Are any of the things being worked on in the scope of this grant reusable outside of KDE? From the post itself it seems mostly just directly KDE stuff (instead of possibly imporving some "more foundational" thing, e.g. some kernel API, Wayland protocol or similar that KDE wants to make use of but doesn't exist).

Not the person you asked, but I found this list of earmarked uses for the money:

* Improving KDE Plasma & KDE Linux QA Infrastructure

* Improving KDE Plasma’s Recoverability Mechanisms

* Implementing Factory Reset Functionality for KDE Linux

* Improving Security Infrastructure for Organisational Usage across KDE Plasma

* Improving Data Backup and Restore Systems

* Strengthening Configuration Management as Core Desktop Infrastructure

* Improving Network Shares Experience

* Building KDE PIM QA Infrastructure and an End-to-End Testing for IMAP4 and WebDAV

* Supporting IMAP4rev2

* Supporting WebDAV Push Notifications

* Standardising Account Configuration

* Improving KDE PIM Suite Desktop Integration with Flatpak-Based Delivery

So at the very least, the QA Infrastructure and Security Infrastructure will almost certainly result in quicker finding and reporting of upstream bugs, and potentially even KDE devs working on fixing those upstream bugs.

So the scope of this investment from STA is mostly focused on area which are underfunded in KDE, useful in a bit more corporate context while also being core components used by the rest of KDE and some third parties.

Wayland protocol development is fortunately already funded by Valve. And for the kernel work, this is something where KDE developers are very rarely involved with.