Project Leadership Changes

[joshuaboniface]

Hello everyone. Effective yesterday, Anthony and I decided to depart from the project, myself as Project Leader, and he as a core team member. This is in addition to the resignation of Andrew on Friday. We leave the project in the very capable hands of the remaining team who have been driving the project for many years now.

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Joshua:

For me personally, it was just time for a change. I simply could no longer provide the effort (mental or time-wise) that the role demanded, and thus I was not performing my duties to an acceptable degree, facing severe burnout, and risks to my mental health. It was time to step aside. Hand-off is ongoing and is amicable, and there is good communication lines, so there is little to no risk of a hostile fork or anything of that nature. Jellyfin will continue for a long time to come, just not with me at its head.

When I started Jellyfin, I thought it would be something used by a few hundred, or maybe if we were lucky, a few thousand, users. We might put a few pet features in, and do a bit of cleanup, but really, I didn't expect much. Now here we are 7-and-a-half years later, and it's the #1 FLOSS media server, a truly viable alternative to Plex for literally millions of server administrators and probably 10x that many individual users, and we've left our parent project completely in our dust. We've proven that FLOSS works, and is in demand.

I truly hope Jellyfin outlives me, and I trust those in the team to keep the philosophy and code alive.

For the last time, happy watching all!

Edit: For posterity, here is my more-detailed blog post on the subject: https://www.boniface.me/posts/on-my-jell...signation/

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Anthony:

My particular reasons are a bit different, so I figured I would post as well.

For myself, though I don't touch much code these days, I do a lot to manage things in the backend and with App Stores/etc. After 7.5 - nearly 8 - years, it's been a long time since I've been able to give much of my free time to Jellyfin. My life is changing and I've got other things that must take priority. 

I am fully committed to a smooth transition, which is something I've wanted for a long time anyway. Even if the transition takes a year, I'm still down to do that. I want Jellyfin to succeed, and it should.

[jellykrabbypatty]

Thank you for everything!

[Cutter]

Thank you very much Joshua, Anthony and Andrew for the time and effort you've put into this project.

[mikey242]

Thank you both so much for all the time and effort you put into this project, it is one of my favourite self-hosted projects which I now consider essential!

[dxbi]

I have nothing but the greatest respect for both such excellent, sustained effort and also for recognizing when your own situation warrants stepping back and handing the reigns to someone else to carry on.

Thank you!

[bitmap]

Just want to echo the sentiments from all the conversations as well as those shared here: thank you all for your contributions to this massively popular and wildly successful project. I thank the whole team for expanding my repertoire of knowledge around self-hosting and providing a better, open source alternative to other (unnamed 🗿) products.

Good luck in your journeys. 🚀 I hope to see you back around the project should you be able to find the right balance, contributing however you can.

[Gay Moist]

Thank you for building this amazing app and community that brings joy and access to hundreds of thousands 


Take it easy, enjoy the rest!

[xenago]

Thank you for everything. I truly appreciate all your hard work on Jellyfin and I'm sad to see you leaving but glad everything seems to be working out amicably.

[kvoong825]

I just stumbled onto JellyFin late last year and it has changed the way I store and watch videos. I can't thank the JellyFin team and the great community enough for their dedication and support.

[Rhialto]

My first post for a thank you for Jellyfin! A bit curious why leaving just a few days before the 12.0 full release but whatever...

After getting a NAS years ago I was looking at the options to store some media files and I found Universal Media Server which I ran a while, then tried Plex which I think I ran for a year. When I say ran, it was very light usage, almost never using it. Then I kept reading about Plex bad decisions and one day I had enough and found a few more alternatives like Emby but also Jellyfin and I'm still using it. Still light usage but still...

Is the Team listed somewhere? When I click Team above, all I see are Admins and Mods but who lead, program, debug, QC, etc.

Good luck in your future projects!