But I'm not sure I really understand what happened. AFAICT, Valve had a contract with Blue Systems, specifically a subunit of Blue Systems that does KDE development. Blue Systems decided to sell that subunit to Techpaladin, Nate Graham's company. Riddell was unhappy about this, and proposed that... I guess that Blue Systems not sell to Techpaladin? Or that Techpaladin reorganize itself into a worker-owned company? And then when Graham declined to do this, stuff happened, and eventually Riddell got fired from Techpaladin, or not hired by Techpaladin, and now Riddell is not getting paid to work on KDE. So Riddell has (not unreasonably) decided to stop working on KDE. And the other people who once worked for Blue Systems and now work for Techpaladin have decided to keep working for Techpaladin.

Am I missing something? Being unfair to someone?

UPDATE: Apparently it was a deal done months ago with the Blue Systems owner: https://pointieststick.com/2025/03/10/personal-and-professio...

We never had workers rights at Blue Systems, we were all on self employment contracts. This will continue at Tech Paladin. It is illegal but unenforceable when done on an international setup. But employment rights are not a luxury you can chose to do without if you enjoy your job and want some more flexibility in your work day. They are fundamental and life altering rights that change people’s lives as I discovered when my adopted children were taken away from me. Nobody should be doing business with or taking money from Tech Paladin else be party to illegal workers rights abuses.

I read Nate's response and it seems very hand wavy. Regardless hope Jonathan can continue doing what he loves somewhere else.

As a Plasma user and a part of a KDE team for 10 years at some time (in the past), reading this really breaks my heart. I hope Jonathan can find peace and healing.

It sounds like Nate is set on starting a conventional company, and that should be fine. The previous company apparently never made financial sense so it also doesn’t work to just continue that model directly and so things and people get cut. It can be both hard to communicate and to hear, doubly so when you’re emotionally invested. That’s why IMO it’s important to separate your self worth from your job at some level, for your own mental wellbeing.

On KDE, the best for the project would be an inmutable distro with Flatpak.

I don't see enough people reflecting on this, much less in the open source community. Props to the author for being so honest about it.

HN has a culture that is very eager to promote passionate computing, and I still consider that good thing. At the same time though, we put an immense amount of faith in technology, that "fixing" a problem in code or hardware will make it go away. It's a great religion for motivated tech workers, but also still a passionate lie. There are so many extenuating things that determine success and define your problem space, it becomes almost wasteful to sacrifice your personal wellbeing to "fix" a problem and renew your faith in technology.

This happens everywhere, in startups and open source projects alike. Take care of yourselves, people.

What? There were plenty of books out by Petzold, Richter and Prosise.