Kubuntu is likely to retain its name, the lead developer Jonathan Riddell has said at UDS.
It had been rumoured that legal issues with ownership of the trademark would force Kubuntu and its new financial backer Blue Systems to choose a new name for the project.
But Canonical, Riddell says, have expressed no issue with the team continuing to use the trademark under a new sponsor.
Canonical dropped financial funding of Kubuntu earlier this year. KDE company Blue Systems stepped in, assuring users that they have ‘no plans’ to change anything.
“They [Canonical] are very happy to have extra sponsors …working within the Ubuntu ecosystem.”
“The negotiations are not yet 100%”, David Wonderly, also present, added, “[But] from the way everything seemed to go yesterday on the Canonical side they more than happy to not just work with us and for us but to to do everything they can to help us out too.”
Name Change or Game Change?
Would Kubuntu changing its name be a good thing? That depends.
By divorcing themselves so cleanly from the “Ubuntu” brandmark they would certainly lose the instant recognition, and traffic, that the ‘ubuntu’ suffix brings. All official Ubuntu spins use this ‘ubuntu’ suffix – Xubuntu, Lubuntu & Edubuntu – and it makes them instantly recognisable as being official community spins.
Had Kubuntu needed to opt out of this trope it would have made consistent branding across the Ubuntu family that little bit harder.
But the change would have only be cosmetic: ‘Kubuntu’ – whatever its name or whoever is backing it – is to remain as it ever was: being developed by the same people, with the same goals, being based upon Ubuntu, and built using Ubuntu/Canonical resources.
And that, at the end of the day is all that matters.