be rewarded for our hard work and for the quality of our answer.
I believe we have everything needed to provide a solid answer: we have a great distro, focused on the desktop, we provide professional support and we have a tool for deployment and administration, Pulse, which is 100% GPL. We also have the right partners answering with us.
Let us hope they will be more calls like this, let us hope other government agencies will understand that they need the help of enterprises to do this.
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02.08.07
Posted in English, Mandriva at 5:14 pm by François Bancilhon
Last week, we were busy with the Paris Linux Tradeshow (Linux Solution) which took place Tuesday through Thursday in La Défense.
This is annual big mass of Open Source in France. Everyone is there and you meet everyone. Mostly French, but a few international players show up. There is the usual interesting mix between jeans and suits.
I found the show pretty active and I was happy with the Mandriva booth: nice design, lots of activity and a good crowd of people. The Mandriva team did a great job and I was proud of their work.
François Bayrou (center right candidate to the French presidential election) stopped by the booth, and spend a whole 35 seconds there. Pascal Joly grabbed him and gave a Mandriva One CD, but he replied he was using a Mac. Well, too bad François, but it was nice (and smart) of you to come and show interest for the Open Source movement.
Pierre Jarillon, from ABUL, gave me plenty of ideas and offered me a bottle of Bordeaux wine. It is a Château Saint Jean that his daughter makes. I tasted it yesterday and it’s pretty good. The only one entirely made under Mandriva, he claims. Maybe he’s wrong and there are others.
We had a lot of partners on our booth, among those:
Fon is cool: they have a grand scheme to take over the world, and they have made some of the first steps. It’s true that having Google and Skype as shareholders is a good start. We did some work with them and there should be something good for our users soon.
Wengo is also very cool. I talked to David Bitton, their CEO. They are also planning to take over the world. Once again, having Neuf Telecom as a reference shareholder is going to be helpful. We are preparing a partnership with them, to be announced soon. There again, we believe there is a good cultural match and we can help each others.
Nexedi is more serious: you can’t really use the word “fun” for an ERP, but this is great technology and they’ve been working with Mandriva for ages. I have a lot of respect for Jean-Paul Smets and I am happy to follow the steady progress of his company.
Our friends from Linbox were there of course, showcasing their products.
I also talked to Jean-Marie Verdun about his new start up, Splitted Desktop. What does the name mean? nothing says Jean-Marie, this ways people like it and ask questions. Pretty ambitious start up, still in the fund raising stage, but there is clearly a need for this type of product/technology. Another one in the club of those planning to take over the world.
We had put a lot of our stuff around Metisse, our future 3D desktop technology and things went very well. More about this soon.
A lot of people complained about our lack of communication. I hear the complaints and I will work to solve the problem.
Mandriva Flash sold well on the floor and Pascal Joly was happy about it.
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