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- Kubuntu Status
- Jonathan Riddell jriddell at ubuntu.com
- Mon Feb 6 23:27:25 UTC 2012
- Previous message: Ubuntu Flavor and LTS Changes
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
- Today I bring the disappointing news that Canonical will no longer be
- funding my work on Kubuntu after 12.04. Canonical wants to treat
- Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as
- Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu, and support the projects with
- infrastructure. This is a big challenge to Kubuntu of course and KDE
- as well.
- The practical changes are I won't be able to work on KDE bits in my
- work time after 12.04 and there won't be paid support for versions
- after 12.04. This is a rational business decision, Kubuntu has not
- been a business success after 7 years of trying, and it is unrealistic
- to expect it to continue to have financial resources put into it.
- I have been trying for the last 7 years to create a distro to show the
- excellent KDE technology in its best light, and we have a lovely
- community now built around that vision, but it has not taken over the
- world commercially and shows no immediate signs of doing so despite
- awesome successes like the world's largest Linux deployment
- (http://lwn.net/Articles/455972/).
- The first question to answer is whether the world needs Kubuntu - a
- regularly released community-friendly distro with a strong KDE focus.
- There is no other major distro out there that matches that description
- but others arguably come close.
- If it does then we need people to step up and take the initiative in
- doing the tasks that are often poorly supported by the community
- process. ISO testing, for example, is a long, slow, thankless task,
- and it is hard to get volunteers for it. We can look at ways of
- reducing effort from what we do such as scrapping the alternate CD or
- automating KDE SC packaging.
- I expect to do other desktop team tasks in my work time such as Qt. I
- can't do much free software work in my spare time for now because of
- my poor health (slowly recovering I'm pleased to say).
- I hope and expect Kubuntu can continue. I encourage Kubuntu devs to
- apply to UDS so we can have discussions on how to continue it and keep
- the dream alive.
- Jonathan
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