We recently had to let some valuable members of staff go, notably amongst community members and distribution. It’s always a difficult decision to make and I would like to thank them for the contribution they made to Mandriva during all these years.
Once we are through this arduous passage, we plan to re-think and reinforce the Community template.
Mandriva distributions-based solutions are coming through the pipeline ready to target our Community, a world-wide market and the ensemble of Mandriva’s partners. Mandriva is brimming with new ideas aimed at the whole community. The Mandriva Mini and Mandriva OEM solution have just been released and have already met with a warm welcome from the Netbook Industry.
Dear Friends, Mandriva may have caught flu but is alive and very much kicking.
Et maintenant pour les francophones :
Trente jours plus tard…
Nous avons dû récemment nous séparer d’un certain nombre de collaborateurs de valeur, notamment dans les équipes relatives à la Communauté et la distribution. C’est une décision douloureuse… Je souhaite ici remercier toutes ces personnes pour leur travail et leur implication dans l’entreprise durant toutes ces années.
Sitôt le cap difficile actuel franchi, nous prévoyons de repenser et d’accentuer le profil de la Communauté.
Les solutions basées sur la distribution Mandriva ont été mûries et sont près d’être lancées sur le marché mondial. Mandriva est en ébullition, avec de nouveaux projets en tête qui bénéficieront à toute la communauté. Mandriva Mini et les solutions de Mandriva OEM viennent de sortir et l’accueil a été plus que chaleureux au sein de l’industrie des Netbooks.
Chers amis, Mandriva a été grippée, mais elle est en vie et elle se bat pour vous tous.
C’est une bonne chose de vous être exprimé. La communauté demandé des explications et d’être rassuré sur le fait qu’elle était toujours considérée comme importante.
J’espère que vous serez amené à vous exprimé plus souvent, pour notamment expliquer/exposer vos choix et vos directions.
Bon courage et bonne chance.
Bienvenue.
Nous avons été échaudés par le fonctionnement “tâtonnant” par le passé de Mandriva et bien que ce premier contact entre nous soit intéressant, il ne révèle pas grand chose sur les directions futures, qui sont sous-jascentes au changement de PDG. J’espère qu’il vous sera possible de nous en dire plus bientôt, et que Mandriva pourra capitaliser sur la communauté pour prendre enfin l’essor que tout le monde attend de cette société.
Bon courage, et je l’espère à bientôt plus de précisions.
There in Brazil a very strong market for computers with Linux. But Mandriva is losing this opportunity. Mandriva also is not participating of the Brazilian government Auctions. Why? You are not taking advantage of the Conectivas´s legacy.
Sad to see them go. I only hope that this is not the product of a superstitious CEO. Who thinks that you have to start by fireing someone so you can tell the board than you have “trimmed the fat”. I hope I am wrong, and that Mandriva will survive.
But the biggest question remains; How are you going to get better and more popular with fewer resources and less smart people around? You are already the smallest of the Commercially backed distros in regards to employees. I just can’t see the the upside to this for anyone.
I will continue using Mandriva, so I hope you have a cunning plan up your sleeve.
Oh btw. Make sure to motivate the remaining employees to stay organized. They have to be, now that there is even less people around, to do the things that need to be done.
Hi,
first of all, i would like to thank for the answer you gave to the community, even if i didn’t consider it enough reassuring. I have proposed a petition 2 days ago (signed until now by more than 630 people) to rehire Adam and Oden:
http://www.petitiononline.com/qws589/petition.html
this is also an open letter to you, wich i totally agree with:
http://rodgerdean.org/blog/2008/11/28/open-letter-to-mrherve-yahi-mandriva-ceo/
All the community thinks that this decision will be negative for the company, because in the linux world is very important the contribute of the volunteers and Adam is the only person that has contributed to make bigger the community and to augment the number of the contributors, improving the development of the distro. While Oden has high skills about server packages and he maintains more than 1500 packages.
After having destroyed the community firing these two capables employees, what are your plans to re-think and reinforce the Community template? how can you improve the distro when will it become unknown by everyone because no one will care about public relations? Do you think that the cost saving of removing these two employees will be higher than the benefits of keeping them with us?
In the past years there were a lot of platitudes about mandriva and it was becoming less and less used by the users. Adam has started a useful work to explain the mandriva choices, its system of working but, overall, he started to listen to the users and helping them (as it demonstrates the hugh number of signatures) and many of them now work as FREE contributors, included me.
The new solutions are welcomed and interesting, but it’s not firing the most valuable assets of mandriva, the PEOPLE, that they will get more attention and will be better developed and promoted.
How will be discovered the work of the developers, when there will be no one to promote and shows us the improvements?
Pleas, rethink about the firing of adam and Oden. Mandriva may have caught flu, but this is not the right treatement.
Thank you for the attention
Best Regards,
Marcello Anni
I have been a Mandriva stock holder for several years. I bought them at “first impression”, according to the quality of the OS product, low price of shares, and high potential of the company in its home market. It was my mistake. It’s a small company, with less than one hundred or so “in house” developers and little middle management staff to support the marketing, working downtown in confined offices. The company is losing money. I don’t understand yet its business model. How do you make money with open source? How do you compete with MS? You are probably the new Occam’s man. According to the stock behavior last November where there was always an “insider” seller to meet the demand 2 minutes before the fixing, I guess that there will be a new shares dilution coming soon. I would like you to strongly communicate on your new business plan to surge stocks, demand and clients.
Pourquoi tant de silence ? Pourquoi s’exprimer aussi tard alors que les contestations étaient prévisibles ? Pourquoi ne donner aucune indication à la communauté, tout en faisant appel à son soutien elle dans les moments difficiles ? La communication chez Mandriva n’a jamais été un point fort, mais à part brasser du vent, votre communiqué ne donne pas franchement de raisons d’espérer. “Repenser et accentuer le profil de la Communauté” risque d’être un défi difficile à relever, quand celle ci a l’impression d’être toujours la dernière roue du carrosse. Rien que lors du licenciement de wobo, lui annoncer son licenciement et lui indiquer qu’il pouvait continuer à faire le même travail gratuitement… Je vous avoue que ça m’a donné la nausée. Si on pouvait éviter de revenir à ces méthodes, la communauté ne s’en porterait que mieux, et pourrait continuer de faire son boulot : pousser Mandriva dans le bon sens.
Mr. Yahi,
I also am a (small) Mandriva shareholder as well as contributor and I for one don’t approve this strategy of letting go two of the most valuable employees the company has. I implore you to reconsider this decision.
I welcome you to Mandriva and hope that your stay with our favourite distribution.
While I understand the need and, in fact, requirement that you consider profitability above almost all other considerations; I also believe that you have missed something vital here.
With respect to Mr. Adam Williamson you have dismissed the one person who, in the dark times of bankruptcy, kept Mandriva’s name in the English speaking world alive and relevant. I submit, strongly, to you that were it not for Mr. Williamson that the market share for Mandriva would be minuscule in the face of Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical instead of healthy and growing within the English speaking world. This applies as much, if not more, to the OEM and corporate worlds as it does to the Community.
I add that there was a time, not so long ago, that Mr Williamson, almost alone, defended Mandriva’s reputation and road map in the blogosphere often at the expense of ridicule. In the end he was right and his critics wrong. In this he got little or no help from Mandriva itself due to the bankruptcy as much as anything.
I further submit that the passionate and enthusiastic Community that Mr Wilkinson rebuilt has been an important reason that, in a very short period of time, recovered from a buggy and poorly presented distro to the high quality and respected distro it is now. Returning it to the state that it is possible to market it to the OEM and corporate sectors.
The Community is the people who test, discuss, criticize and agonize over the needs of the distro far beyond those looking for a free ride. A disproportionate number of us test in Cooker so that we may give back to the excellent product that Mandriva has become.
I submit, strongly, that the termination of Mr Williamson’s contract is a mistake that will cost you more than it will ever gain you as there is strong evidence, at the moment, that the Community is in a state of shock and is angered by this move and that that shock and anger extends beyond the Community to the OEM and corporate worlds.
As for your words that you are planning a re-thing of the community template I am concerned that there will not be a community to build a template for and, hence, a distribution and profitable business to build a template for.
In that light I urge you strongly to rescind the termination of Mr Williamson’s contract as well as reconsider other terminations with a view to seeing what it is they contributed as opposed to expenses on the balance sheet. Taken in that light Mr Williamson has been an asset that you cannot replace at anywhere near the cost of continuing his employment at this time.
Your’s truly.
John Wilson
Once we are through this arduous passage, we plan to re-think and reinforce the Community template.
Template?
Your “cookie cutter” approach to the Community, and, I fear, Linux itself, doesn’t bode well for the future of Mandriva.
About eight years ago another new CEO, who also did not understand Linux or its community, took Mandriva in the wrong direction and into several millions of dollars debt. Debt which Mandriva is still paying off and will be till 2014, if Mandriva lasts that long. I doubt that you will have that luxury.
So, it is a mystery to me and many others who ARE knowledgeable about Linux, at both the “community” and Enterprise level, why you would cut “muscle” along with the fat? The “muscle” I refer to is Adam Williamson, whose credentials and respect among ALL users of Linux are exceeded by none and matched by few.
If and when you decide to “reinforce” it, .I seriously doubt that your “template” will be appealing to the Linux community, many of whom, like me, also work(ed) in the Enterprise side. It give one pause to wonder that if you so poorly understand the community side of Linux how will you fair any better among putative Enterprise users?
M. YAHI,
Vous ne me connaissez pas car comme beaucoup j’oeuvre dans l’ombre. Je ne suis ni développeur de talent, ni analyste de qualité comme tous ceux que vous avez sous la main.
Je fais en sorte de fermer de douloureuses plaies qui ont écarté la communauté éducative de celle de mandriva. (Je laisse vos collaborateur vous expliquer)
Je n’ai sans doute pas besoin de vous dire que cette administration n’aiment pas les comportements gratuits à l’égard de ces bienfaiteurs. En expliquant votre geste je pense que vous m’aideriez beaucoup.
Vous planchez depuis un certain temps sur une version éducation. J’y ai passer énormément de temps et pousser beaucoup de porte, non sans difficulter. Je souhaite qu’elle participe à l’amélioration financière de votre entreprise et pas au licenciement des membres de sa communauté.
Je fais le voeux que dans un proche avenir vous soyez en capacité de revenir sur ces obligations malheureuses.
Je souhaite que votre stratégie sois la bonne et que mandriva trouve la place qu’elle mérite.
Très cordialement
Mr. Hervé Yahí
I really think that you own to us, the Mandriva users, a response. I agree that company is one thing and the Community is other. So, theoretically, you can do whatever you want with the company.
But the product “Mandriva GNU/Linux” that you sale (and in which your company bases its other products) is created day by day, by many many volunteers. So, I think you must, at least, give us an explanation, because we (the Community) consider that you (with your desicion of fire Adam Williamson and other important persons) are contributing to the destruction of the “product” (I say product, but for us is much more) that we help to create and maintain.
As I sayed in a letter I sent you by the contact form in http://www.mandriva.com, people are the true important assets.
Maybe I’m wrong (time will say if you’re right and we’re all wrong), but I feel the obligation to tell you my opinion.
Sorry if I offend or offended you with any of my comments. It was not my intention.
Best regards.
Mandriva may have caught the flu, but IMO the doctor has prescribed the wrong medicine.
To continue the analogy; what was prescribed in this case is a radical mastectomy. While a mastectomy can elimate the disease, it is a very morbid surgery and is not performed except in extreme cases. Some radiotherapy or chemotherapy could also cure the disease and leave the patient in a better state.
I hope the procedure prescribed can be rethought and Adam brought back into the fold. The English forum is quite active and we will greatly miss having Adam as our Mandriva contact and guru. . Adam deserves to be compensated for all his effort and accomplishments since he came aboard. Hoping he will provide for free, what he has been, and deserves to be compensated for, is just not right.
I really hope you can re-consider your hard decision and find an another way to continue.
In general OEM products are cleanup made by a couple of workers on top of the open source products. To be successful in that in the long term, you will need to have an active community of contributors and workers that keeps the Mandriva flag up, provides up to date versions of applications, writes blogs and news, howtos and tips about the usage of distro and in this way make the distribution to look appealing for the OEM partners you work with.
Mandrake and Mandriva have had bad times, due to badly made decisions made by previous CEO’s, Mandriva almost lost the game and became one of the bad repution distros that did not got any press releases. But thanks for the reliable and people like Thierre, Pixel, Adam and Oden, that just do not write the software, but also participate to discussion with the community, the repution of Mandriva has got a little by little a much better again.
Mr Hervé,
I am not sure as to your information about Mandriva outside businesses and France, but thanks to the excellent public relation efforts by Adam Williamson, Mandriva is currently -or was!- considered one of the major desktop Linux distributions. I myself have been a satisfied user since late 2007.
However, the more I have looked into things and the more I have learned Mandriva seems to have been plagued by horrifying business acumen and have consistently made abysmal decisions. Your first notable act as new CEO seems to confirm this trend. While it is imperative to reduce spendings in lean times the first thing we learn in business (I make my living among other things with business consultancy) is to distinguish between positive and negative costs, that is costs that contribute to or detract from generating revenues. Cutting away positive costs in fact further damages your bottom line. Adam has individually been responsible for making Mandriva a major player in the English and desktop parts of Linuxland and your decision has created perhaps unprecedented ill will and bad word-of-mouth toward Mandriva and you personally and have detached one (and certainly others, too) of your most market-retaining assets.
Due to this I have lost faith in Mandriva and am now looking for replacement distributions.
I wish you the best of luck in protecting the future of Mandriva, but I fear you have just thrown the snowball that will cause the avalanche.
Regards,
Michael
I must agree with the other commenters and their statements of the importance of people like Adam and Oden, etc, etc. These two and others like them have been a huge help to Mandriva the distro, Mandriva the company, and to the Mandriva Community. Without these people Mandriva will simply not be the same.
[...] nuevo CEO de Mandriva, Hervé Yahi, habla en su blog sobre la situación actual de esa empresa y sus polémicos despidos [...]
Je ne suis pas du tout informaticien mais simplement attaché à l’esprit du logiciel libre. J’utilise Mandriva depuis la version 9.2. Actuellement les 3 machines de la maison tournent uniquement sous Mandriva, Windows a terminé sa carrière à la version 98. Ceci n’est possible que si la qualité du système est au rendez-vous. Vous ne pouvez confier un outil informatique à un proche, un ami, que si il satisfait à ses besoins quotidiens. Son souci est uniquement guidé par la pratique de l’outil et non par sa philosophie. La qualité du “deboggage” est essentiel dans l’obtention d’un produit final utilisable. Je voudrais vous donner simplement un exemple précis qui illustre l’importance de cette tâche et par la même l’importance du rôle de Adam Williamson. Vous constaterez en lisant le forum : http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=98948 , que d’un incident détecté par 3 personnes sur la version 2009.0 on remonte à un bug critique sur la version 2009.1 (bug report 46347 et 46409). L’initiative de Adam Williamson a été cruciale dans ce processus en répartissant les tâches et les signalements. Sa fonction est essentielle à l’obtention d’un produit final de qualité. Comment comptez vous l’assurer dans l’avenir Monsieur Hervé Yahi ? Je serais désolé pour nous tous ( la communauté des utilisateurs de Mandriva) et pour la société Mandriva qu’il fasse profiter de son expertise une entreprise comme Canonical. Cela serait peut-être pour lui une bonne solution et pour la communauté du libre dans son ensemble de toutes façon un bénéfice réel.
Letting Adam go is lunacy of the highest order. Words cannot convey how disappointed I am in Mandriva’s current (alleged) management. Plus ça change …
I have seen other times when mandriva/mandrake let go of staff that was the face of mandry to the public/community. and while Oden and even Adam did work with the companies best interests, and did work diligently, they may not have been the very best at their what they did, and/or were given more work than they could do with 100 percent effectiveness. Most of the remarks attempting to save their employment come from people that do not remember who and how those same jobs were preformed prior to those 2 people trying to fill those shoes.
For the most part, people who were not pleased with Adam and Oden are no longer around to sound their opinions, so the conversation naturally seems one sided.
Hire back Civileme, (rather than Adam and Oden)… and then lets see where the distro goes, and how goes quality of the project, and the LAMP stack, as well as quality of the product…
I submit, strongly, that the termination of Civileme’s contract is a mistake that has cost you more than it will ever gain you as there is strong evidence that the Community was in a state of shock and was angered by this move and that that shock and anger extends beyond the Community to the OEM and corporate worlds and lost far more paying customers than any thing I have seen since..
I too am a long time user of Mandriva/Mandrake (since 2000 – 7.0 days). I am also the systems admin for a global sports based web hosting company. The only reason I mention that last bit is because I wish to convey that I strongly understand the business behind decisions like these.
That said, I am not sure that losing Oden or Adam will give you back the $$ that you think it will. I have been reading and reading forums and posting ever since this decision was made on how shocked, dismayed, disappointed, and even angry your community is. While you may perceive this as a null point because community does not generate revenue, I would strongly disagree. Take a look at your Enterprise base and see where they got the idea to install and use Mandriva… you don’t think they just magically knew Mandriva was great do you?
Also, look at your Mandriva Store, do you think Enterprise customers are buying all those T-Shirts and Coffee mugs?
Why do you think those sales (store items and enterprise licenses) are happening?
I will tell you why, because of satisfied customers, community customers that give you the best marketing the world will EVER know… “word of mouth”.
Now I pose one more question before I leave you to your thoughts.
What do you think is going to happen to that “word of mouth” when they no longer have high qaulty, community consious people like Adam or Oden to make them happy?
Not sure, but one thing is certain… leave it this way and you will know in a year or two.
I am mystified by the unwillingness of “the community” to accept painful reality.
There seems to be a vague notion out there, that, admittedly, Mandriva have a somewhat smaller revenue base to work from than, say, Novell (SuSe’s corporate sponsor), or Redhat, or Microsoft. But everyone seems to agree that “management” should somehow look past this, and keep employing <>. And of course, then they should implement our favorite distro features <>, and salvation will be assured.
Guys: Mandriva is a small business. In the most recent quarter it had turnover (revenue for you US folks) of EUR 830 thousand. Not million, THOUSAND. Less than USD 1.2 million. And the trend is down, not up. Imagine a small fast food franchise with 3 or 4 restaurants. That local restaurant business would have roughly the same revenue as Mandriva, your favorite “worldwide Linux provider”. How many highly-paid employees do you think that local restaurateur has? None, that’s right. He’s got a bunch of hourly minimum wage employees, and a small handful of salaried managers/assistant managers. That’s it.
Exactly, how much bigger than Mandriva is Redhat, you think? 141 times, in terms of revenue. So, if Redhat have 2,200 employees (the number reported on Yahoo! Finance), then what would be a comparable number be for Mandriva? Well, 2,200 divided by 141 is less than 16. Mandriva’s web site lists 5 people under “Management”, which would leave 11 to do, you know, work. Developing software, testing it, managing IT, accounting and finance, selling some licenses (hopefully!), and marketing/communications.
So, give the Mandriva guys a break! They cannot provide everything you ask for, and having to cut employment of some undoubtedly excellent people like Adam was just a painful necessity. These public appeals to defy logic and hire back people whom you cannot pay don’t help anyone.
I am a user on several fronts, including Mandriva, several Ubuntu based distros, openSUSE, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, and FreeBSD. I saw this post and am astonished. Apparently you people do not know me from dirt in the Mandriva community but I must say that this is a poor grasp at business intelligence and practice. If these two people are of this much importance Sir, not only to the community but to Mandriva as a whole, then you have just signed Mandrivas death certificate for sure.
Mandriva OEM, Enterprise, Free, Community and all it’s involved aspects are a whole. They work together and cannot be separated. I am an American and was in the midst of a consideration of purchase but at the moment, as you have made this grave error, I will not be making a purchase of your pay for product, not will I continue use of any other of your products free or otherwise. If you reconsider and find the gentleman back in your staff, please contact me via the email I have provided to submit this.
Good luck and Sincere Regards,
I.T.Guru