In case you weren’t aware, KDE e.V. is doing a membership drive right now, fundraising to strengthen the organization’s financial sustainability. The money goes towards employment for KDE contributors, organizing development sprints and the Akademy conference, server hardware, and more. If you want to know more details, check out the 2022 annual report which lists the budget.
For this fundraiser, we set a super ambitious goal of 500 members. We started with around 50, and as of today the total sits at 202! Even if it’s not 500, it’s still quadruple what we had before! This is great!
But we would really like to get to 500 before the release of Plasma 6 next February. 🙂 If you haven’t donated recently or aren’t a member of the KDE e.V., this is the perfect time to become a supporting member and help ensure the financial sustainability of one of the oldest and greatest FOSS communities on the planet! It’s less than the cost of Netflix or Amazon Prime, and it’s a whole lot more important. So please consider becoming a member or donating today! Already a member? Pitch it to a friend, family member, or colleague who uses KDE software! Every member helps. 🙂
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
I’m happy to contribute to KDE eV, as it’s clear to me that the organization is functioning well, and the money is being used judiciously on important projects. It’s the best way I know how to say “thank you!” to the many coders, artists, and leaders who deliver such amazing software!
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Wonderful, thank you so much!
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I’d love to contribute something, but I’m wondering why there are a set of fixed amounts, rather than letting people choose freely how much to donate. There are plenty of projects I want to support, so it’s not feasible to give so much to each one.
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Thanks, I think we can accommodate you!
You need to donate at least 100€ per year to become a Supporting Member of the KDE e.V., which provides various benefits ( a quarterly newsletter, invigation to KDE e.V.’s annual general meeting, and more. But if you’re not interested in those benefits and would like to give a smaller amount–either one-time or on a recurring basis–you can do that on https://kde.org/community/donations.
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I would like to thank you, Nate, for your amazing work on KDE and this blog. I’m already a supporting member, sometimes I also file bug reports. I would like to do more. Perhaps in the future, when I eventually learn C++ enough, I will help you with coding. But it’s a distant future.
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You’re very welcome!
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Now WHY would I want to contribute one cent to KDE when you make it 1) harder to use 2) getting rid of apps that were in KDE 4 that required a simple check mark to have have different widgets and different wallpapers in separate virtual desktops, etc.
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Then it sounds like you don’t want to contribute. In fact, it sounds like you don’t want to use our software at all, so I recommend that you find another set of software that brings you the joy you deserve.
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This blog is superb and your work on Plasma is astonishing and so much appreciated. I’ve signed up for the minimum for now, but will hopefully be able to increase the amount early next year. Thanks so much.
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And thank *you* too!
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I don’t know use KDE plasma because I’m a window manager guy, but I make use of multiple KDE programs, specially Krusader. It’s the most powerful GUI file manager by far!
Do you know if there’s anyway I can make a donation to Krusader specifically? I’ve made small one time donations to KDE in the past but I’d like to directly support the program that I use the most.
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At the moment there is no way to make a donation just to Krusader through KDE e.V. However what you might be able to do is donate to the specific person or people involved in the project who you feel do a good job. If you aren’t aware of any of those folks, you can find some using https://invent.kde.org/utilities/krusader/-/graphs/master?ref_type=heads
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I’ve been using KDE Plasma (through Manjaro KDE) since 2015 and I’m generally happy with it. It’s a great system, and I am grateful for the work you and others are doing.
I have never donated though. Rather than make a recurring donation to KDE the organization, I would prefer to donate to specific, clearly defined fundraisers where you pay a developer to create specific applications, features or bug fixes. I think many people would prefer earmarked contributions over the current generic funding.
Fundraisers should be in the style of all-or-nothing funding so that contributors only pay if the funding goal is reached and the project happens.
I’ll give some examples of projects that I would donate to:
– Gwenview: batch edit functionality for batch rotate, crop, resize, color/brightness/contrast adjustments, convert, etc.; search for similar images; an option to turn off cross-fade between images for zero-lag flipping through images
– KDE ports of Mp3tag, AdvancedRenamer, Notepadd++, MultiPar
– Dolphin supports queue for copy/move; can rename a directory that is being copied to; file verify for copy operations and move to different medium; optional exact file comparison instead of “seem identical” shortcut; an option for copy/move operations: do not stop at file exists popup but continue in background with non-colliding file names
– “offline viewer” functionality for Dolphin that stores directory structure with file names, file info and thumbnails so you can browse offline external drives and media.
– faster Dolphin rendering of folders that have pictures defined as folder icons via a .directory file and [Desktop Entry] Icon= (currently slow); option to suppress preview thumbnails for such folders
– Dolphin support for the folder.jpg convention that uses a folder.jpg as the sole thumbnail for a folder, without random image rotation and increased size that uses more of the folder icon space (basically like Windows XP did this.)
– resumed development for the Cantata music player
– a way to have different icons in the task manager for different browser profiles for Firefox and Chrome-based browsers.
Could you bring this idea of targeted/earmarked fundraisers to the attention of the KDE leadership?
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We do general fundraisers because that’s the kind of money KDE e.V. needs: operating expenses. Believe it or not, we’ve only been directly paying for technical development work for, like, a year; most of the money KDE e.V. spends is unrelated to that. It pays for things like Akademy, developer sprints, server hosting, accounting and taxes (yes, we do pay taxes), an office assistant to handle paperwork, and so on.
You’re welcome to sponsor individual features via bug bounties or direct work with a developer via https://discuss.kde.org/c/development/sponsored-work/31. However KDE e.V. itself isn’t planning to handle this kind of thing–especially all-or-nothing fundraisers as it’s a ton of work and there are financial risks involved in being the custodian of escrowed funds.
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