02.08.07

Bits and pieces about Linux Solutions

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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