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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.
... that everyone needs to concentrate on litigation and legal battles instead of making a difference by doing something constructive. Before seeing this story, I was just thinking about an article where someone said businesses in the U.S. need to stop whining about everything foreign business competition and they need to start competing with those foreign businesses instead. The trouble is that the government, meaning federal, state, county, city, and otherwise, is and has been abusing businesses for a long time with all kinds of taxes, fees, and administrative overhead that does nothing for anybody. So of course American products must cost more to cover the costs.