Jellyfin, the open source media server, is undergoing leadership changes as two founders and a core team member depart. The exits follow recent warnings about maintainer burnout within the project.
Joshua Boniface, founder and Project Leader, is leaving the role. Andrew Rabert, the other founder, announced his departure days earlier. Anthony Lavado is also stepping down as a core team member.
The departures are described as amicable with little risk of a hostile fork. Boniface cited the mental and time demands of the role and risks to his mental health. Rabert pointed to friction over a desktop client rewrite begun in December 2025 that reduced his motivation. Lavado, who has focused on non-code tasks like App Store management, said personal life changes limit his available time and he will assist with the transition for up to a year.
In May the project reported steady activity with hundreds of pull requests and issues handled monthly from May 2025 through April 2026. The update also introduced an AI policy after a surge in AI-generated contributions and highlighted growing burnout risks from support demands and code review workloads.
