> KDE seems to be losing the plot here-- how does this help build the best possible DE for the community? I feel like they are fragmenting developer attention and time by futzing around with this.

A lot of the manpower working on this previously worked on KDE Neon, so it's perhaps better to think of it as a lessons-learned project that doesn't in fact do what you worry about (but it has already attracted new contribitors that also improve things elsewhere).

KDE also does serve users (and hardware partners) with Neon that deserve improvement.

There's also the fact that increasingly new users experience KDE software e.g. as Flatpaks on new distros that ship Plaama by default, e.g. Bazzite and CachyOS, and it makes sense to get more developer eyeballs on this to make sure it's a good experience.