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.
UPDATE: Apparently it was a deal done months ago with the Blue Systems owner: https://pointieststick.com/2025/03/10/personal-and-professio...
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
But that organization operates on a one person, one vote model, not a one dollar, one vote model. He seems to want one person to put in a disproportionate amount of investment capital and end up with a disproportionate amount of voting authority. That’s not the kind of “cooperative socialist” model which Jonathan was advocating, it’s a standard capitalist one.
And I’m not saying that he has no right in the way the world works now to operate as a capitalist. He does. But he shouldn’t be surprised if someone who wants a cooperative model doesn’t view that as even aspirationally qualifying and isn’t satisfied by vague comments about how workers can gradually buy their way toward an approximation of equal power.
What? There were plenty of books out by Petzold, Richter and Prosise.
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.
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.
Independent contracting can of course be legitimate if the substance of the relationship is arranged to match what the law understands independent contracting to mean.
But if it’s de facto employment and only de jure contracting, what’s actually happening is the employer is dodging a lot of mandatory contributions to the employee’s local social security systems (such as pension and healthcare) and a lot of the mandatory employment protections applicable in that jurisdiction. The employee can make a huge mess for the employer if they ever report it to the authorities with adequate proof of the true nature of the relationship, because misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor is illegal.
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?
anthk•1d ago
On KDE, the best for the project would be an inmutable distro with Flatpak.
1oooqooq•20h ago
but sadly is the direction it will go, because people see the dollar signs "when valve buys the license" which will never happen because that ship already sailed.
anthk•13h ago
On 'the ship already sailed', Gnome's performance it's really bad compared to Plasma.