Why KDE: A (Statistically) Unified Vision
It has been said that some Free / Open Source software projects lack direction and vision, that it's all just a random herky-jerk towards an unknown or poorly defined goal. While this may be true of some projects (though hopefully not too many), KDE is not one of those projects. Right from the beginning, KDE had a vision. Matthias stated that he wanted to build a consistent desktop to counteract the menagerie of toolkits and methods common to X11 environments at the time and a full set of user-oriented applications on top of that environment. This vision has not changed significantly.
Those familiar with the project may point out that KDE doesn't actually have a well defined multiyear written plan with buy-in from a significant percentage of the project that says how we will continue to achieve that goal. But it doesn't need one. Each participant knows what part or parts of KDE they are working on, and we know what KDE aims to be. The project offers many ways for these individuals to coordinate their part of the vision with everyone else. This includes the development plans on developer.kde.org, bugs.kde.org, the mailing lists, IRC channels and regular in-person meetings and conferences. Whether or not you believe that this would work, the facts are undeniable that KDE has and continues to march inexorably along the path that Matthias first voiced over 6 years ago.
Interestingly, this can give the impression that there may not be many companies supporting KDE development since KDE has such a prominently unified public face. Sometimes its hard to see the companies for the forest in KDE. It is true that there are not as many (per-capita) paid developers in KDE as some other projects, but there are a long list of companies that are involved in KDE; from SUSE to Trolltech to KDAB to Kittie Hooch to Staikos Computing to SourceXtreme to... the list is longer than one might expect.
But these individual companies don't stand out as being KDE themselves because of the nature of the (statistically) unified vision within the project; which is to say the project runs the project. The companies participate in rather than dictate that process. This gives KDE a unified front when it comes to development, even with the corporate involvement and even with a constant rate of developer turn over. This makes KDE a safe place to put your corporate dollars and to invest your future in, since you know some other company won't be able to simply come in and subvert the project's vision against your will. You can also be assured that your involvement won't erase the benefit of community involvement by chasing the volunteer group of participants away, since that would have happened a long time ago were that the result of corporate involvement in KDE.
How many other projects can show corporate involvement from large and small companies alike while remaining generally unified with a thriving community of both volunteer and paid developers? Some of the most successful ones, actually, such as the Linux kernel and Apache. Like those successful projects, KDE has a palpable vision, one that it has followed for years and continues to follow. This consistent and cooperative vision is one of the big reasons to get behind KDE: it has a future that you can see clearly from the vantage point of today.