Blue Systems is a German IT company. It is most prominent as a major KDE supporter and previous driving force behind

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

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 (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

. Tönnies Lebensmittel generated 4.3 billion Euro revenue in 2011. German IT website

Golem.de Computec Media GmbH is a German computer media company headquartered in Fürth. It is a subsidiary of the Swiss Marquard Media Group. The company publishes multiple magazines and websites related to computers, video gaming and media. History Co ...

did a feature about Tönnies Jr. in July 2012. According to the feature, Tönnies Jr. studied computer 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 (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

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 made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

Netrunner whose first release was in March 2010. In February 2012, Clement Lefebvre of Ubuntu/Kubuntu-based Linux Mint 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 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 openDesktop.org is a libre website portal offering personal cloud services like storage and communication services, as well as public services in form of a store for libre (Open source/creative commons) content publishing and a code hosting site fo ...

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 cont ...

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. KDE e.V. is a registered non-profit organization that represents the KDE community in the legal and financial entities. The association supports KDE’s work in cash, hardware, and other donations, and then the use of donations to help the KDE dev ...

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