<p>As part of <a href="https://kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2026/">KDE's 30th
anniversary celebration</a>, the project has released <em>The KDE Documentary
&mdash; A Story of Free Software Underdogs</em> (<a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vyzla9mx4g">YouTube video</a>):</p>

<blockquote class="bq">
<p>The story starts in 1996, when Matthias Ettrich, a student at the University
of Tübingen, posted to a Usenet group asking for programmers to help build a
desktop for Linux. What followed became KDE, one of the largest free software
communities in the world. KDE made Linux usable as a desktop for people who
weren't system administrators, giving it a complete, consistent graphical
environment at a time when there was none.</p>

<p>The film covers the highs and lows of three decades of KDE: the Qt licensing
fight and the rivalry with GNOME; the success of KHTML, the browser engine that
became the basis of Apple's WebKit and Google's Chrome; and the contentious
release of KDE 4 and the rebuild that followed.</p>
</blockquote>