Name: Akademy 2025
Start: 2025-09-06T09:00:00+02:00
End: 2025-09-11T18:00:00+02:00
Location: Technische Universität Berlin

Akademy 2025

from Saturday, 6 September 2025 (09:00) to Thursday, 11 September 2025 (18:00)

Monday, 1 September 2025
Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Wednesday, 3 September 2025
Thursday, 4 September 2025
Friday, 5 September 2025
Saturday, 6 September 2025

09:30 Welcome and Introduction
Welcome and Introduction (Main)
09:30 - 10:00
10:00 Keynote: Open by Design: How Governments Can Lead the Shift to Digital Sovereignty - Alexander Rosenthal (DigitalHub.SH)
Keynote: Open by Design: How Governments Can Lead the Shift to Digital Sovereignty (Main)
- Alexander Rosenthal (DigitalHub.SH)
10:00 - 10:50
Switching to Open Source is more than a technical migration – it's a strategic, political, and cultural shift. This keynote provides a practical perspective on what it actually means for a government to transition towards Open Source and digital sovereignty. Schleswig-Holstein has been one of the trailblazer in this field for some time and is committed to further strengthening its role as a central hub for Open Source Development in Europe. We will walk through the concrete steps that were taken: from defining a strategy and setting up internal capacities to building trust among decision-makers and securing long-term commitment. The presentation is intended to help learn from experience we have made and show what arguments and means are available to promote Open Source at a government level. It is up to you to help shape the future of Open Source in the public sector. Whether you build, contribute to, or advocate for Open Source – this session will show how your code can drive public value.
10:50 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
10:50 - 11:20
11:25 KEcoLab: KDE's Automation Tool For Energy Consumption Measurements - Karanjot Singh
KEcoLab: KDE's Automation Tool For Energy Consumption Measurements (KDE Development)
- Karanjot Singh
11:25 - 12:05
Room: Room 2 KEcoLab is an automation tool that allows KDE developers to remotely measure the energy consumption of their KDE software through GitLab CI/CD. Instead of obtaining measurements manually and in person in a lab such as the one at KDAB, Berlin, KDE developers can trigger the process through GitLab CI/CD, wherever they are. This enables developers to effortlessly assess their software's energy consumption when merging new code into the codebase. KEcoLab opens the door for data-driven software development that prioritizes energy efficiency, while also making it easy to obtain the reports needed for certifying software with the Blue Angel ecolabel, the official environmental label of the German government.
Plasma: Lessons Learned and Our Path Forward in 2026 and Beyond - David Edmundson (KDE)
Plasma: Lessons Learned and Our Path Forward in 2026 and Beyond (Main)
- David Edmundson (KDE)
11:25 - 12:05
Room: Room 1 Plasma's reputation has gone through a series of ups and downs over the years, the reasons behind that are as much philosophical as they are technical. This talk looks at the mistakes we've made over the last 10 years and the mindset we need to look into the upcoming years and deliver a product that we can share confidently to millions of users.
12:05 Lunch!
Lunch!
12:05 - 13:30
13:30 Design System - Progress and Goals - Andy Betts
Design System - Progress and Goals (Main)
- Andy Betts
13:30 - 14:10
Room: Room 1 In this talk I will provide a list of all the updates and implementations made since the last design system announcement last year at Akademy. This includes a review on variables availability for designers and developers. I will detail the preferred method of use for these variables and how to submit any issues.
KDE Linux: Banana Growth Cycle - Harald Sitter (Techpaladin LLC)
KDE Linux: Banana Growth Cycle (Main)
- Harald Sitter (Techpaladin LLC)
13:30 - 14:10
Room: Room 2 Banana plants typically take between 9 to 12 months to produce fruit after planting. KDE Linux® - better known as 🍌 - was planted a year ago! Where are we today? What has been accomplished? What has not gone so well? What's next? A retrospective on the past year and a look at the next.
14:15 The Role of New Languages in the Future of the Qt Ecosystem - Cristián Maureira-Fredes (The Qt Company)
The Role of New Languages in the Future of the Qt Ecosystem (Main)
- Cristián Maureira-Fredes (The Qt Company)
14:15 - 14:55
Room: Room 2 User Interfaces (UI) are an essential part of our lives, we use them every day, in all our devices, everywhere we go. At the same time, we see new technologies and programming languages enriching our tech scenario, but in some cases, they don’t have the necessary modules to produce those UIs. Qt is currently a widely used framework, that has proven to be mature enough to be a industry-quality solution for people that want to develop User Interfaces. However, being written in C++ limits the people that can use it. Luckily, a few bindings to newer languages, like Qt for Python have been around to open the doors to new generations of developers, but the problem is not solved. Writing bindings to new languages or even re-writing modules in new languages is an enormous task that needs a better solution. With that in mind, one of the Qt Framework goals is to find ways of using our technology that has been around for a long time, in a quick manner, without requiring a lot of knowledge of programming languages that are not familiar with our stack. On this talk, you will learn about a new initiative within the Qt Project that aims to unlock the Qt framework’s features and technology into more programming languages without the need of relying on bindings or learning C++. No previous experience in Qt nor C++ is required for attending this talk.
What's Been Happening In The "End Of 10"? Presenting A Cross-Community Initiative To Bring Linux To Windows Users - Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss (KDE) Bettina Louis (KDE Academy - Endof10 Campaign) Carolina Silva Rode Nicole Teale (eco.kde)
What's Been Happening In The "End Of 10"? Presenting A Cross-Community Initiative To Bring Linux To Windows Users (Main)
- Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss (KDE)
- Bettina Louis (KDE Academy - Endof10 Campaign)
- Carolina Silva Rode
- Nicole Teale (eco.kde)
14:15 - 14:55
Room: Room 1 Windows 10 security updates end on 14 October 2025 [0], which also just happens to be KDE's 29th birthday as well as International E-Waste Day [1] -- what is more, International Repair Day follows shortly after on 18 October. The irony is deep, but what is not ironic is that hundreds of millions of functioning devices [2] could end up discarded as e-waste. This means manufacturing and transporting new ones, perhaps the biggest waste of all: hardware production alone can account for over 75% of a device's CO2 emissions over its lifespan. The FOSS community had an opportunity here, and we took it. In November 2024, KDE Eco made a call to action at SFSCon to coordinate a global, unified campaign across FOSS communities to upgrade those Windows 10 users to Linux. We thought big and acted boldly, and many people around the world heard the call and came ready to act! In this talk, contributors to the End Of 10 campaign are invited to present what we did and discuss what worked, what didn't work, and what is still to come. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/lots-of-pcs-are-poised-to-fall-off-the-windows-10-update-cliff-one-year-from-today/ [1] https://weee-forum.org/iewd-about/ [2] https://www.canalys.com/insights/end-of-windows-10-support-could-turn-240-million-pcs-into-e-waste
15:00 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
15:00 - 15:30
15:35 Report of the Board - Eike Hein (KDE) Nate Graham (KDE) Lydia Pintscher Aleix Pol Gonzalez (KDE) Adriaan de Groot (KDE)
Report of the Board (KDE Reports)
- Eike Hein (KDE)
- Nate Graham (KDE)
- Lydia Pintscher
- Aleix Pol Gonzalez (KDE)
- Adriaan de Groot (KDE)
15:35 - 16:15
Room: Room 1 KDE e.V. supports the KDE Community in organizational, legal financial and other matters. In this session the Board will talk about the work of the organization over the past year and what is coming next.
The State of (the) Union - Arjen Hiemstra (Blue Systems)
The State of (the) Union (Main)
- Arjen Hiemstra (Blue Systems)
15:35 - 16:15
Room: Room 2 Last year during Akademy I presented the Union styling system, which is a project to create a styling engine that is intended to unify the various styling methods we use in KDE. Now, about a year later, I will talk about what kind of progress has been made to achieve this goal. I will discuss some of the new major features that have been developed, the state of adopting Union within KDE and some plans for the future.
16:20 Pursuing KDE Neon Core - Kevin Ottens (enioka Haute Couture)
Pursuing KDE Neon Core (Main)
- Kevin Ottens (enioka Haute Couture)
16:20 - 17:00
Room: Room 2 Last year we covered the "KDE Neon Core" effort to bring Plasma on Ubuntu Core. We focused on the work required and the challenges we encountered along the way. We concluded on an upcoming radical change in the system architecture. This time, we will focus on what changed during the past year. It will be a status update on the system architecture change from a technical perspective. We will also highlight how this reconfigured our relationships with the Snap ecosystem and KDE Neon itself. The dynamics for managing upgrades on such systems is very different from systems with unconfined sessions. This brings constraints on our own dependency management. Last but not least, we'll cover some of the broader interest in the KDE ecosystem this effort seems to bring. If you're curious about the new KDE Neon Core architecture and its outcomes (technical or otherwise), this talk will be for you.
Report of the Working Groups - Lydia Pintscher
Report of the Working Groups (KDE Reports)
- Lydia Pintscher
16:20 - 17:00
Room: Room 1 The Working Groups of KDE e.V. are helping the KDE Community in various areas such as fundraising, community management and running our infrastructure. In this session the Working Groups will give an overview of their work over the past year and their plans for the future.
17:00 KDE Goals - One Year Recap - Farid Abdelnour (Kdenlive) Nicolas Fella Aniqa Khokhar (KDE) Gernot Schiller Paul Brown (KDE) Johnny Jazeix Joshua Goins Jakob Petsovits
KDE Goals - One Year Recap (KDE Reports)
- Farid Abdelnour (Kdenlive)
- Nicolas Fella
- Aniqa Khokhar (KDE)
- Gernot Schiller
- Paul Brown (KDE)
- Johnny Jazeix
- Joshua Goins
- Jakob Petsovits
17:00 - 18:00
Room: Room 1 This cycle of the KDE Goals is a foundation for the future of the KDE community. We’ll take a brief look at what we’ve achieved over the past year, what makes this cycle so special and also how can you help.
17:05 From Misunderstood to CEO – Breaking Bias and Building Inclusion - Alexandra Betouni
From Misunderstood to CEO – Breaking Bias and Building Inclusion (Main)
- Alexandra Betouni
17:05 - 17:45
Room: Room 2 Through real experiences and lessons learned, the talk highlights the challenges, small wins, and internal grit required to claim space in a male-dominated industry — and offers encouragement to anyone who's ever felt underestimated.
18:00 Language Bindings: The Future of KDE? - Nicolas Fella
Language Bindings: The Future of KDE? (Main)
- Nicolas Fella
18:00 - 18:40
Room: Room 2 Over the last year many KDE libraries have gained bindings for Python and Rust, enabling developers using these languages to create KDE applications. In this talk we are going to look into why this is important, how the binding generation works under the hood, how to use them in applications, and what their existence means for KDE as a community.
What's New with Qt Learning? - Emilia Valkonen-Damjanovic
What's New with Qt Learning? (Main)
- Emilia Valkonen-Damjanovic
18:00 - 18:05
Room: Room 1 In this BoF we’ll go over the latest in Qt learning. You’ll learn about: - Qt Academy and the future plans - Official Qt Developer Certifications and how to get one - Qt’s University and Talent Network
18:05 Gently Retiring KWallet - Marco Martin
Gently Retiring KWallet (KDE Development)
- Marco Martin
18:05 - 18:15
Room: Room 1 KWallet is getting near its retiring time: its C++ API is marked as deprecated in order to be replaced by a new DBus API, called Secret Service. Although KWallet can provide a Secret Service API, its technical implementation is quite old and different people have different preferences about what Secret Service to use. It's also a good occasion for trying to use a common backend between different desktops. The talk will show the recent split that has been done and the kwallet compatibility daemon and shown how to use alternative Secret Service providers, such as oo7 or KeepassXC, with legacy KWallet integration.
18:15 Emergency and Weather Alerts - Volker Krause
Emergency and Weather Alerts (Main)
- Volker Krause
18:15 - 18:25
Room: Room 1 Being able to receive weather and public emergency warnings can save lives, and we don't want people using FOSS to be at a disadvantage compared to proprietary platforms when it comes to that.
18:25 Boosting your code and simplifying your life with clazy - Alexander Lohnau
Boosting your code and simplifying your life with clazy (Main)
- Alexander Lohnau
18:25 - 18:35
Room: Room 1 Clazy, KDE's static code analyzer for Qt and C++, keeps evolving. In this talk, I’ll cover the features of clazy including its first-class support for Qt6. We'll explore how Clazy can boost your workflow, helping you write cleaner, faster, and more reliable code. It will also provide some hints on how you can contribute to clazy to make it even better!
Sunday, 7 September 2025
10:00 Keynote: The Politics of the Pull Request: How Open Standards Can Shift Power - Paloma Oliveira (STA)
Keynote: The Politics of the Pull Request: How Open Standards Can Shift Power (Main)
- Paloma Oliveira (STA)
10:00 - 10:50
Room: Room 1 What if open source is not about collaborating to create code, but a tool against asymmetry? This talk draws from Diversifying Open Source: An Open Standards Playbook for Inclusive and Equitable Tech Projects, as a kind of mirror, one that invites us to reflect on the systems we build and the values we embed within them. It's less about ticking the diversity box, and more about raising awareness: of how power flows, who gets heard, and who gets left out—not by accident, but by design. This talk is about responsibility. It’s about realizing that the technologies we create don’t just do things, they shape things. They shape communities, access, power, and identities. Every governance decision, every line of code, every project norm carries a ripple effect, often reaching far beyond what we imagined. And when those decisions are made without the voices of those most affected, we risk building systems that quietly replicate exclusion, even in projects that call themselves “open.” By drawing on intersectionality theory, critical race studies, and real-world examples, we’ll explore how open standards, when crafted with care, can become tools of equity. Not rigid rules, but “gentle enforcement”: communication patterns, governance models, and accountability mechanisms that help communities grow in more just and inclusive directions. Open source is to me a powerful force, a tool against asymmetry. But that requires intention and consciousness about the wrong it has also been replicating. Because yes, our code affects people, ecosystems, infrastructure, and futures. This keynote invites you to build with more than efficiency in mind. To build with awareness. And to ask: what kind of world is your project making possible, and for whom?
10:50 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
10:50 - 11:20
11:25 CppCheck: Grooming Your Sources for KDE CI - Sune Stolborg Vuorela
CppCheck: Grooming Your Sources for KDE CI (KDE Development)
- Sune Stolborg Vuorela
11:25 - 12:05
Room: Room 2 CppCheck is a static code analyzer that is easily integrated into KDE's CI workflow on invent. As with all static code analysis tools, code needs some initial grooming to be useful. We will here go over some of the things needed to get properly started and also showcase some instances of where CppCheck has been helpful in KDE code.
Handling Negative Feedback - Akseli Lahtinen
Handling Negative Feedback (Main)
- Akseli Lahtinen
11:25 - 12:05
Room: Room 1 In this talk I would go over various negative and positive feedback I've gotten during my time of being KDE contributor. Notable examples are window outlines, rounder corners to items and KUrlNavigator changes. I've gotten both "hatemail" and seen "redditors" trash my work publicly. However, I will also remind the audience that there's good feedback too, and it's why I keep doing what I do. I'd like to go over it all and share things I've learned about it: How to handle the feedback, how to pick out the actual golden information, how it can affect ones psyche/motivation.. And I would also go over some ways to give polite, constructive feedback. It would likely end with a reminder that we're all human after all and we should maybe chill a bit, instead of ranting at FOSS devs. :)
12:05 Lunch!
Lunch!
12:05 - 13:00

13:05 Group Photo
Group Photo
13:05 - 13:25
13:30 Developing on Flatpak - Aleix Pol Gonzalez
Developing on Flatpak (KDE Development)
- Aleix Pol Gonzalez
13:30 - 14:10
Room: Room 2 Historically, we have developed our applications locally together with the system libraries and someone else has been taking care of the distribution of the application. With the introduction of Flatpak amongst other tools we have been breaking that barrier, thus allowing KDE to ship the apps to fellow Linux users. While that works for the most part, there is still a last mile part of the story that I keep seeing our fellow developers miss which is the actual development time. We keep using flatpak as the distribution method rather than the actual environment where the application is developed. In this presentation I'd like to explain how I've been doing such development personally with KDevelop and will also offer some ways of doing so for other editors in our ecosystem like Kate, vim or vscode. This will ensure a simpler development story and a more accurate QA process.
Maintainers Don't Grow on Trees - David Edmundson (KDE)
Maintainers Don't Grow on Trees (Main)
- David Edmundson (KDE)
13:30 - 14:10
Room: Room 1 There's a billion talks on how to get new contributors into a project, what's less covered is how to grow these new contributors into maintainers. This requires a completely different set of skills and a bit of manipulation. This talk covers how to spot future maintainers from the crowd and how to give them space to grow.
14:15 Exposing Data to QML - Ulf Hermann (The Qt Company)
Exposing Data to QML (Main)
- Ulf Hermann (The Qt Company)
14:15 - 14:55
Room: Room 2 In QML, you generally use the model/view/delegate pattern to expose data. In the last few years, several features have been added to the QML language to help you do this in a type safe and predictable way. Required properties have been around since Qt 5.14, but only since Qt 6.10 you can actually write through required properties into the underlying model. Also in 6.10, Synchronizer has been added as a way to synchronize model values with views. Finally, a SortFilterProxyModel for QML might still get finished in time for 6.10. The talk will give an overview over the tools at your disposal today, show their respective benefits and drawbacks, and discuss possible further developments.
Getting Hired to Work on FOSS - The Do-s, Don't-s and Pitfalls for Everyone Involved - Till Adam (KDAB)
Getting Hired to Work on FOSS - The Do-s, Don't-s and Pitfalls for Everyone Involved (Main)
- Till Adam (KDAB)
14:15 - 14:55
Room: Room 1 For many contributors to FOSS projects it is a dream to get hired to work full time, or even part time, on their favorite project and get paid for it. And companies love hiring motivated, skilled developers with a history of contributions to successful projects. This dream can come true, and has, for many in KDE, at least for a while, but it can also turn into a disappointment and has risks for the contributor, the hiring company and the project. In this talk I will share my personal experience getting hired to work on KDE, hiring people to work on KDE and other projects, and dealing with the conflicts of interest and challenges that appeared along the way. I will also take an honest look at the tradeoffs involved for all parties.
15:00 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
15:00 - 15:30
15:35 Mass Migration from Windows: Why and How - Patrick Fitzgerald
Mass Migration from Windows: Why and How (Main)
- Patrick Fitzgerald
15:35 - 16:15
Room: Room 1 We all know that Windows 10 is end of life this year. The prospect of that alone should be enough to motivate change to Linux desktops - but the current US administration is providing a lot more reasons - tariffs, annexation and questionable attitudes in defense partnerships to name a few. I've been part of migration projects most of my career, so in this talk I'll present some of the big picture items to consider when you are promoting the idea of migrations to Linux - such as politics, cost and practicality. Thankfully the growing movement to cloud based applications has reduced Windows dependencies, so it is now easier than ever to migrate to a Linux based solution.
Next-Gen Documentation Infrastructure for KDE - Nicolas Fella
Next-Gen Documentation Infrastructure for KDE (Main)
- Nicolas Fella
15:35 - 16:15
Room: Room 2 By the time Akademy happens api.kde.org will have completed the transition away from Doxygen to using QDoc for documentation generation. In this talk we are going to look at how and why this is happening and how we can leverage QDoc to make our documentation even better in the future.
16:20 Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition is Real, Now What? - Neal Gompa (Fedora Project)
Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition is Real, Now What? (Main)
- Neal Gompa (Fedora Project)
16:20 - 17:00
Room: Room 2 Fedora KDE has had an exciting few years with a growing community and significant efforts between Fedora and the KDE project, with the latest milestone of Fedora KDE becoming a recognized flagship offering in the Fedora Project as the [Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition][1]. This presentation will briefly cover the recent history and contextualize it for the future developments emerging to attract and grow the mind share and market share for KDE through Fedora. [1]: https://kde.fedoraproject.org
Minding the Big Picture: Opportunity From Chaos - Nate Graham (KDE)
Minding the Big Picture: Opportunity From Chaos (Main)
- Nate Graham (KDE)
16:20 - 17:00
Room: Room 1 During normal times, change is hard and slow. During abnormal times, change is easy and fast. Whatever else is happening, there are opportunities for KDE to be seen as a source of stability and improvement in these times of great disruption. In this talk, learn about efforts to do just that, and how we can boost them and KDE in general by focusing on the big picture.
17:10 Bridging the Gap: Artists and Wayland - Joshua Goins
Bridging the Gap: Artists and Wayland (Main)
- Joshua Goins
17:10 - 17:50
Room: Room 2 A big focus for KDE in Plasma 6 has been making our Wayland session usable for artists. It has been ready for general computing for some time, but these users have special requirements that require extra care - from drawing tablets to remotes to color management. The KDE community also happens to maintain popular software like Kdenlive and Krita - so we also need to help our own developers as they switch to the Wayland stack! Let's explore the artist-oriented features we have in KDE Plasma Wayland today, what's on the horizon!
17:15 Say what now? - Communication Theory for Software Developers - Nicolas Fella
Say what now? - Communication Theory for Software Developers (Main)
- Nicolas Fella
17:15 - 17:25
Room: Room 1 One of the most important and underrated parts of creating software in a team is communication, and yet we don't tend to talk as much about that. While most computer science graduates went through a course in theoretical computer science they usually know very little about the theoretical underpinnings of talking to each other. In this talk we are going to take a brief look at various facets of communication theory and use them as a lense for looking at every day software development scenarios
17:25 The Art of a Good Commit Message - David Edmundson (KDE)
The Art of a Good Commit Message (Main)
- David Edmundson (KDE)
17:25 - 17:35
Room: Room 1 The commit message is as important as the code patch that goes along with it. It sets the tone for the rest of the merge request. In this thinly veiled rant, we go over what makes a good commit message for both maintainers and future archeologists.
17:35 Plasma Mobile Power Management: Reliable Sleep and Wake Ups - Bhushan Shah (Developer)
Plasma Mobile Power Management: Reliable Sleep and Wake Ups (Main)
- Bhushan Shah (Developer)
17:35 - 17:45
Room: Room 1 It is quite an important for Plasma Mobile to go into sleep mode and wake up device when user needs to interact with it, for example: - Receiving Call or SMS - Push notification or cell broadcasts - Hardware events such as battery low or button presses We will talk about recent development in this area.
17:45 Funding and Growing - Kdenlive Experiences and Perspectives - Jean-Baptiste Mardelle
Funding and Growing - Kdenlive Experiences and Perspectives (Main)
- Jean-Baptiste Mardelle
17:45 - 17:55
Room: Room 1 I will share our experience working with external developers funded through our fundraising campaign. I'll also present the contacts we've made to best manage the project's growth, as well as our thoughts and plans to address upcoming challenges ahead: how to perpetuate the funds, maintain the project's vision, keep the community active and engaged, and increase the project's visibility.
18:00 Sponsor's Talks
Sponsor's Talks (Main)
18:00 - 18:30
Room: Room 1

18:30 Awards and Closing
Awards and Closing (Main)
18:30 - 19:00
Room: Room 1

Monday, 8 September 2025
Tuesday, 9 September 2025
Wednesday, 10 September 2025
Thursday, 11 September 2025