The potential sad thing about this is that our options are reduced. Mandriva has been one of the most important distros for a decade and there have been several forks.
PCLOS being the most established one. Then there is Mageia that barely has consolidated itself, but is the closest to Mandriva 2010, Unity etc.
Many have considered the diversity in Linux to be a bad thing.
Now we are left with a few clear options on the RPM side Like Fedora and Centos. And Debian, and Ubuntu with forks on the Debian side.
+ some special distros like Arch and Gentoo.
Mandriva as a driving force could be history - we don't know yet. That might influence the forks too. I don't think there are some automated mechanisms that necessarily will make Mandriva-Users jump to a Mandriva fork.
It could very well happen that they pick Fedora or even Mint.
That way Mandriva could crumble and disappear like the very first distro: Ygdrasil - who remembers that today?
It has not been possible for the people in Charge to make money on Mandriva. I believe that this would have been different with different owners.
Today Mandriva is a French/Russian "business" - both famous for their bureaucracy , and not for efficiency.
I can't help thinking that Mandriva would have been a thriving business with German origin.....
Wild speculations but we are invited to it, by the bankruptcy publication ( I am not sure that threat should have been published - It still would have worked internally).
Then again
I asked for it, so who am I to complain
The speculations in themselves are bad for business - but I think we are beyond that now. This is simply about survival, after that there will be a major task for the management to create confidence in Mandriva again.
I guess I am saying that it is hard to believe that this good distro did not make any money while more inferior distros have managed just that.
I don't want Mandriva to die, because Mandriva matters, and we all know that Mandriva has a magic origin.
So it is time to pull something spectacular out of the hat....