The KDE Project has published its manifesto, benefits and principles. Under the Manifesto it says:

We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software.

Citing the benefits of a KDE project the site says: Being part of the international KDE community conveys certain benefits and rights. These include:

Stand on the shoulders of giants

• Make use of KDE infrastructure for project hosting
• Benefit from the experience of the KDE sysadmins
• Get support from the larger community with development, documentation, translation, testing, bug handling, etc.
• Use opportunities to integrate with a large ecosystem of end-user products
• Create cross-pollination of ideas and innovation through interaction with teams sharing common values

Enjoy representation and support by KDE e.V.

• Participate in Akademy and other KDE events
• Be considered for financial and organizational support
• Know that your trademark can be secured
• Know that your project's license can be defended via the Fiduciary Licensing Agreement

Increase your market visibility through the reputation of the KDE community and KDE promotion tools such as:

• pushing project announcements to the Dot and employing other KDE promotion channels
• having your project reachable through a subdomain under kde.org
• having a #kde-<projectname> IRC channel on the Freenode network
• using KDE as an umbrella brand to associate with the KDE community for communication on web sites and other channels

You can read the manifesto, benefits and principles here.

Developing