GOOD NEWS: Kubuntu has a NEW sponsor!!!!

[GreyGeek]

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/04/kubun...w-sponsor.html

A while back, Canonical announced that it will no longer fund Kubuntu, the KDE Ubuntu flavor, thus making it a community-only Ubuntu flavor. But there is some good news for Kubuntu users: Blue Systems will start sponsoring Kubuntu starting with version 12.10 for which the development cycle starts in May.

Our sponsor since it started has been Canonical who are now moving to focus on their Unity flavour. We would like to thank Canonical for this kind support and wish the best success for the Unity flavour (also called Ubuntu).

According to H-Online, Jonathan Riddell, the main Kubuntu developer, has confirmed that he will now continue with Blue Systems as his full-time job, so he'll be leaving Canonical after the next Ubuntu Developer Summit.


Blue Systems isn't new to KDE, and it already sponsors projects such as Linux Mint KDE, Netrunner, Folderview, Muon Software Center, Kde MenuEditor and more.

via Kubuntu, H-Online

I hope you caught the part about Jonathan Riddell moving to Blue Systems as a PAID developer of Kubuntu!

PS - Blue Systems is a German company which sponsors open source projects.

[bubblecruntz]

I just read that article myself, and I must admit a smile crossed my face.

[ardvark71]

Glad to hear

[rec9140]

Great but... lots of unaswnered questions still . . .

While this is great.....

There seems to be a lot of questions..

1) Infrastructure... compile servers, DL servers, bandwidth, all the stuff KUbuntu is using right now that canocial provides. Does this have to be recreated/replaced? ?

2) From the post in re canoncial dumping us at the altar... what does this person do ? ? ? "main Kubuntu developer" whats that mean? ? ?

3) promotion? ? canoncial going to promote this on their site in the same way? ? Seems counter that a version developed by another company would get promoted on site ? ? Several here state they develop things for each release... whats the hierarchy and positions? ? ?

4) does this mean we've completely broken off from canoncial? ? ? Not that its a bad thing, but its not entirely a great thing short term, see #1.

5) does this mean we can fix some of the things canoncial and debian upstream broke to force their respective agendas?

Lots of question swirling on this... lots more details I would like to know..... I probably could go on for a while.. but .. . . .

COMMUNICATION... COMMUNICATION...COMMUNICATION...... Can't say it enough!

Complete and full details on how this works need to be posted so the community* understands the future...


*That word means EVERYONE from lurkers to users to developers.... not just some cliche subset.

[GreyGeek]

A little more research resulted in a picture of the house at the address given in the domain registration.


It is an middle-upper class house with hedges that need clipping. Three businesses office out of it. The second one listed is an IT firm that has been in business almost 15 years.

[SteveRiley]

There seems to be a lot of questions..

Lots of community-driven projects rely on Launchpad, Canonical's free software project management environment. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and others have all used Launchpad for a long time. There's no reason to believe that Kubuntu will be evicted from Launchpad just because the project's sponsorship has changed.

Again, please understand that there's been no wholesale abandonment here. Canonical simply decided that they no longer wanted to have a Kubuntu human on their payroll. Essentially, that decision removed Kubuntu's special status and made it equivalent to Xubuntu and Lubuntu and the other recognized flavors.

Now, the Kubuntu human is moving to someone else's payroll. Excellent! And no cause for worry.

[Jonas]

That's not good news - that's GREAT news!

I'm a bit of a "germanophile", think it's because of the mix of engineering and arts/philosophy. I really like that there's support coming from a German company, even though not that surprising as there's many users, developers and institutions there that use GNU/Linux.

Aside from supporting flavours of the KDE desktop, what do Blue Systems actually do?

Thanks for sharing GreyGeek, congratulations to the "new" job Jonathan, keep up the good work.

B.R

Jonas

PS here's the coordinates to the address ALT+F2 - Ctrl+V : 8° 27' 22,7"E, 51° 58' 14,8"N

[whatthefunk]

Yeah!

[GreyGeek]

The most probably source of money behind Blue-Systems is http://itwu.de/index.html

[gnomek]

Blue Systems already sponsors Linux Mint KDE. It would be great if these two project could become one and developers could work together to create one excellent KDE distribution. I don't like when there are unnecessary splits of resources. This is a big problem for Linux. It seems to me a little odd to fund two almost very much alike distributions. Instead of creating separately many different projects developers should combine their efforts. This would make progression much faster. And this would be good not only for distributions but for KDE as well. After all both distributions are based on Ubuntu. Mint KDE is not based on Kubuntu.

[UnLead2D]

wow very happy to hear

[bubblecruntz]

That GmbH and Co. is on my credit card statements whenever i purchase mushrooms from the browser game i play Shakes and Fidget so I wonder if they run the servers that host that game. I think they are called Playa Games or something. Perhaps now when i buy mushrooms in that game i will be making a small donation to Kubuntu

[schnelle]

Now Aurelien Gateau will work for full time on Kubuntu too! http://agateau.com/2012/04/11/into-the-blue/

[GreyGeek]

A "Twofer"!!! Great news!

[GreyGeek]

That GmbH and Co. is on my credit card statements whenever i purchase mushrooms from the browser game i play Shakes and Fidget so I wonder if they run the servers that host that game. I think they are called Playa Games or something. Perhaps now when i buy mushrooms in that game i will be making a small donation to Kubuntu

The letters GmbH is a German abbreviation for "company with limited liability", which is identical to the US version of "LLC". or "limited liability corporation".

A GmbH signifies a private company and German corporations with AG after their name signify publicly owned companies.