Mandriva, Mandriva, oh why did you mess with thieves and rogues

Posted Jan 12, 2012 9:49 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981)
In reply to: Is Mandriva Finished This Time? (OStatic) by ymmv
Parent article: Is Mandriva Finished This Time? (OStatic)

They probably weren't told of some interesting details:

people working with ex-minister of Russian communications Leonid Reiman charged of $150M launder (he's behind NGI which invested in Mandriva);
LinLux is controlled by Bryan Garnier bank which seems to oppose launder;
one of Reiman's team members currently employed in President Administration, Maksut Shadaev, is seemingly busy with destruction of Russia's own technological potential.

Some related flames and details for those reading in Russian may be found here:

my early warning back in 2009;
this topic discussed on the prominent Russian FLOSS forum;
presumable NGI funds source (being originally "Electronic Russia" program funds).

In short, Leonid Reiman, Maksut Shadaev and Dmitry Komissarov are greedy ignorant gang aimed at destruction instead of construction -- and they're not shy of public lies either.

I also wonder how the then just-formed company, PingWinSoft, could participate in strangely won tender for Linux deployment throughout Russian schools -- with the pilot project by ALT Linux being surprisingly successful, and the subsequent PWS' rollout being heavily failed with pushing lots of pain and profanity onto teachers due to ignoring pilot's experience rather completely. I don't have any workable hypothesis but that they have bribed folks in the ministry of education (maybe indirectly), but have no proof for that so far.

That company rather went lower profile with a newly-formed Rosalab by the same people swirling into existence to embrace and extend Mandriva.

The interesting detail is that Leonid Reiman had connections to ALT Linux before 2008 or so but dropped those: my understanding is that he tried to get control, understood that he can't, and then tried to destroy the company.

Good luck for all the good people at Mandriva, I do hope that they will get over this blunder somehow and keep going rather in Duval's spirit. Pretty sad that Sarcozi's government looks rather hostile to free software.

--
Michael Shigorin
ALT Linux Team