Mandriva Fires Founder Gael Duval, Who Plans to Sue 267
Otter writes "Mandrake Linux founder Gael Duval has confirmed that Mandriva has let him go." A few hours later, Newsforge (owned by the same company that owns Slashdot) did an exclusive IRC interview with Gael in which he said he plans to sue his former employer for "abusive layoff." This is a sad day for Mandriva -- and for GNU/Linux in general. Gael was the founder and heart of the original Mandrake (now Mandriva) project, which was the first Linux distribution designed to be easy for non-technical users to install and administer. There is plenty of consternation in the Mandriva Club Forums about whether the company will go on supporting individual desktop users as strongly as it has in the past.
His own fault (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is truly a sad day (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the Ubuntu equivalent to PLF is the Multiverse [ubuntu.com].
How is it abusive? He shouldn't sue at all (Score:2, Informative)
Most states are right to work so they can do that.
Employers have the right to fire people on spot for any reason at all. The reason why I am agaisnt suing is because its unfair that blue collar workers such as myself have no right at all and get paid 1/5th what the upper middle class white collar workers do which do sue for wrongfull termination. We have no rights at all and have to sign contracts making us employed at will.
And most states even the CEO can be fired for no reason at all if its a right to work state.
Also the shareholders own the company and yes if the CEO owns less then %50 of the company then he can be fired. Its just part of business. ANd if you owned a company I think most people would have a different opinion as bad workers can make or break your company and take your dreams down with it when you go under.
Re:You gotta be kidding me. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You gotta be kidding me. (Score:3, Informative)
Small business and startups have an insane near %90 failure rate 2 years after they open. Bad employees will make it much higher. If your retirement savings and home were used as equilateral for the loan for your business then you lose that too and perhaps your marriage if it fails due to a couple of bad apples that you need to fire.
Capitalism is the most efficient system around and this is coming from someone who is considered a liberal and left wing nut by those in US.
Re:How is it abusive? He shouldn't sue at all (Score:5, Informative)
France, where Mandrake was based and where his employment contract was signed, is not a state of the United States of America.
Re:How is it abusive? He shouldn't sue at all (Score:5, Informative)
but the product declined (Score:5, Informative)
I installed ubuntu and never looked back. it recognized all my hardware (even the USB wifi), and apt-get is far superior. It's a sad day for sure, but they only have themselves to blame. They made poor financial decisions and it hurt their product. Now, I do confess to having been an iBook user for a few years and haven't used linux nearly as much. Most of my development is LAMP, java, python, etc., and it's all the same on OS X or linux. OO.org runs great, and so does GIMP, and with fink/darwinports, I don't "need" linux. So, I haven't used a "PC" in quite some time, but that doesn't diminsh the fact that my one remianing PC at homeruns ubuntu not mandriva.
Ouch. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, all that great work had a price tag attached to it, so when Mandrake Club was announced, I was first in line to join. The idea back then was that it was a voluntary donation with no extra benefits other than supporting continued development.
Unfortunately, once the club started to take off, they started closing things off to the public one by one to drive membership numbers higher. Now it's to the point where standard members can't even download the full set of CD images for their $60 yearly membership fees.
Something seems to have really changed in a big way since the Connectiva merger, though. With the release of Mandriva 2006, they've been focusing on marketing deals like that with Skype. Then, there was the worldwide Mandriva party, where the locations weren't announced until the night before... until then, there was just a form to fill out for organizations to get corporate schwag.
Also, I was reading on the Mandriva forums earlier that the reason their cut of X.org doesn't work with my ATI Radeon 7500 is that they "chose the wrong X.org" and are staying with it due to an Intel marketing agreement. Luckily, seerofsouls.org has working RPM's, but needing to depend on a third party to provide core components of the distribution is not exactly ideal.
Anyway, it looks like their management has decided that it wants to be Red Hat or Novell. I wish them good luck with that. I've seen it mentioned that PCLinuxOS is trying to be what Mandrake was, so hopefully they will provide a good upgrade path from Mandriva so I can get off this sinking ship without getting my clothes too wet.
Re:Many have bailed on them already though. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:He should fork it... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ouch. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, the fact that you can download any missing packages by adding a random public FTP mirror to your urpmi media makes that a non-issue.
A version of X.org that works with your graphics card, too, is included in the distro updates that are downloaded right during the installation procedure. Have you tried running MandrivaUpdate?
Re:Many have bailed on them already though. (Score:3, Informative)
The key word here is support. Mandriva 2006 had a release schedule. Had they included OO.o2, they would have had to support a hardly tested pre-release version of it for years to come. They've been bitten before by including RC-quality software (KDE 2.99 iirc) and I think it's very understandable they don't want such a disaster to happen again.
Yes, OO.o2 is now available on the Club, but it is still unsupported.
Re:This is truly a sad day (Score:3, Informative)
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/doc/plf [ubuntu-fr.org]
http://placelibre.ath.cx/keyes/index.php/2005/10/
Re:You gotta be kidding me. (Score:4, Informative)
The UK govt. doesn't get involved (and I doubt any other European govts do either) with people being fired on an everyday basis - I mean, how would they ever get any work done?*
In the UK, there are such things as industrial tribunals, where you can go and argue that you were unfairly dismissed - i.e. there was no good reason to dismiss you (to the poster who worried that they wouldn't be able to fire someone for poor performance or bad decision making - of course these are grounds for dismissal in the UK - but some guy putting sugar in the boss's coffee by mistake when the boss is having a bad day is not).
What you might have been told about is that when a company makes people redundant (downsizing), if they let go more than a certain number of people, they have to warn the govt. in advance. If you let go of more than 25-30 people, you have to give a month's warning, and there's another threshold for 3 month's warning. I'm guessing similar arrangements may exist elsewhere in Europe.
* Leave it.
Re:You gotta be kidding me. (Score:2, Informative)
Not in France, certainly not. You'll end up in court and having to prove that the person was doing something really wrong.
Re:This is truly a sad day (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the Ubuntu equivalent to PLF is the PLF:-)
http://wiki.ubuntu-fr.org/doc/plf [ubuntu-fr.org]