The founder of the elemetnary OS distribution, Danielle Foré, spoke on her Twitter about the company's financial problems, cuts and disagreements with the co-founder. Some of the posts were immediately deleted, but a complete thread of reflections remained in the archive.
At first, the girl noted that from the very beginning of the pandemic, the elementary OS team began to experience financial difficulties. The operating system is distributed free of charge, but before downloading, the user can donate any amount. Due to difficulties with work and income, users began to leave less funds for development.
The company tried to combat this, attracting new users, developing social networks, but in the end came to the conclusion that there was a need to cut costs. The analysis showed that the largest and main item of expenditure is the salaries of employees. At the beginning of this year, management agreed with workers on a 5% reduction.
At the beginning of February 2022, another meeting was planned, at which they were preparing to discuss cuts in the salaries of managers, and Danielle noted that she was ready to give up part of her income for the benefit of the company. But a few days later, elementary OS co-founder Cassidy James Blade (Cassidy James Blaede) announced his departure from the company and expressed a desire not to give up his share and remain on the board. Danielle emphasized that such a step is unacceptable for elementary, since historically only those people who work on the product make decisions.
On this basis, the founders disagreed, and as a result of discussions, they came to the decision that Cassidy takes half of the company's assets and refuses to manage in favor of Danielle. The documents were already in the hands of the lawyers, but at that moment Cassidy's lawyer announced that his client wanted to receive $30,000 at a time, $70,000 annually for the next 10 years, and keep 5% of the company's shares.
Conversations with Cassidy did not help and he stood his ground and did not want to give in. So far, the parties have not been able to reach an agreement, and Danielle noted that the company is only losing money every day. The founder talked about how she is doing everything possible to save elementary, but if the company cannot be saved, then she is ready to take a break from Linux and implement other projects.
The latest version of elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir was introduced at the end of December last year. The operating system has worked to improve efficiency, expanded the list of compatible hardware and added fixes based on user complaints.
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