Open Source Projects
The staff members of Fre(i)e Software GmbH are regular contributors to
Free & Libre Open Source projects. Contributions are part of their
customer driven company work, but also many of your staff members
contribute their voluntary work to a variety of Open Source projects.
Debian
Debian GNU/Linux is a free and
universal operating system, that is developed by an international
community of more then 1.000 people all accross the world. Together, they
are the Debian project. At Fre(i)e Software GmbH, we intensively use
Debian for implementing our customers’ demands. People in the company
have been contributing to Debian for up to ten years (and more) and have
have done their bit to sustain the continuous improvement of
Debian. Whenever possible we try to give back our discoveries and
improvements to the Debian community while working on customer projects.
For us, giving back to Open Source projects is our means to turn the word
sustainability into action.
Members of our team are involved in, amongst others, these Debian teams:
Ubuntu Touch
Ubuntu Touch is a mobile
operating system for tablets and phones based on the Ubuntu GNU/Linux
distribution. Ubuntu Touch is powered by the convergent operating
environment Lomiri: Being mainly optimized for touch based device
interactions, Lomiri can also be used on desktop computers and at runtime
switch between those two usability models. Ubuntu Touch is developed by
an international community of paid contributors and volunteers under the
umbrella of the UBports Project.
Mike Gabriel currently works on packaging the entire Ubuntu Touch
software stack for Debian and provides consulting around release and
package management. Mike Gabriel also does software development on the
Ayatana Indicators project (until midst of 2025 together with Robert
Tari) which has become a core component of Ubuntu Touch’s Lomiri
operating environment (instead of Ubuntu Indicators). Since October
2021, Guido Berhörster has joined the UBports team as a core developer.
Lomiri
Within the scope of a major customer project with the goal to bring all
of Lomiri to Debian GNU/Linux, we have been very actively contributing
to the upstream development of Lomiri. (Esp. Mike Gabriel and Guido
Berhörster, until June 2025 also Robert Tari).
Lomiri is an operating environment provided in nearly fully-featured
scope in Debian GNU/Linux starting with Debian 13.
Some may remember the Ubuntu Touch project initiated by Canonical Ltd.
with their initiative to come up with a convergent desktop, or rather…
‘operating’ environment called ‘Unity 8’ that could be used across all
device form factors (desktop, tablet, phone). After Canonical Ltd.
discontinued their work on Ubuntu Touch in 2017, the developers at the
UBports community (now under the umbrella of the UBports Foundation)
took over the upstream maintenance of the complete Ubuntu Touch software
ecosystem. Part of this take-over was forking Unity 8 as Lomiri.
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Debian Edu / Skolelinux
Debian Edu / Skolelinux is a special adaptation of the universal Debian GNU/Linux
operating system targeting being used as a school IT system. Debian Edu
is maintained by an international developer team within Debian and is
being used around the world. The Debian Edu / Skolelinux installer allows
one to set up an entire school IT server infrastructure, provides an
administration interface for the site and ships / recommends a wide range
of educational software.
Mike Gabriel joined the Debian Edu team in 2011 and has been working as
co-maintainer and developer for the project since then. Mike has been
providing Open Source consulting and sysadmin services for schools via
his personal company DAS-NETZWERKTEAM and, together with Daniel
Teichmann, collected a wide range of expertise on Open Source learning
environments for more than ten years now, being IT manager for various
schools within Northern Germany.
Within the scope of a customer project, Daniel Teichmann and Mike
Gabriel have been developing the Debian Edu
Router
since 2022.
Ayatana Indicators
The Ayatana Indicators Project provides indicator applets and shared libraries for
application indicators and system indicators. Indicators can be used for
displaying system or application status, capturing and displaying system
notifications, and for interacting with system functionalities. All
indicators are coherently display in a designated area provided by the
desktop environment (e.g. the desktop environments panel).
The Ayatana Indicators project has been forked from Ubuntu’s Indicators
in 2015, after Canonical Ltd. decided to discontinue the development
effort on the Unity7 desktop environment. The Ayatana Indicators project
is currently (as of 2025) managed by Mike Gabriel. The former
co-maintainer Robert Tari unfortunately has stopped being active in the
project since June 2025. Ayatana System Indicators are distribution
independent and desktop agnostic. They are interoperable with Xfce,
MATE, Budgie and Lomiri. Since 2020, Ayatana Indicators are used by Ubuntu
MATE, since 2021 they are used by the Xfce-based Ubuntu Flavour Xubuntu.
Currently (as of 2025), Ayatana Indicators and the UBports
Project are cooperating on
getting Ayatana Indicators optimized for usage in Ubuntu Touch (i.e. the
Lomiri Operating Environment). This project is currently funded by the
UBports Foundation.
X2Go
X2Go is a remote (desktop) computing
solution that allows for remote access to GNU/Linux desktops on low
latency and low bandwidth internet/network connections. X2Go provides
various operation modes: access to already active desktop sessions,
starting of so-called headless desktop sessions and accessing them remotely,
or embedding single (published) remote applications into a local desktop
environment.
X2Go’s client component is available for MS Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD
and Mac OS X. Since 2021 a web based X2Go client implementation has
become available that allows one to connect to a GNU/Linux desktop from a
web browser.
X2Go suports audio in remote sessions, file sharing, printer sharing, and
remote assistance. Every session can be suspended and resumed later from
the same or another client machine. X2Go also offers a thin client
environment (TCE). For large fleets of X2Go Client machines the session
profile management can be provisionied to those devices via an X2Go session broker.
Since September 2010, staff members of Fre(i)e Software GmbH (formerly
via DAS-NETZWERKTEAM) have been actively contributing to the development
and improvement of X2Go.
MATE Desktop
MATE is a desktop environment
for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, that is built on
traditional and intuitive usability concepts. MATE has been forked from
the GNOME (version 2) desktop environment and is now an indepdent project
with an international community of voluntary software developers.
Together with Martin Wimpress, Mike Gabriel is the package maintainer of
MATE in Debian and is
indirectly having an impact on Ubuntu MATE by providing the package base for their Ubuntu flavour.
Skolab
Skolab is a
secure, scalable and reliable groupware solution that integrates
well-proven components for e-mail, a directory service and a web service.
It also provides a standalone administration interface. Skolab has been
forked from the final release of the Kolab 2 Groupware.
Mike Gabriel develops this project to meet company internal needs.
