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Jonathan Riddell’s Diary: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE
It was the turn of the millenium when I got my first computer fresh at university. backdoored Windows seemed uninteresting, it was impossible to work out how it worked or write programs for it. SuSE GNU/Linux 6.2 was much more interesting to try and opened a world of understanding how computers worked and wanting to code on them. These were the days of the .com boom and I went to big expos in London where they showered you with freebies and I.C.B.M. competed with SuSE and Red Bait for the biggest stall. I.C.B.M. said that GNU/Linux had made it on the server and now was going to take over the desktop so I realised that working with KDE would be a good idea. And as a novice coder it was very perfect for learning Qt and how open development worked and I loved the free software ideals. Going to the pre-Akademy conference (it was called Kastle then) in Nove Hrady was a great intro to the community in person and in some ways I learnt more about software development in a week there then my years at uni.
[...]Last winter I drove to the Blue Systems schoße for a routine conference and was organising people to give talks when the guy who pays us started off by saying he was dying and the company would be shutting down. Which was very sad but it makes sense to end it on a high. After years of having no business modal and not knowing what the aims of the company were, which caused several people to genuinely go mad, we finally had a business model of sorts with Valve paying us to make Plasma up to the standards needed to ship it as Desktop Scope on the Valve Steam Deck games console. Nate had been given advanced notice of the company shutting down and had already started another company, Tech Paladin, to take on the business. Shouldn’t this be run as a cooperative we wondered? No that was too complex he said. The next day I ended up at a funeral for some German accountants and when I came back there had been some more discussion and we watched a video about Igalia who make the other operating system for Valve. They are a cooperative socialist paradise and Nate said he’d look into doing that instead of the setup where he had full control and all the profit. It was clear there was to be no other discussion on the matter of our future.
[...]
Then I started to get sad, being cut off from my life for the last 25 years was too much for me. All things come to an end and I’ve seen plenty people had to leave KDE because the money ran out or maybe they had a disagreement with someone in the project, but never a profiteering control struggle like this. I struggled to get out of bed on some days.
Update
More here:
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Jonathan Riddell Leaves KDE After 25 Years with Mixed Emotions
As I mentioned, Riddell’s most visible contribution came with Kubuntu, the KDE-based variant of Ubuntu. He worked to bring KDE into Ubuntu’s ecosystem, spending roughly a decade leading the distro’s development, making it probably the best Ubuntu flavor.
Under his watch, the project was adopted by institutions such as Google, the City of Munich, and Weta Digital. After Canonical withdrew funding for Kubuntu, Riddell and others continued their work under Blue Systems, which later backed the creation of KDE neon.
And here:
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Unhappy Ending! Kubuntu Creator Jonathan Riddell Departs After 25 Years with KDE
A clash of opinions and values results in Jonathan Riddell saying goodbye to KDE after 25 long years.
The Register:
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Key KDE developer Jonathan Riddell quits
Sad news for KDE: one of the core people guiding the project for the whole century so far has left the building.
Jonathan Riddell, the former leader of both the Kubuntu and KDE neon distributions, has published an emotional blog post titled "Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE." In it, he describes how changes in the corporate structure behind the KDE organization have resulted in his departure.
Riddell describes himself as a "Canoeist, Quaker, and Computer Person." It's a modest summary. Over the years, he's been featured on The Register a few times. For instance, in 2020, he talked to the Reg about the importance of KDE. In a touch of foreshadowing, back in March, we reported that he planned to step down after the Plasma 6.3 release cycle.
Some Clarification:
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A few corrections about the transition from Blue Systems to Techpaladin
By now, many have probably read Jonathan Riddell’s blog post yesterday about his departure from KDE and the events that led up to it. And today, an article has been published in ItsFoss about the topic that unfortunately seems to have misunderstood some of the details of Jonathan’s post. I didn’t want to have to write this post, but since I’m named personally in both places, and there are inaccuracies spreading out there, I thought it would make sense to correct the record before this becomes too much of a game of telephone.
Overall it’s a very sad situation, and I want to make it clear that I bear no malice or ill will towards Jonathan. As for the internal details of the transition of many of Blue Systems’ personnel to Techpaladin Software, Jonathan is entitled to his interpretation of events, and that’s fair. But it was a delicate transition, and people also have a right to personal and professional privacy. As such, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to get into anything non-public about individual people’s personal and work situations, motivations, or decisions.
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The move from Blue Systems to TechPaladin
People have been a bit weirded by what happened during this period. People have been interested in this after the post by Jonathan Riddell was written.
Here's what I remember from the situation.
Ed: Response above says a lot.