This week marks KDE’s 29th birthday, which is pretty special. Did you know KDE has been around longer than Google, PayPal, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Tesla, Spotify, Uber, VMware, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Github? Seriously! That’s a long time producing high quality, autonomy-respecting, non-exploitative software.And humanity needs and deserves it, so we’re gonna keep going! We’re celebrating KDE’s birthday by kicking off our annual end-of-year fundraiser: https://kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2025/The money raised here will support the ability of KDE e.V. (the nonprofit behind KDE) to continue hosting Akademy, funding development sprints, affording server hardware and hosting, and employing engineers, marketers, documentation writers, and support personnel (but not board members; we’re unpaid volunteers).There’s a big set of initiatives, and they’re growing all the time as KDE gains in prominence worldwide! We have extremely ambitious goals of spreading humane software throughout the world.Looking at the kind messages people have written in their donations, it seems like we’re seeing some success. Here are a few recent examples:Thanks for KDE Plasma, can’t wait for KDE Linux!!! HB To the most consistently feature rich Desktop Environment and just generally awesome set of applications! Thanks for the hard work!Happy Birthday! Thank you, the Plasma Desktop and the KDE family of applications have made my life so much better. Keep up the good work on the newly-minted KDE Linux.I’m giving you guys the money that would have gone to Windows 10 ESL had I not switched to Kubuntu earlier this year!This might sound dumb but the wobbly windows option convinced one of my friends to install Linux so you winPlasma is the best, very excited for Bigscreen!KDE’s really great for both enthusiasts and newcomers. Without it, I’d be worried about “the linux desktop” hehe.Thank you for you great work! One day I’ll find the time to contribute!I know it’s only the minimum amount, but I love using your DE and software and want to help out any way I can. Thank you!Thank you for your work and contribution!Keep up the kood kork!With love from Spain!! Keep up the great work!thank you for a fine desktop KDE is my daily driver for personal computing. It’s abundance of features and the distraction-free experience is great. Keep it going! I’ve been an on-and-off user since the KDE 1 Beta 3.Thank you KDE team for your wonderful work. I use Neon daily and it’s truly a joy to useThanks for making the computing world a significantly better place.Happy Bday, KDE has be rock solid this year!VIEL ERFOLG von der Alten (84) !! (GOOD LUCK from the old folks (84) !!)I love your work – thank you for everything! Greetings from Germany Hope this helps you keep up the great work!Thanks for the hard work! Keep it up! From a french user!To many more birthdays to come.Great work, KDE!First time donating. I really love to use KDE.Thank you, KDE developers & KDE application developers, for 29 years of FOSS-licensed desktop software for Unix.Grazie mille per tutto quello che fate. Fedora KDE è fantastico!Thank you for bringing Plasma and Kdenlive to the world. Keep doing what you’re always doing.Just a small donation for now, more in December I dunno why, but I really love what you are doing! I really enjoy KDE’s vibe overall and everything that you guys did!We’ve set the comparatively modest goal of raising €50,000, and I’m happy to see that we’re already a quarter of the way there after only three days. But we need to keep up the push, as typically the first few days see the most donations. So please donate if you can, and spread the word far and wide!