Hi folks,
as some of you already know, this is my last month at Mandriva/Conectiva.
So I am writing this blog post to summarize a bit of what the Mandriva experience was for me.
When I came to work officially at Mandriva back in 2008 (I was already in close contact with many Conectiva and Mandriva developers for some years then), I was expecting a lot from this challenge. The possibility to work in an open-source-based company, developing open-source solutions and products for everyone – it was practically my geek dream coming true. And I have to say now, after 2.5 years since that moment, that it was certainly an amazing experience.
While at Mandriva, I managed to work on many challenging yet amazingly interesting projects; I had the privilege to work with extremely talented people from all the corners of the world – Canada, Brazil, France, Sweden, Russia – just to name a few! And it certainly was an unforgettable experience for me.
During all those years, I managed to work a bit on probably each and every Mandriva product – as a developer/maintainer for Mandriva Distribution (2009.0, 2009.1, 2010.0, 2010.1, 2010.2, 2011); as member of Mandriva Security team first with Vincent Danen, and then with Oden Eriksson, providing several thousands packages via official updates for the whole range of Mandriva products (MNF2, CS3, CS4, Mandriva 2007.0 to 2010.2); working on dozens of research and development projects (msec, tomoyo-gui, mandriva cloud, mandriva edu, and many others, some of which did not came out of the door yet, so I won’t comment on them 
), developing several custom solutions for Brazilian customers, and of course countless packages..
For the past year, I also had the honor to be the technical leader and manager of Conectiva team in Brazil. And of course, as you all know, for past 9 months I was the responsible for Mandriva Desktop distributions development, leading the Mandriva 2010.2 and Mandriva 2011 products (which should be out in less than 2 months from now!).
During those years, I had the privilege to get to know and work alongside such legendary figures in the open-source world as ennael, cavassin, blino, tv, fcrozat, pterjan, rtp, teuf, neoclust, ahmad samir, götz, misc, pixel, pcpa, claudio, miura, herton, santiago, jbj, boiko, tmb, rda, colin, guillomovitch, lcapitulino, vdanen, heliocastro, bogdano, oden, aginies, anssi, adamw, … just to name a few, and of course many many others! It was a real honor, and I learned a lot with you all!
And of course, I had the chance to meet (and be the one responsible for bringing some of them ) the newly-rising stars in both Mandriva and open-source world, such as gmoro, wiliam, paulob, alexandrefm, edgard, franck, jvdm, leonardoc, denis koryavov, alex burmashev, eugene sokolov, ural mullabaev, kirill monakhov – and many other talented developers from Mandriva, Conectiva and ROSA! If you are using Mandriva, or will be using its 2011 version – you’ll certainly encounter the fruits of their work!
So, definitely, it was an amazing and priceless experience!
However, times change, people change, and I realized that time has come for me to sail to new horizons and look for new challenges. Many things changed in Mandriva during those 2.5 years, and it is a completely different company from what it once was. Many people had left, and many new faces has arrived as well during this time. But nonetheless, albeit all the challenges, problems, disappointments and achievements, we managed to stay alive and kicking even in cases where nobody was believing that Mandriva would survive. But it did.
So I’d like to thank you all for the time we spent together trying to make a Linux distribution which would change the world – I believe that we did a not that bad job over those past years!
Mandriva 2011 is almost at the release bay with all of its enhancements and unique features; Mageia 1 is there and Mageia 2 is starting its sail towards its exciting new release. Future looks bright for everyone – and I am really happy about it.
So, I’ll be around in Mandriva (the company) until the end of this month, and I’ll certainly be around in Mandriva and Mageia communities afterwards! And, of course, in the open-source world as a whole .
Cheers,
Eugeni
Sad to hear that you areleaving
good luck in your futur job position, and have à good sailing !
Best of luck for your next step Eugeni! It was a pleasure to work with you during the last years. I hope we will keep in touch.
Good luck for your new horizons, hope to see you on port ( I would say on a tcp port if I wanted to do a bad pun )
Ouch :/ Good luck for your future.
Удачи! Кто теперь за главного остался?
All the best and see you
Sorry to hear this (for Mandriva) – but happy for you! Any hints on who will carry the Baton from here on?? Best of luck in you new adventures!
All the best! It’s been a pleasure working with you on various projects and you deserve a bright, fun and exciting future. I’m sure you won’t be far away in terms of community, so I won’t say “goodbye” as such
See you around!
Hope you don’t quit because I left the Mandriva’s Romanian translation team too
Troubled waters at MDV and difficile birth for MDV 2011, but I think the waters will be more troubled without you and the MDV 2011 birth will be even more complicated.
Nice thing to know you’ll be around the Magaia’s community and help us with high quality stuff as you already accustomed us. See you there and we’ll give a warm welcome.
This is sad, but is your decision and must be respected.
Thanks for those years of work and lead the exciting adventure called “Mandriva 2011″.
Lots and lots of luck in your new projects. I send you a hug!
Не знаю, по полагаю что Дмитрий Комиссаров что-нибудь сообщит!
@Robert I don’t know yet, but there are some very skilled and capable managers in Mandriva/Conectiva/ROSA now. If it were my call, I’d vote for Denis Koryavov for mandriva the distro development – his team did all the job about the new interfaces and so on (all the packages with ‘rosa’ prefix in them are basically developed by him); or Alexander Burmashev – he is the one responsible for each and every technical solution in terms of packaging, fixing, rpm’ing and so on from ROSA.
But it is up to the Mandriva Board to decide, so I am mostly guessing…
Who knows, maybe they’ll rehire Gael? This certainly would be interesting
.
Good luck in your new adventures I’m a bit sad that you are no longer in mandriva, but still be with free software
Good luck! I’m writing from my business notebook, which runs mandriva 2010.2 (not switched to mageia yet on this).
Let’s on the Mageia side.
Well, although it’s sad to hear of your leaving, I wish you the best. Thanks for all your hard work. By the way, I enjoy your stories. Thanks for sharing those.
[...] http://dodonov.net/blog/2011/07/06/sailing-for-new-horizons/ [...]
[...] Twitter o Identi.ca. Las razones del abandono de Eugeni Dodonov, explicadas por él mismo en su blog, son de carácter personal y se resumen en “buscar nuevos [...]
Well, good luck, и жму руку. You and Alexander Kazantsev are the two decent Russian people I know in current Mandriva.
Regarding “highly skilled managers” — I’m yet to see one at ROSA/PingWinSoft side, as Komissarov is a *** *** *** (from my experience) and Denis got a hard time between trying to stitch things together and working with a *** (I know it’s hard for him personally to accept and support lies).
And Mandriva is now substantially a change coin in a political game regarding Russian government market from what can be told from all of this NGI scam story so far
The generals that haven’t been soldiers don’t value lives, and managers who didn’t manage to create don’t value creativity, both their staff’s and others’. Alas.
Hope that such komissarovs and narcozis are the bad day, and will just pass in time.
So… right, even if sad for some time.
(Eugeni – Sorry, I edited your post a bit, let’s avoid personal attacks at least here, shall we?
_
[...] the chief developer of the Mandriva distribution, Eugeni Dodonov, in his blog writes , he becomes the end of the month after almost three years left Mandriva. Reason for leaving are [...]
Eugeni, i like to wish all the best for the future. Mandriva is going to miss another rock!!!
See you around!!!
I’m sorry to see you go. Best of luck in the future!
Germ
I wish you all the best in your future, new challenges, new victories and co.
I’ve always said, maybe not to you :p, that you have a cool-head, that’s a great “feature” in any developer/human being (in that order)
Уважаемый Евгений, не верьте вы этому Михаилу Шигорину, ООО “Альт Линукс” куда более грязная конторка, про неё я на днях напишу и обязательно вам сообщу.
Очень советую почитать: http://altlinuxhater.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/это-война/
Ну все далеко не так пессимистично, Альт Линукс проделал просто громадное количество работы за эти 10 лет.. Я бы даже сказал, что если бы не они и ASPLinux, то Линукса в России до сих пор бы особо и не было..
Ну версия Альта 4.1 была неплохой, а вот 5.0 это же полное убожество, которое валится в kernel panic ещё при установке. Я конечно понимаю, что скорее всего дело в его несовместимости с тем железом на которое я его ставил, но другие же дистры по крайней мере устанавливаются. Такое в школы просто нельзя, учителя будут долго материть Linux. А про то, кто владеет ООО “Альт Линукс” вы читали?
Кстати ASPLinux уже походу совсем RIP, на его форуме посты извращенца даже удалять никто не собирается . Вообще среди российских дистров, заслуживает внимания AgiliaLinux, бывший MOPSLinux, который был доработанной слакой, но они уже далеко ушли вперёд от неё, но это дистры для ИТшников и тех кто этим интересуется, тем кто не хочет возится с системой он не подходит.
Man, you brought positive vibes to Mandriva when that was exactly what was needed. Thanks. Best wishes for your future enjoyment of life! And I am looking forward to what the future holds for both you and Mandriva. I can see where the new stuff from ROSA Labs could lead to increased market penetration with further development and refinement. Wish I could read Cyrillic. If I even spelled that correctly?
Estimado Sr. Eugeni, sou um jovem velho de 65 anos que aprendi a manejar computadores desde quase seu inicio, mais cansado de outro sistema operativo resolvi mudar para o Linux em 2008. Durante estes anos acompanhei tudo o que avia sobre o Mandriva e seu desenvolvimento. Conheci, por intermédio deste meio, que existia um desarrolhador e segui de perto, sempre tudo o que o Sr fazia, e realmente e com sinceridade posso dizer que deixou milhares de pessoas satisfeitas e orgulhosas ao dizer “EU TENHO UM MANDRIVA”………. Não sei quais seriam as suas metas no futuro mais posso dizer-lê, que desejo ao Sr. um futuro muito prospero e cheio de satisfações como ate agora teve……………… Este desconhecido o sauda com satisfação, por os momentos gratos que faz passar, quando abre o computador. Cordialmente Gianfranco Torchia
@Eugueni we shall
(but hope you still let me blame deeds not persons)
Re MSA: насколько понимаю, это чудо (“Станислав Малахов”) у меня в lj вылезло с детским рэкетом.
Откуда только такие экземпляры берутся… я-то альт знаю весьма давно, с разных сторон (см., например, окрестности упоминаний Clustrx в devel@), и сколько было багов повешено да копий сломано — считать умаешься.
Для расстановки точек над “ы”: ALT Linux 5.0 вышел хуже 4.0/4.1 в первую очередь потому, что Комиссаров украл деньги, на которые должна была разрабатываться следующая версия школьного дистрибутива. Почему украл? Потому что альтовский пилот был удачным, а его “продолжение” — провальным. Выпуск же был вытянут чуть ли не в две руки Андреем Черепановым (aka SibSkull).
А вот насчёт учителей, матерящих Linux — интересно, как всё же-таки воспринимать т.н. “внедрение” и т.н. “обучение”, если почитать утёкшую шпаргалку? Это ж такое позорище, что я как учитель, линуксовод и внедренец долго ходил и не знал, куда мне деться от стыда за них!
В общем, не стоит лезть на рожон с обвинениями: а то вдруг объяснят, как было на самом деле. И вдруг выйдет вовсе не так, как рассказывал один дядечка развесившим уши и не сопоставляющим с наблюдаемым.
Грустно такое писать, но за отравление людей вокруг и недолюбливаю крепко тех, кто сознательно врёт.
@Michael Shigorin, ладно уже хватит, посмотрим, что будет после выпусков Альт Линукса 6.0 и Мандривы 2011
Но Комиссаров не вор, просто его компания выиграла тендер, кстати ПингвинСофт не оставил школы без поддержки, когда срок истёк, а ваш ООО “Альт Линукс” с Армадой вряд ли на такое пошли.
2 MSA: я-то знаю, как “просто выиграла” (и интерес тогдашнего замминистра образования через АйТи) и какая была “поддержка”.
А Вы вот не потрудились узнать цену своему “вряд ли”. Подсказываю: ломаный грош.
Комиссаров — вор. Мандривы 2011 в августе не жду. Такие дела.