[Mageia-discuss] Interview de Anne Nicolas pour Mageia [french]

[Maarten Vanraes]

Op dinsdag 02 november 2010 18:19:45 schreef Olivier Méjean:
[...]
> If i am couragous, i will do an English translation

google translate to english: 


Philippe Nieuwbourg - Hello everyone, welcome to the TV set of open
world forum, we will now turn to another topic with our
new guest Anne Nicolas, Hello
Anne Nicolas - Hello
PN - So you work for a community called Mageia
AN - Absolutely
PN - But then there are our listeners are saying "but never heard Mageia
speaking, what is it that the promotion of this new thing "is a Mageia
fork of Mandriva
AN - quite
PN - it remembers Mandriva, Mandriva I had left in my head
a time when there were many financial difficulties, it was not
well what it was going to give. Tell us a little bit what happened
and what made you want to create this Mageia fork.
AN - This fork Mageia came a whole lot of uncertainties that reside in
Mandriva, I was myself employed by a subsidiary of Mandriva. It was felt
there had been 12 years of tremendous work performed on this distribution and
need to sustain this effort and we wanted to abstract from the presence
a company that had high and low economic level and we
decided to fork, ie resume distribution Mandriva Linux
one point from a copy simply because the license allows
and assembling a new project from there and only Community
within an association and the project is called Mageia
PN - so it's very fashionable because ultimately what you have done
people from the MySQL community did at the time of acquisition by Oracle, they
accepted the takeover by Sun, they have not accepted the takeover by Oracle, 
we
learned yesterday that the OpenOffice community was doing the same thing
too because they do not agree with the direction of Oracle
So finally for those who do not know where all these terms, a
Forking is that you can resume the original source code
and create for the moment exactly the same thing, a true copy
?
AN - altogether, it does not reinvent the wheel, since I
mentioned earlier, we believe many technology integrated with
Mandriva Linux, we think it's really a strong point, but
it would work differently in the development of future
distribution
PN-Mageia So it'll be a 1901 association therefore non-profit?
AN - quite,
PN - built around the community, developers in fact, it is
community developers who are members of the association?
AN - then the members of the association will overlap with the full scope of
that affect people directly or indirectly to a distribution. It will be
developers, people who are packaging software, testers
translators, but also because today what users
The strength of a distribution is the ability of its community
users to promote the distribution so they have a
part quite predominant and essential in the association.
PN - So it begs the question why an association. You think
today is the best way to work together on a project
like this?
NA - found that the values of freedom today are that it can be
a little demanding on the necessity of sharing the sustainability of the 
software,
etc.. and given the history and challenges of the time
Mandriva has been estimated that a community project was more appropriate and
the association is only there to regulate the use of resources
organization, so yes there is a community project but
organized in a lasting way.
PN - At the same time we must live, you were employed by a company that
working on Mandriva, you may have wanted to find a job and
back wages
AN - yes it would be nice
PN - it must be that all that great, how is what generates the income
fully associative structure?
AN - then the association is one thing, it produces a product that
Mageia which is called a distribution, we can consider a perfectly
commercial structure that will act in the periphery of the association and 
will
based on the distribution called Mageia and will offer a whole
lots of service as support, consulting, development, thereby
help the company take this product has tremendous community
strength and integrate it into its array of solutions it may have.
PN - So now you're faced with a number of needs
urgent first need we will try to answer them all is to make
a bit of noise around Mageia because nobody knows.
AN - Nobody knows the outdoors in the little world of open source
I admit that we were very pleasantly surprised by the return because not
Mandriva only the present community has reacted to the announcement and
acceded but also because people using Mandrake at the time and
returning because he believes it is a little more to their
expectation that they and their vision of an open source distribution
PN - Be careful what is called the navel syndrome which
that people who know you and you know how difficult it is to
ensure that those who do not know you have the reflex to go
see Mageia rather because he must say things very clear shot of you
become a little competition from Mandriva?
AN-quite
PN - How is what you do to try to promote this
new brand, because it costs money as all that?
AN - is finally starting very small since the initiative was made very
short time, we launched an appeal for donations which currently meets
extremely well, we had solutions to enable us to host
our entire infrastructure, and we will try to sustain it in
companies adhering to the association, and finally it becomes
account that there are many users who understand that the
Free software is not necessarily free and that I can to support the
distribution rather than put a little money every month by
example since I know that this money will be used so
transparent and maintaining a number of value. We have many
returns on that front.
PN - And do you think that you will generate enough money
eventually pay people who will permanently work
distribution?
NA - Immediate not within the Association, cons in
a business structure that offer services can be more
Traditional here we can actually generate income and that income
may possibly be used to fund developments
additional distribution
PN - Very good transition, is what you have already thought about it
should evolve within Mageia that it continues to meet
required? At the same time Mandriva was in trouble for some time that
therefore may be missing a bit of development, is what you want
do new things?
AN - So yes, there are plenty of things we want to do lots of things.
Among others there is a huge strength is the control center, the
Linux Control Center and now it's to change the
rejuvenate because it's true that it is a little older and then
Why not move towards architectures that are increasingly
used as shelves for example, and can also switch to
openness to services like cloud, etc.. so all that they are
guidelines that will define in the coming weeks.
PN - You have a real functioning associations, participatory?
AN - quite,
PN - you will meet regularly?
AN - While meeting a little bit special as they will
because the virtual community Mageia is international, ie
it's a lot in Europe, South America, so in these cases we do
can not do real meetings, the fact remains that these are people who are
accustomed to working in that way, remote, so yes it will
meetings, as each interest group, we will have a board to manage
the association to make a strategic decision, especially so many
communication, perhaps what we missed.
PN - Okay, we hope to have made our small contribution, good luck
in this project
AN - thank you
PN - we will continue elsewhere if we want to know more the website is
AN - mageia.org
PN - thank you very much Anne Nicolas
AN - Thanks