I'm assuming most of you already know what Elementary OS is, but here's their website for context:
https://elementary.io/
Elementary has in my opinion, one of the best user experiences in any Linux distro. Their desktop, made by their own team, Pantheon, is simply amazing. It's fast, beautiful and easy to use.
And to hear that the days of one of my favourite distros are possibly numbered is not really a very happy thought.
There has been a lot of drama between the Elementary OS founders recently, which culminated in Cassidy James, arguably the head of Elementary, leaving and joining Endless, an organization that makes affordable computers and has a distro of their own - Elementary OS.
Farewell, elementary. https://t.co/t4DTBgT1oy
— Cassidy James Blaede (@CassidyJames) March 31, 2022
We had a big business development meeting in December, 2021 to go over projects, prioritize finances, and discuss the budget. During that week, Dani, our CFO, and I again discussed the possibility of taking jobs elsewhere while continuing to work on elementary. In January, we enacted some adjustments including cutting salaries and completely eliminating healthcare for employees and family members. I was reluctant to agree to these cuts, but agreed since it seemed like the only immediate solution, as increasing revenue would take longer. We also agreed to revisit the situation quarterly—likely with additional salary cuts—with the next time set for April.
Since discussing the possibility of taking a salary elsewhere, I had been keeping a casual ear to the ground for potential positions at open source companies I believed in, but nothing really stood out. However, soon after our meeting and these cuts, a perfect opportunity in open source and with existing friends and colleagues was shared with me—so I looked into it. After confirming it would be an incredible fit while importantly allowing me to continue my work on elementary, I made the hard decision to cut back my hours at elementary, eliminate my salary (freeing it up for other initiatives), and to take this position for my wage.
As a result, Dani has asked me to resign and completely step away from elementary. This was not my intention when seeking out another position, but Dani has been adamant. In the end, I have decided that the best course of action is indeed for me to move on; I’m giving up on my decade-plus passion for elementary, and have accepted an offer for Dani to be the sole, 100% owner of elementary, Inc. I’ve signed my resignation and as of today, she now owns the entirety of the company shares and responsibility. I wish her the best in continuing its legacy.
In line with Dani’s wishes, I will no longer be involved in any way at elementary. Instead, I will focus my free-time efforts on contributing to GNOME, Flatpak, Flathub, and those growing ecosystems. In many ways, this will be a continuation of my work from elementary where I was involved in GNOME hackfests and conferences, attended and spoke at the Linux App Summit, helped design and championed the cross-desktop dark style and accent colors, and worked on an open ecosystem of apps. Soon, I will share more about joining an open source organization where I will continue to work with many familiar faces in the free desktop world while improving the lives of folks around the world—and I can’t wait to get into it. But more on that later.
This is a good way to remember that Linux distros and any other open source project doesn't run on the will of their developers alone. Money is absolutely necessary for anything to keep going, as is in capitalism.
We've seen how Ubuntu has gone downhill on the desktop space, even if 22.04 has been surprisingly good, their focus on the server space has clearly marked a shift of direction, one headed into the path of money.
And as Cassidy said:
I’m extremely saddened by how this whole fiasco transpired, and honestly I still don’t understand the motivations behind certain actions. I hope over time relationships can heal and I can better understand the motivations—even if I won’t ever agree with how it was handled.
I also fail to understand the reasoning behind this. I think Danielle is completely in the wrong on this one. Someone looking at other ways of making a living whilst your company is cutting salaries and benefits isn't any reason to ask for someone to resign, someone so important to the project and that has been there every step of the way.
Danielle's reasoning can be found on a series of Twitter posts, some tweets have even been deleted but they're backed up on archive.org, it can be found here.
I was really excited for Elementary OS version 7, as in-place updates and other great features seemed to be coming.
Dani has stated that the company will continue, but this is some shaky ground right now, and without Cassidy I doubt things will be progressing as fast as they were before, and they were already painfully slow.
My biggest fear with all of this is where the Pantheon desktop environment will go, as for now, Elementary is the only distribution where it can be run properly since a lot of the things it relies on are exclusive to their repositories and implementing it on other distros - even Arch - has been a pain.
Pantheon needs to survive. It's been in development for many many years now and is proof that a third party can make something great that isn't just a KDE or GNOME spin. That breaks a lot of norms and still makes things work amazingly well. I love it.
But without eOS, is there really a place for it? I'd be over the moon if one day we get to see it in the Arch repos. Maybe even a "Ubuntu Pantheon" or a Manjaro edition... but right now, all I can do is hope for the best.
Long live Elementary.
