Charles H Schulz has announced, on behalf of the Mandriva community, that the submission to create the non-profit OpenMandriva Association as an NGO under French law (Association de loi 1901) has been approved by the relevant authorities. With this, the organisation governing the development of the Mandriva Linux distribution "is now legally independent and fully autonomous," according to Schulz.

Turning Mandriva into a community-run distribution and setting up the foundation took over six months, but Schulz remarked that he is looking forward to the "year of our rebirth" with the legal framework for the governance of the distribution laid down. In a statement on the blog of Mandriva S.A., the commercial company behind the project, Schulz also affirmed that the company is committed to continued support of the development of the distribution.

The developers are still working to get all of the technical infrastructure of the OpenMandriva Association into place while Mandriva Linux 2012 is still being worked on, the latest release of which is Alpha 2 from November. A beta release was scheduled for 7 December but has not been released yet.

See also:

OpenMandriva becoming fully independent, a report from The H.

(fab)