As promised, I've emailed KDE. I think the questions here-in are pretty decent and something everyone who uses open-source desktop should be concerned about.
I was unable to find a spokesman contact email on the Gnome website! In this article about upcoming gnome releases Paula rooney mentions "..Those distributors may also opt to use the GNOME 2.24 update, which is due in six months, a GNOME spokesman said. GNOME also said it is hard at work on GNOME 2.24, due in six months..." However this mysterious gnome-spokesperson is never revealed!

Anyway, heres the email I sent to KDE's europe contact which i found through their website

From: 	Leigh Morresi dgtlmoon@gmail.com
To: 	info-europe@kde.org
Subject: 	Some general questions about KDE management team
Date: 	Tue, 13 May 2008 09:42:05 +1000

Sebastian Kügler,

KDE is a great project, I'm looking to deploy the KDE desktop system for
many users.

However I have a couple of questions about KDE's infrastructure /
management and how it has an impact on the software that the KDE team is
responsible for.

I'm not sure the best way to ask these questions so I will just ask
them :)



- How does KDE ensure resources are allocated to maintaining core
applications such as Koffice as well as the KDE window manager? is there
a budget set for this?

- How does KDE's development philosophy ensure that it focuses on steady
refinements and resolving existing issues instead of fancy new bells and
whistles? Are there any documented policies on this?

- Does KDE offer any 'project adoption' where it channels resources into
maintaining contributed yet highly popular projects? Is there any
assurance to the end-users that a project that may become a very
important part of running their business is going to be maintained when
all of the developers of that project are no longer interested?

- Does KDE view the above as a responsibility or as a liability?

I look forwards to your answers! Would be great to discuss this on skype
sometime soon, but email is fine also.

regards,

Leigh Morresi



-- 
Leigh Morresi
+61401883741
dgtlmoon@gmail.com
http://dgtlmoon.com
skype: dgtlmoon

* This email is subject to GPL v2 licence.

When i receive a response I'll be sure to follow it up here...