Mandriva COO Jean-Manuel Croset has taken to the official Mandriva blog to ask the community of the Linux distribution for "constructive inputs, ideas and visions" for Mandriva's future strategy. The promised share holder meeting that is set to decide the financial future of the company has finally been announced for 30 April and Croset now wants the users and contributors of the distribution to tell him about their background, motivations and needs as far as Mandriva is concerned.

Croset admits that the commercial entity behind Mandriva "didn’t communicate during the last few months", but offers no explanation for this sudden interest in the community's thoughts on the project. In 2010, developers and users concerned with the future of Mandriva created the community-run Mageia fork. Mageia is currently working on their second release, which is expected to arrive shortly.

The blog post not only asks for input from the community, it also indirectly poses the question if Mandriva is still viable as a distribution: "This is about preparing the future, seeing whether there is a community now, active or potential, around Mandriva Linux." It is not clear what impact the users feedback will have on the shareholders of the company, though. Mandriva has been in financial troubles since December of last year, having delayed the decision on how to proceed several times.

(fab)