DuckDuckGo Donates $25,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation v2026

Oct 26, 2026 by Olaf Alders

For the third year running, The Perl and Raku Foundation is thrilled to announce a gift of USD 25,000 from DuckDuckGo, part of their 2026 charitable donations. Recurring donations allow the foundation much more flexibility when planning a budget 12 months in advance, especially when it comes to ensuring that grants for Perl 5 core development will be funded in the year ahead.

DuckDuckGo’s support is greatly appreciated and goes directly to sustain the key people who maintain Perl – the developers who fix vulnerabilities, improve performance, and keep the language stable for millions of systems worldwide. Donations like this are what keep Perl maintained and progressing.

– Stuart Mackintosh, President, The Perl and Raku Foundation

Perl received 2,382 commits in 2025 and 1,925 so far in 2026. These included fixes for eight security vulnerabilities (CVEs), new language features, and performance improvements. Just as critical is the largely unseen work of code review, issue triage, and security response. Sponsored maintainers wrote nearly a quarter of these commits and carried much of that background work – work that contributions like this help make possible.

Gifts from donors further ensure that the foundation can continue its day-to-day work, including:

funding and administering grants for work on the Perl core
organizing the 2027 Perl and Raku Conference in Ontario, Canada
supporting important events like The Perl Toolchain Summit
administering grant money for the CPAN Security Group to find and fix vulnerabilities in Perl and CPAN

We look forward to continuing this partnership with DuckDuckGo for another year and further helping to maintain a healthy Perl 5 and CPAN ecosystem.