There's an exp-run going on for KDE4 on FreeBSD right now. That means that the official package-building machines are grinding through the entire ports tree to see what happens. This is part of the regular procedure for big updates -- and this is a big one.

While KDE4 as a desktop -- with Plasma shell 4 and the old collection of KDE modules like PIM, etc. -- is not getting a lot of upstream releases, it does get some updates, and some applications release new versions. This is one reason to continue to update the packages.

Another reason to update KDE4 on FreeBSD is to get ready for the next generation of KDE: Frameworks, Plasma and Applications. Making things co-installable (and co-developable) means (re-)arranging headers and libraries and whatnot in a nicer way than we have up til now. The kde4 versions of headers now go into /usr/local/include/kde4 (e.g. the headers for libkgeomap).

Once this is done, and the KDE4 updates land in the official ports tree, then the way is cleared for a few updates (e.g. kdevelop, perhaps digikam). And of course the way to landing KDE Frameworks 5 is open then, too: those will install headers probably in /usr/local/include/kf5.