Future of elementary OS is uncertain due to lack of money and dispute between founders

The two co-founders of Linux distro elementary OS have a dispute and the company behind the software is losing money. The future of the elementary company, and with it the software, is uncertain, one of the founders admits.

Elementary OS sales have been down since the coronavirus crisis low and they barely recover, elementary school co-founder Danielle Foré reports: “Elementary has been losing significant amounts of money for a long time.” The company has received an anonymous donation for several years, but due to the disappointing results, wage sacrifices have to be made, according to her. At the beginning of this year, it was agreed that wages would be cut by 5 percent and further reductions would be discussed at a meeting in February.

Prior to that meeting, elementary elementary co-founder Cassidy James Blaede announced that he was leaving and accepted a job elsewhere, Foré writes. She claims that he does want to keep the shares in the company in order to keep influence. Foré: “That’s not okay with me. Elementary has always been about the people who do the work.” Blaede does not respond substantively, also because, according to him, lawyers are involved. According to him, elementary will be able to continue to exist.

Out deleted tweets via the Wayback Machine, it turns out that Foré is not so sure. In those posts, she claimed that Blaede wants $30,000 right away and $70,000 over the next ten years, while retaining 5 percent of the stock. According to her, that was not the agreement and she feels betrayed. “I have no idea what’s going to happen to this company. I don’t have the power to do anything without coming to some sort of agreement first and that takes a long time, where we lose money every day.”

Elementary OS is an ease of use focused Ubuntu LTS based Linux distribution. Users can purchase the distro for an amount of their choosing.