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Mandriva Fires Founder Gael Duval, Who Plans to Sue
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.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that this may not be such a bad thing. Mr. Duval may now start another project, and build something good again. Mandrake(driva) had really started to fall off a few releases ago in my opinion. Many people I know are using Fedora now that used Mandrake in the past. I certainly feel bad that Mr. Duval is now unemployed, but perhaps we can build something positive out of this. Mandrake used to be the distro I told people to start with, lately it's been Ubuntu. Perhaps this can be a day remembered as the day a new distro was born, and it was also today that Mandriva lost a great asset. Just trying to remain positive.
Many places in Europe, IIRC, you can't just fire anyone for any reason.
While there may be a legal right to terminate employees, one I certainly don't agree with, for any reason in the USA, it is ultimately counterproductive due to decreased worker morale. I know I'd think twice about working for a company who fires their employees on whims. I'd also do poor work if I had to continuously worry that today might be my last day.
To me, that is a scary thought.
If I own a business, I have the right as theowner to discontinue paying them for their services at anytime for any reason unless I have signed a contract with them stipulating otherwise. To think that I cannot fire an employee for poor performance or bad decision making sounds absolutely insane.
Mandriva has every right to terminate his employment for _nearly_ any reason.
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
Well of course being open source. We're immune from situations like this.
Well, if not immune, at least less vulnerable.
After all, suppose you spend ten years creating your Magnum Opus, the thing that's going to change the world. Then the managers you originally hired to handle the boring business stuff turn around and fire you. If your work is proprietary, that's it. Find a new life's work.
Within open source, you go to the spare bedroom, pop the source CD's, and open up a new sourceforge project. Your employment agreement might be a bit of a hurdle, but with any luck it's written with proprietary software in mind. "Uh, your honor, I'm not selling any products that compete with my former employer."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In the US we have a better end-run around that sort of thing. We just place unreasonable goals and expectations on our employees, underpay them, and ride them as hard as we can. Then when they begin to come apart at the seams (and begin to manifest the personality traits of someone who's being driven to the edge of their sanity) we can label them as underperforming, or bad behavior, or anti-social. If they don't acquiesce to the subsequent managerial flogging we can then terminate them. The company documentation will, of course, read "behavioral issues".
No. We don't fire on a whim. What we do is create the situation and then blame the victim.
The government itself is not stealing your liberties. Their new programs are enabling criminals who will.