Jellyfin Loses Project Leader Joshua Boniface, Core Team Member Anthony Lavado, and Co-Founder Andrew Rabert Within Days

Overview

Jellyfin’s Project Leader Joshua Boniface, core team member Anthony Lavado, and co-founder Andrew Rabert have all left the open-source media-server project within days of each other in July 2026, according to Linuxiac. Rabert resigned from the Jellyfin organization first, on July 17, followed two days later by Boniface and Lavado, whose departures took effect July 19.

What We Know

Boniface, who has led Jellyfin since its inception in late 2018 when the project launched as an open-source fork of Emby, explained his exit in comments reported by Linuxiac: “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.”

Boniface formalized the change himself. He opened a pull request against the jellyfin.org website repository describing it simply as “Removes me and Anthony from the org,” which fellow team member Niels van Velzen merged on July 20.

Lavado, whom Jellyfin’s own team roster lists as handling “Social Media, Outreach, Finance”, had been with the project for nearly eight years, managing app-store operations, public outreach, releases, and finances even though he was not recently active in coding, per Linuxiac. Both departing leaders are working with the project’s remaining maintainers to hand off their responsibilities, and Lavado has committed to help with the transition for as long as needed, even if it takes a year, Linuxiac reported.

Rabert’s exit came separately and for different reasons. He had begun rewriting Jellyfin’s existing desktop app, Jellyfin Media Player, in December 2025, according to Linuxiac. In the GitHub issue announcing his departure, Rabert wrote that the rewrite was meant “to address long-standing problems in the previous desktop app (ie. HDR support, maintenance issues with Qt).” He said the internal reception to his approach soured over time: “the general attitude was very negative and increasingly burdensome and restrictive,” adding, “it eventually reached a point where I lost almost all motivation to dedicate my time to this.” Rabert wrote that he “made the decision to leave the Jellyfin organization entirely on 2026-07-17 and continue development externally.”

Linuxiac reported that Rabert cited increasing disagreements over the development approach, including opposition to his use of AI-assisted tools, as part of his reasoning. His client project, previously part of the official Jellyfin organization, has since been moved outside the project and renamed Jellium Desktop, Linuxiac reported.

Jellyfin’s public team roster document lists Boniface’s former responsibilities as “Project Leader, Packaging, Releases, Finance, Infrastructure” and Rabert’s as Finance, alongside several other core team members who remain with the project.

The project has grown well beyond what Boniface anticipated when he started it. Linuxiac reported that Jellyfin is now used by millions of users, a scale far larger than what Boniface said he had originally expected the project to reach.

What We Don’t Know

Neither the pull request nor Linuxiac’s reporting names a new project leader or lays out a formal succession plan; both departing leaders are described only as transferring duties to the project’s remaining maintainers.

It also isn’t clear whether Rabert’s dispute over AI-assisted development tools reflects a broader policy disagreement within the Jellyfin project or a conflict specific to his own desktop-client work — the available reporting and his own account describe only his individual case.