Six years after having forked the commercial Mandriva Linux distribution andwith five solid releases, the Mageia community wants to share its successesand lessons learned from developing, releasing and supporting a user-friendlyand flexible distribution with an inclusive governance model. Mageia's aim isto bridge the gap between end users and developers, encouraging andfacilitating contributions from all users thanks to low entry barriers andmentoring programs in its various teams. * * * The 100% community-driven GNU/Linux distribution Mageia was forked from thethen-unsteady (and now defunct) commercial distribution Mandriva Linux 6 yearsago, in September 2010. Since then, the volunteers from the Mageia communityhave published 5 stable releases, with the 6th one in the making, alwaysfocusing on bridging the gap between end users and contributors, to create auser-friendly but powerful system made for and by its users. Forking a commercial distribution with paid staff to run it as a community-driven non-profit endeavour relying solely on volunteers was an ambitious move– with the perspective of those 6 years of development, the Mageia communitywould like to present the lessons learned, the hardships and successes it hador still has and its plans to continue progressing forward as a community-based independent GNU/Linux distribution. The talk will aim at outlining general conclusions that could be relevantbeyond the scope of GNU/Linux distributions, and therefore provide usefulinsights for other projects transitioning from a company-driven development topartial or full community focus.