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Jellyfin, the open source media server and most popular free alternative to Plex, is going through a significant leadership transition. Three of its core team members have stepped down within a short window: co-founder Andrew Rabert, project leader Joshua Boniface, and core team member Anthony Lavado.
Joshua Boniface, who has led the project for 7.5 years, cited burnout and mental health risks as his reasons for stepping down. Andrew Rabert’s departure followed internal friction over his desktop client rewrite. Anthony Lavado is leaving due to shifting personal priorities, though he’s said he’ll help with the transition.
None of this came out of nowhere. Back in May 2026, the team published a “State of the Fin” post that flagged burnout as a growing problem. Part of the pressure: a surge of AI-generated pull requests that added review burden without adding much value — a dynamic that’s become a recurring complaint across open source projects.
There’s no sign of a hostile fork or a messy split. Both Boniface and Rabert described their exits as voluntary and amicable, and the remaining team is expected to continue running the project. Jellyfin has grown from a small experiment into what the team describes as the number one free and open source media server, used by millions.
The departures are a reminder of how fragile volunteer-driven projects can be at the top. The code stays, the community stays — but the people who hold institutional knowledge and make the hard calls don’t always get to stay indefinitely.

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Jellyfin, the popular open source self-hosted media server, is facing a leadership crisis after founder Joshua Boniface stepped down as Project Leader after 7.5 years, co-founder Andrew Rabert departed due to internal friction over a desktop client rewrite, and core team member Anthony Lavado announced his exit. Boniface cited burnout, mental health risks, and an unsustainable workload. The project had flagged burnout as a concern as early as May 2026, partly attributing it to the surge of AI-generated pull requests adding review burden. Despite the departures, the remaining team insists the project will continue with no hostile fork planned.

Jellyfin loses three core team members to burnout and internal friction

Would be interesting to be in on the zoom where they all realized they had enough slop-sorting.