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Canonical becomes KDE patron

There’s a lot of formal collaboration going on out there in the world of free and open source software.

KDE logoHard on the heels of news of the link-up between The Document Foundation and the Free Software Foundation Europe (news passim), comes the announcement that Canonical, the company behind the very popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has become a patron of KDE e.V. (the German non-profit organisation that represents the KDE Project in legal and financial matters. Ed.) through the latter’s corporate membership programme.

Ubuntu logoCommenting on the move, Michael Hall, Ubuntu’s Community Manager, stated: “From its very beginning Canonical has been a major investor in the Free Software desktop. We work with PC manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Lenovo to ship the best Free Software to millions of desktop users worldwide. Becoming a corporate patron is the continuation of Canonical’s decade-long support for KDE and Kubuntu as important members of the Ubuntu family. Canonical will be working with the KDE community to keep making the latest KDE technology available to Ubuntu and Kubuntu users, and expanding that into making Snap packages of KDE frameworks and applications that are easily installable by users of any Linux desktop. We will benefit from sharing knowledge, experience and code around Qt and Qt packaging, pushing the advancement of QML and increasing its adoption in Unity and Ubuntu native applications alongside KDE’s own work towards convergence.”

KDE e.V. Vice-President Aleix Pol Gonzalez remarked: “We are excited to have Canonical supporting KDE’s work. It is important that we make a continuous effort to work together and this is the best way to continue offering a thriving free and open development platform to build upon. We are confident that this collaboration can be very beneficial for the overall GNU/Linux community and ecosystem.”

KDE e.V.’s other patrons are The Qt Company, SuSE, Google and Blue Systems.