As for contributing to KDE, it's not as fun as starting a new project, things move slowly, you have limited options of what you can do and I just generally don't agree with the mentality / philosophy / culture of the KDE project.
Mind if I ask what do you dislike about it?
Or what is your perception of the mentality/culture?
"Should we do this or that? I don't know, let's make it an option in the settings!"
Also, they seem to lack design taste.
So, in the end, you're just a troll. You have no facts, no knowledge, no reference but just your "feelings" about "bloat"; and you keep spitting on KDE's work.
I'm quite sure you've not used KDE since a long time.
UX is all about feelings and intuition by the way. Designing user interfaces is mostly trying to make users feel good while they're using it.
That's not how it happens.
It happens like this:
Person 1 creates something.
Person 2 wants slightly different behavior and provides a patch to make it configurable.
And you know what? Its not a bad thing.
My KDE is heavily configured and you have no idea how productive it is for me. I love it :)
Why do you think things move slowly? KDE releases Frameworks 5 every month, and Plasma 5 every 3 months, that's pretty fast in my opinion.
Stop thinking and actually do and ship!
You keep complaining and say you know better, then show us!