Blue Systems is a German IT company. It is most prominent as a major

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

supporter and previous driving force behind

Kubuntu Kubuntu ( ) is an official flavor of the Ubuntu operating system that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment instead of the GNOME desktop environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems. Kubuntu shares th ...

with a number of KDE developers working for Blue Systems. According to Blue Systems employee Aurélien Gâteau, "Blue Systems does not have a business model, at least for now".

Background

Blue Systems was founded by German businessman Clemens Tönnies Jr. He is a son of the deceased Bernd Tönnies who founded meat production heavyweight Tönnies Lebensmittel in 1971. Clemens Tönnies Jr. inherited 25% but left the company by transferring his shares to his brother Robert, who now owns 50% of Tönnies Lebensmittel. The other 50% are owned by Bernd's brother Clemens Tönnies Sr. who is also the chairman of FC Schalke 04's

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. Tönnies Lebensmittel generated 4.3 billion Euro revenue in 2011. German IT website Golem.de did a feature about Tönnies Jr. in July 2012. According to the feature, Tönnies Jr. studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, was 36 years old at the time of publication, and was described as a

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

History

Blue Systems became first known as creator of Ubuntu/Kubuntu-based

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

Netrunner whose first release was in March 2010. In February 2012, Clement Lefebvre of Ubuntu/Kubuntu-based

Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-developed Linux distribution. It is based on Ubuntu and designed for x86-64 based computers; another variant is based on Debian which is named Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and has both 64-bit and IA-32 support. T ...

announced that Blue Systems would become a sponsor to help Mint's KDE edition. After Canonical Ltd. stepped down as the main sponsor of Kubuntu in February 2012, Blue Systems stepped into that role in April 2012. In 2012, Blue Systems gained more attention by hiring at least nine KDE developers. Among the hired KDE developers are former Canonical employees Jonathan Riddell and Aurélien Gâteau, who joined in April 2012, as well as long-time

KWin KWin is a window manager for the X Window System and a Wayland (display server protocol)#Wayland compositors, Wayland compositor. It is released as a part of KDE Plasma, for which it is the default window manager. KWin can also be used on its o ...

developer Martin Grässlin who announced in October 2012 to switch to Blue Systems to work full-time on KWin beginning January 2013. On 13 January 2016, openDesktop.org founder

Frank Karlitschek Frank Karlitschek (born 25 July 1973) is a German open source software developer living in Stuttgart, Germany. Karlitschek argues on his blog that "Privacy is the foundation of democracy." He says that people should have a basic right "to control ...

announced that his company ''hive01 GmbH'' along with openDesktop.org and related web sites has been bought by Blue Systems. Later that year, in September 2016, KDE e.V. announced that the former openDesktop.org site "kde-look.org" now operates under KDE's umbrella as ''KDE Store'', operated by Blue Systems’ “sister company” Pling GmbH.

References

{{Reflist, 2 KDE Software companies of Germany