Source: CNET Gael Duval, a co-founder of Linux seller Mandriva, is among employees who lost their jobs at the company after it became unprofitable in its most recent financial quarter. Duval confirmed Wednesday that he was terminated as part of a layoff that in his estimation cost the jobs of 18 other employees at the French Linux seller. "It's not easy: You create your job and some jobs for a dozen other people, and seven years later, the current CEO of the company tells you 'now you go away,'" he said in an interview Wednesday. Duval is going to give the open-source start-up business a second shot, though. "I've been working for one year, in lost hours, on a new concept of open-source operating system called Ulteo. "It will be an open-source system, and part of the concept is going to rely on broadband Internet access." Mandriva, so named after MandrakeSoft acquired Brazilian Linux company Conectiva, has been struggling financially, but emerged from bankruptcy protection and became profitable. However, in its most recent quarter, ended in December, the company slipped back into the red, reporting a loss of $712,000 (590,000 euros) compared with a profit of $1.24 million (1.03 million euros) a year earlier. "Mandriva's financial results...are disappointing," the company said of the quarter, blaming the situation on dwindling sales of boxed products at retail, marketing expenses from the new release, economic fears in Brazil and a slow start to new deals with computer makers. The company faces competition not only from better-established, global companies such as Red Hat and Novell, but also from new versions such as Ubuntu that can be downloaded over the Internet for free. To deal with the situation, the company announced the elimination of redundant jobs in Brazil and France and said Chief Executive Francois Bancilhon plans to become chairman; co-founder and former Chairman Jacques Le Marois will remain on the company's board. It's also possible the company will have legal action to reckon with. Duval said he planned to sue Mandriva for an "abusive layoff." Mandriva executives in Paris didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Source: DistroWatch Despite the release of a new Mandriva edition last week, it was the company -- rather than the new product -- that stole the spotlight in the media. In a never-ending series of blunders that have relegated the best desktop Linux distribution on the market to a mediocre one over the last few years, the decision makers at Mandriva have asked Gaël Duval (pictured on the right) to leave the company! Yes, the same Gaël Duval who single-handedly created Mandrake Linux back in 1998. The same Gaël Duval who had a proven track record of understanding desktop Linux better than anyone else at the time. The same Gaël Duval who probably contributed more than anyone else to increased adoption of Linux at a time when very few distributions thought about usability of Linux on the desktop. Now, last week, Gaël Duval was deemed a burden to the company he helped to jump-start! It was a telling sign of Mandriva's attitude towards their user community that we had to learn about such an important event in an obscure IRC channel or a private web log, rather than directly from the horse's mouth. It was only when a major news site picked up the story that the company found itself in an embarrassing position of having to provide an explanation. Although Gaël Duval disagreed on a few minor points, the message given by Mandriva's CEO was clear: Mandriva as a company is once again in a bad financial shape and needs to find ways to cut expenses. With the acquisition of Conectiva and Lycoris in 2005, the ill-contrived spending spree of the past year has come back to haunt the company's investors. Fresh doubts about the viability of its business model have re-surfaced. Is this the end of Mandriva as a company? No, not just yet. Is this the end of a distribution that helped so many users (including your DistroWatch maintainer) to jump on the Linux bandwagon back in the late nineties? Sadly, yes. As one forum reader put it so bluntly, it is frightening to realise that in their quest to increase the value of their investments, Mandriva's desperate shareholders have made so many absurd decisions that instead of building a prosperous business entity they will bring about its downfall! Right now, the only thing that can save Mandriva from certain death is return to its roots - by building a distribution for home users, not suits. Although following Red Hat's business model might sound like a perfect way to ensure future financial prosperity, the sad reality is that Mandriva will have hard time competing with the likes of Red Hat and Novell. Instead, the company should close its rapidly diminishing Club infrastructure, return to a 6-month release cycle, and give away the base distribution with no delays and no strings attached. With the dramatically increasing interest in Linux that we have been witnessing over the past 6 months, it shouldn't take too long before it would generate solid and sustainable revenue from private and government contracts, as well as by selling support and custom solutions. For Mandriva to survive, it needs to stop laying off its best employees and start implementing a radical overhaul of its business strategy. It should strive to become a leader in one area, not a follower in another - no matter how lucrative it might seem to certain uninformed investors. Unfortunately, as its most recent action demonstrates, Mandriva might have already passed the point of no return....
