A group of 19 Manjaro team members has signed a manifesto demanding the project separate from its parent company and restructure as a nonprofit. They threaten to fork if leadership does not agree. Project lead Philip Müller has responded cautiously.
Manjaro, a popular Arch-based Linux distribution, faces internal turmoil as team member Aragorn published the 'Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto' on the official forum. Signed by 19 members—including developers, community managers, moderators, and the company's technical lead—the document criticizes the project's decline over the past decade, citing lost trust, departing contributors, and unaddressed issues like outdated TLS certificates despite volunteer fixes offered by the team. The manifesto accuses project lead Philip Müller of treating Manjaro as a personal venture with tight control over codebase and infrastructure. It also notes that Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG has not reinvested funds into the project or sought external funding. The proposal calls for spinning off the Manjaro Project as a registered nonprofit association (e.V.) under German law, with equal ownership distribution among members, transparent voting on major decisions, and 'arbiter' roles for experienced contributors. Key assets such as GitHub organizations, the self-hosted GitLab instance, forum, CDN, and manjaro.org domain would transfer to the nonprofit. The trademark usage would be shared until 2029, after which the company could hand it over for €1. The team outlined a three-stage response plan: waiting for reply, striking publicly, and forking or leaving. They advanced directly to phase 3 of stage 1 by posting publicly and archiving the thread. Dennis ten Hoove clarified the goal is to change leadership and build a community-driven project, not remove people. Philip Müller stated he supports forming an association but will not initiate it, insisting asset transfers occur on company terms and warning of legal consequences for damaging statements. Aragorn countered that the plan allows the company transition time. Roman Gilg, the company's CTO who signed the manifesto, questioned Müller's specific objections to the asset list, receiving no reply. Aragorn then declared stalling and proceeded to phase 3. A community discussion thread has over 200 replies.
