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07 February 2012, 10:30

Canonical pulls funding from Kubuntu, drops commercial support

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Kubuntu logo Developer Jonathan Riddell has announced that, after the release of Ubuntu 12.04, Canonical will no longer be paying him to do development work on Kubuntu, the KDE derivative of Ubuntu. As a Canonical employee, Riddell has, for the last seven years, been paid to work on Kubuntu and is now moving on to other tasks within the company. Riddell has previously been on hiatus from Kubuntu-related work, though it had no noticeable affect on Kubuntu releases.

One significant outcome of this situation is that there will be no paid support for Kubuntu from version 12.04 onwards. Riddell said that Canonical has tried to make the derivative commercially feasible, but has failed in doing so.

According to Riddell, "Canonical wants to treat Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu", which means that it will still be recognised as an official derivative. He also questions "whether the world needs Kubuntu"; if it does, then he suggests that community developers step up to take on tasks such as ISO testing. He also notes that he may not be able to work much on it in his free time and calls for community contributors to replace him.

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