Developer Jonathan Riddell, who has worked on Kubuntu for the past seven years, has announced that Blue Systems will be the Kubuntu project's new sponsor from May with the start of the 12.10 development cycle. The news comes just two months after Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, confirmed that it would no longer be funding the KDE derivative of Ubuntu and would be dropping paid support for future versions of the distribution.

Blue Systems has also partnered with and sponsored other KDE projects and distributions including Linux Mint and Netrunner. "With this new sponsorship we will have the independence to give the project new wings and take the excellent KDE Software to new audiences," said Riddell, who had been paid by Canonical for his work on Kubuntu.

Speaking to The H, Riddell confirmed that Blue Systems will be paying him to continue full time work on Kubuntu, and that they plan to set up an account to help the project to pay for sprints, promotional materials, its web servers and other expenses. He also said that they have yet to talk to Canonical about the Kubuntu/Ubuntu trademark rules, which could force the project to change its name. However, Riddell expects that there will be no problems with its use. Riddell's last day with Canonical will be on 11 May, the final day of this year's Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS).

See also:

Blue Systems becomes Linux Mint partner and sponsor, a report from The H.

(crve)