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⇱ Jonathan Riddell Leaving KDE Development After 25 Years - Phoronix


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Jonathan Riddell Leaving KDE Development After 25 Years

Written by Michael Larabel in KDE on 15 September 2025 at 08:26 AM EDT. 51 Comments
Prominent KDE developer Jonathan Riddell who was formerly involved with Kubuntu and then KDE Neon, served for a while on KDE Plasma release management, and other significant contributions over the years announced he's stepping away from the KDE world.

Jonathan Riddell has been involved with KDE for the past twenty-five years but has decided to leave this space. This comes following the German IT company Blue Systems shutting down. Well known KDE benefactor Blue Systems had employed Riddell for a number of years.

With Blue Systems shutting down, Tech Paladin was launched as sort of a spiritual successor. Tech Paladin has been focused on efforts being funded by Valve for enhancing the KDE Plasma desktop. But with Tech Paladin not covering the entire scope of efforts as Blue Systems and not employing everyone from the former company, there seems to be some disagreements and differing/frustrated views over the situation.

Jonathan Riddell published a personal blog post outlining his end to contributing to the KDE project.
"But in the end I lost my friends, my colleagues, my job, my career and my family. What’s a spod who just tried to do the right thing for society to do? Dunno. For now, if you want me, you can find me surfing the endless wave whenever the sun sets over my digital nomad coliving paddleshack at the end of the world."

Riddell's contributions to KDE over the past quarter century have been immense and his technical talent will surely be missed.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.