Ask HN: How to handle a hard-working yet clearly underperformant founder?

My partner and I agreed to work on an app full-time for a 52% (me) 48% (him) split. We both agreed explictly that we were going to work on the entire stack.

7 months later we are very close to launch, and I have built pretty much all the business logic and key IP, while he has built most of the front-end. The front-end however was clearly a simpler piece, and I'm not too happy with the results given the time he's spent on it.

We have discussed this, and he agrees that his contribution to the business logic has been sparse at best. I've given him plenty of opportunity to get involved, but he hasn't been able to contribute anything due to a lack of skill.

He has offered me to rebalance equity to 60%/40%. However, this doesn't adddress my key problem, which is that I may be stuck with a partner that never ends up pulling his weight. Not only do I feel that he's underskilled in programming - I also feel that he's not good at product management, marketing or operations either...

I've considered splitting up the partnership, and offering buying him out or even forking the codebase and go our own ways. He would clearly get the better end of this agreement, but there is still a lot to build and I would rather compete than be in a bad partnership.

On the other hand, he is a really honest and hard-working guy, he's tremendously motivated to continue with the project, and I don't want to give up on him. Plus splitting would be the messier option, even if done in friendly terms.

What would you do?