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Distro: Mandriva & CC-NC-SA

I happened to be “wandering past” (dropping an AV kit to) Jonathan Oxer today, at his Distro Summit, when it struck him as likely that I might just happen to use a Linux distro, so he asked if I might give a short presentation on it.

This, opportunistically, is how I gave a short presentation on Mandriva to about 2 dozen geeks.

Mandriva started life as Mandrake, a derivative of Red Hat, then was forced by Hearst Corporation to change its name. Choosing “Mandriva” to reflect the acquisition of Conectiva, Mandriva shouldered its way through the financial morass caused by this Intellectual Property row, pressing on to remain a useful community presence.

With The Penguin Liberation Front flying in formation, Mandriva offers a range of products from the free/Free, totally Open distribution through PLF-assisted codec-enhanced versions to the Commercial-including “Professional” edition, with associated costs (or lack of) & levels of support.

Also got to ask some pointy questions of Jessica & Kimberlee at the Gaming MiniConf about license issues. Kimberlee’s head didn’t explode (yet) but OTOH a certain performer hasn’t (yet) been convinced to CC license any of her works, either.

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