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Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

jriddell.org

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Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#41

Post by jkaplowitz »

Saaster wrote: post #28
jkaplowitz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing that. Nate’s article links to a comment in which he says the US has no legal cooperative structure “except for limited state-specific exceptions”. I don’t know why those state-specific laws for cooperatives don’t count - they aren’t in any way restricted to operating within the organizing state. I am a member/owner of a grocery store organized under NY’s cooperative corporation law, and they defini…

Your framing seems somehow backwards. Based on the other article[0] Nate and David bought out the business from Blue Systems. Jonathan (previously employed by Blue) proposes a co-op model, the new owners say “no thanks, we’re good”. Jonathan is surprised at this, storms out, detonating all the bridges on the way. [0] https://pointieststick.com/2025/03/10/personal-and-professio...

My framing seems backwards because I’m commenting on what Nate wrote, not on what Jonathan wrote. As you and I have both said, with the way the world works now Nate is within his rights not to want to found a cooperative, and Jonathan is within his rights to be surprised that none of his colleagues care about this like he does.

My point is simply this: Nate shouldn’t pretend that the model he’s proposing is or ever will become the kind of thing Jonathan is advocating for, because it’s not and will not, but I think Nate is pretending that.

From what Jonathan wrote, I also don’t think he intended to storm out. I think he intended to advocate for something, likely with enough frustration and emotion that others who disagreed with him noticed the intensity of his feelings, and they decided to exclude him from further discussions to avoid drama rather than ever engaging with him to give their firm final decision in a calm but explicit way. They weren’t willing to give him a clear final no and instead ostracized him as part of their implicitly stated no.

To be clear, I agree with your implication that Jonathan likely didn’t handle this in the way that would be best for his professional career going forward, insofar as he may not have been calm and diplomatic in his private advocacy and then went quite public with the level of venting we just read. But Nate’s response didn’t make him look good either; it felt as disingenuous as Jonathan’s earnest blog post may have been interpersonally unwise.

Personally I prefer earnest but interpersonally unwise over disingenuous, since it’s easier to fix with constructive criticism and emotional support. But I know a lot of investors and employers don’t feel that way.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#42

Post by x0x0 »

justin66 wrote: post #23

What is he even talking about here? 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 cha…

What seems to have happened is:

Blue Systems had a contract with Valve to work on KDE; Blue Systems no longer wanted to be in the contracting business; several Blue Systems employees (Nate and someone else) formed a company, Techpaladin, which Nate and that person own; said company bought out the Valve contract from Blue Systems.

Jonathan also worked at Blue Systems but seems to have wanted to be part of Techpaladin as an owner without putting any cash in to buy out the Valve contract from Blue Systems.

That said, leaping straight to workers rights, losing kids, and publicly mischaracterizing the events in this way... smells like crazy.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#43

Post by sho_hn »

raverbashing wrote: post #20
nomdep wrote: post #14

The other side of the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45266332

Honestly, it seems some very technically minded people are very naive and very unprepared in regards to practical and legal aspects of life elsewhere. While building a career over such a project like KDE is certainly laudable it seems it leaves people in a very precarious position where the number of companies worldwide where you can be employed at any given time can be counted with the fingers in one hand, with some…

> While building a career over such a project like KDE is certainly laudable it seems it leaves people in a very precarious position where the number of companies worldwide where you can be employed at any given time can be counted with the fingers in one hand, with some to spare

Your average KDE contributor is an expert in at least two widely used technologies, C++ and Qt, and typically in several more. Purely KDE-related work may not be a huge employment market, but trust me it's not that hard for KDE folks to find work in general, and you will find them in many high places.

That is to say that contributing is definitely not putting you into any precarious career positions :-)

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#44

Post by jajuuka »

I got distracted by the Quaker thing and went down a rabbit hole. But overall Jonathan seems like a decent person and major loss to KDE. Only thing I'm confused about is why he got shunned and I guess he had issues with his family too. Just about anything could explain that so I feel like that's a critical piece here but I'm not looking to violate anyones privacy or force them to divulge such information. Just something that could explain where Jonathan is coming from in all this.

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

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#45

Post by toyg »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #41
Saaster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your framing seems somehow backwards. Based on the other article[0] Nate and David bought out the business from Blue Systems. Jonathan (previously employed by Blue) proposes a co-op model, the new owners say “no thanks, we’re good”. Jonathan is surprised at this, storms out, detonating all the bridges on the way. [0] https://pointieststick.com/2025/03/10/personal-and-professio...

My framing seems backwards because I’m commenting on what Nate wrote, not on what Jonathan wrote. As you and I have both said, with the way the world works now Nate is within his rights not to want to found a cooperative, and Jonathan is within his rights to be surprised that none of his colleagues care about this like he does. My point is simply this: Nate shouldn’t pretend that the model he’s proposing is or ever w…

I think Jonathan was disappointed because he honestly thought he was among like-minded friends, people he'd known and worked with for so long; he clearly didn't expect to be rebuffed so hard.

I've been in similar situations, and it's hard to stay professional in those cases. The feeling of personal betrayal is significant. Add to this that most old-school Linux hackers like him are often motivated by striving for social justice, and somewhat expect everyone who works with them to fundamentally wish the same things. Discovering that long-term collaborators actually wish to be regular techbros, must sting.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#46

Post by toyg »

billyjobob wrote: post #24
nomdep wrote: post #14

The other side of the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45266332

Doesn’t sound like we have the full story from either side. This blog post from Nate reads like he is continuing to gaslight. But then Jonathan doesn’t explain why he didn’t just buy into the partnership like the other 2 did if he wanted to be a co-owner.

Probably because he didn't have the capital. He's been doing KDE work for ages behind the scenes, but I don't think that made him much money. He hints at the fact that his professional condition hampered his attempt to keep his adopted kids with him, which would indicate he's not particularly wealthy.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#47

Post by jkaplowitz »

toyg wrote: post #45
jkaplowitz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My framing seems backwards because I’m commenting on what Nate wrote, not on what Jonathan wrote. As you and I have both said, with the way the world works now Nate is within his rights not to want to found a cooperative, and Jonathan is within his rights to be surprised that none of his colleagues care about this like he does. My point is simply this: Nate shouldn’t pretend that the model he’s proposing is or ever w…

I think Jonathan was disappointed because he honestly thought he was among like-minded friends, people he'd known and worked with for so long; he clearly didn't expect to be rebuffed so hard. I've been in similar situations, and it's hard to stay professional in those cases. The feeling of personal betrayal is significant. Add to this that most old-school Linux hackers like him are often motivated by striving for soc…

Yeah, a lot of different types of people get involved in this ecosystem, not only the stereotypical primarily altruistically motivated old-school hacker. This is especially true for the for-profit sector rather than among the purely volunteer part of the community.

That said, only some of them would be tech bro wannabes. Others might not want to try to rock the boat in this awful economy, in the sense of not wanting the career consequences of having been part of a failed attempt to form a cooperative when the company ends up capitalist in the end, or simply might be skeptical that a cooperative would succeed well enough to meet their genuine financial needs.

I am a Debian developer myself, though quite inactive for the last 6 or so years due to life circumstances. Plenty of people even in that world end up working for the man, in such forms as Google or Dropbox or the like, even if they’d rather not. Life is expensive and the world is capitalist with bills to pay.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#48

Post by sombragris »

> But in the end I lost my friends, my colleagues, my job, my career and my family.

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.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#49

Post by tvb12 »

jpetso wrote: post #36
WorldPeas wrote: post #3

Not to scaremonger, are we to expect some extent of software rot on KDE because of this change?

No. Jonathan was co-maintaining KDE neon, which now has one developer left and is about to be joined by KDE Linux, another take on a Plasma-based distro. He also handled release manager duties, which have been transferred and running smoothly for a few months now. He may have contributed in other ways that I'm not aware of, but overall KDE is in a very good spot with many more developers working on stuff.

For others who might not know, KDE Neon is a distribution. I was initially confused because I thought it might have been an alternative desktop environment to KDE Plasma.

This is probably the greatest curse and blessing of modern Linux: there are an impractical number of distributions. I guess you could probably say the same thing for desktop environments, various services, bootloaders, etc.

Re: Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE

#50

Post by ajot »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #26
nomdep wrote: post #14

The other side of the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45266332

Thanks for sharing that. Nate’s article links to a comment in which he says the US has no legal cooperative structure “except for limited state-specific exceptions”. I don’t know why those state-specific laws for cooperatives don’t count - they aren’t in any way restricted to operating within the organizing state. I am a member/owner of a grocery store organized under NY’s cooperative corporation law, and they defini…

Had to check, but it seems that KDE is "owned" (or legally represented and its trademarks owned by) a german nonprofit, KDE eV. Wouldn't there be a possibility for Riddell (or anuone in the community) to create a cooperative in Germany or any other part of the EU, just like the galician folks?
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