Elementary OS reduces staff to 1, warns "less features" for next release
Elementary is "just me now”, and has been an "uncool place to work”.
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In early March, there appeared to be some internal struggles at the company behind the Elementary OS Linux distribution — with one of the company’s founders taking to Twitter to talk about a splitting of the company assets between the two co-founders.
“I offered an even split of the company’s assets. One of us keeps the company and the other gets half of the money.”
Now, one month later, that appears to have happened… accompanied by a significant reduction in staff and future plans for the operating system.
According to a blog post from one of the Elmentary co-founders:
“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.”
The other, remaining co-founder took to YouTube to discuss this change in company leadership in a one hour live stream:
Here are some highlight quotes from that announcement video from the one remaining person involved with the company:
“[the company, Elementary, is] just me now”
“I am the sole owner of Elementary Inc.”
From the video, it sounds like Elementary, as a company, had three employees prior to this event. Now it consists entirely of the remaining co-founder.
There was some discussion about the next, upcoming release of Elementary OS (version 7):
“[for OS 7 there is] some feature stuff that's going to have to be scoped back”
“OS 7 is probably going to be a more modest release”
“a few less features for os 7”
The fact that the Elementary is bracing users for a “more modest release” for a release that is set to happen very soon suggests, rather strongly, that problems behind the scenes have been hindering development for quite some time.
The remaining co-founder also made significant warnings about the future viability and profitability of the company.
“[I don't want elementary to] become this out of control machine... this crazy capitalist profit seeking machine"
“if elementary os is just like a cool design incubator for what gets picked up in GNOME I think that's ok”
“if this can't be a job that's also fine”
When the sole employee of a company states “if this can't be a job that's also fine”, the writing is on the wall… the company is likely not long for this world.
The co-founder went on to suggest, rather strongly, that the future of the Elementary operating system could be reduced to that of a “design incubator”:
“if elementary os is just like a cool design incubator for what gets picked up in GNOME I think that's ok”
And that the “Elementary Developer Weekend” events — the company’s equivalent of a developer conference — is likely cancelled going forward.
“I'm not sure about doing another Elementary Developer Weekend”
Beyond the bleak future of the company, the co-founder also briefly discussed views on the company culture and focus:
“I don't know if Elementary had a bad impact necessarily... I don't think the focus of Elementary Inc. was in the right place.”
“[Elementary Inc was] an uncool place to work”
In short:
The company staff has reduced from 3 down to 1.
Scope of the next release (Elementary version 7) has been “scoped back” to be a “more modest release”.
The company will not focus on profitability, or sustainability going forward. May not be able to sustain the one remaining employee.
The future of Elementary may be simply as a “design incubator for GNOME”.
Elementary has been an “uncool place to work”.
Combine this with the remaining Elementary co-founder’s previous statement of “I might take some time off from Linux or join another community maybe”… and the future of Elementary is murky, at best.
It is always sad to see a quality Operating System self-destruct like this. Not the first time it has happened, and certainly won’t be the last. Just the same, it is certainly a bummer.
The team behind Elementary has done some truly impressive work over the years, and deserves to be proud of what they’ve accomplished.
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