An important resource is squandered

I finally read today, via DistroWatch Weekly, that Adam Williamson will be laid off from Mandriva come 30 December. I find Adam's pending removal from Mandriva's payroll highly annoying. It was Adam who made me think about using Mandriva, who challenged my assumptions about what is important in a distribution, and who eventually convinced me not only to use Mandriva but to purchase a one year PowerPack subscription as well as a Mandriva pre-installed on a USB thumb drive. It was worth every penny I spent. And now I find he's being let go.

For me, Adam came to represent "the voice" of Mandriva. Adam not only responded to comments and criticisms with tireless energy, professionalism and a sense of humor on regular sites such as Slashdot, DistroWatch, and OSNews, but on my little bitty blog, and I'm sure others as well. This is not to say that all other poster's comments aren't important or don't matter. They do. But Adam made Mandriva a lot more approachable as both a company and as a distribution. And it helped convince me my postings weren't a complete waste of storage and electrons.

Adam has responded to comments on OSNews that he's "waiting to hear back" from the Fedora/Redhat camp; I hope he winds up there. Where-ever Adam winds up, that's the distribution I want to give serious consideration to if not use outright. Good people tend to make good distributions. Whether I'll stick with Mandriva from this point forward is an interesting question. Mandriva's release of a very good developer and diplomat indicate poor judgement, and force me to question the long-term viability of the product I'm purchasing from them. I guess I'll be sticking with OpenSUSE a little longer than I first anticipated.

Good luck, Adam.