Nate’s blog has been really encouraging people to submit bug reports. So I think the goal of Neon is to have the bleeding edge KDE with a stable base, to rule out confounding factors as much as possible. I don’t think it’s a bait-and-switch since the product hasn’t changed. They’d probably just really rather it be used for people willing to submit bug reports.
It feels like she knew she would get fired from this new job, leverage it nationwide articles and get even more subscribers to her OF page. She even references the teaching gig in her bio, and the new job in her latest posts.