Prominent KDE developer [1]Jonathan Riddell who was formerly involved with Kubuntu and then KDE Neon, served for a while on [2]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 [3]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.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Jonathan+Riddell

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Riddell-Stepping-Down-Plasma-RM

[3] https://jriddell.org/2025/09/14/adios-chicos-25-years-of-kde/