The co-founders of the Elementary OS project have split, leaving many open questions about one of the most popular Linux distributions (distro).
Danielle Foré and Cassidy James Blaede co-founded the Elementary OS project in an effort to help further Linux on the desktop. Elementary is based on Ubuntu LTS (Long-Term Support) and is often compared to macOS, providing a similar default look and feel. The distro has won its fair share of praise, and currently sits at number 11 on DistroWatch.com.
Unfortunately, there appears to be trouble in paradise, with the two co-founders parting ways, according to Foss Force.
“Thanks to the continued support from our community as well as a large private contribution, I now have the opportunity to do all of this full time as my career,” Blaede announced on his blog. “I plan to continue to focus on the areas I’ve been working on as a volunteer, plus dedicate time to working with OEMs, app developers, and other parties to help keep elementary financially sustainable.”
For her part, Foré vowed to keep moving forward, working on Elementary OS 7.
“I want to still try to release OS7 as close as possible to that LTS release,” she said. “That means there’s some feature stuff that’s probably going to be scoped back. A lot of time was burned recently, so OS7 is probably going to be a more modest release to start with, but since it is an LTS cycle, that means we’ll have two years of basically continuous updates.”
“I don’t care about having Elementary be some big company that takes over the world, and I don’t want to do stuff that’s pushed in that direction anymore,” she continued. “I just want to have fun and be more of a positive force in the broader open source community.”
Given the innovative nature of Elementary, here’s to hoping Foré is able to help keep the project going.
