I've noticed while running KDE4 that KDE3 programs don't seem to inherit colors properly (even if "apply to non-KDE4 programs" is clicked), so I'm going to drop a hint from looking into the config files: KDE4 stores colors under custom headers in the kdeglobals file. KDE3 also stored colors in kdeglobals, but under the [General] header. KDE4's color adjuster does not write colors in [General] - I suspect that is why KDE3 programs don't inherit colors properly. In short, the KDE4 color editor should be patched to write certain colors to the [General] section of kdeglobals along with how it currently writes colors to kdeglobals. I've already tested this by editing the file manually, and confirmed that there is no conflict. I'll give writing a patch myself a shot, but I'm not entirely familiar with the inner workings of kdebase. This is a Fedora bug, not a KDE bug, because this results from the specific way Fedora is packaging KDE4 (both using the same user directory).
KDE 4 simply uses different color settings than KDE 3. If you want to set your KDE 3 colors, install kdebase3 and run: kcmshell colors > This is a Fedora bug, not a KDE bug, because this results from the specific > way Fedora is packaging KDE4 (both using the same user directory). If we were using different configuration directories, then _nothing_ would get inherited, so it would only make things worse.
To sum up, I consider this a shortcoming in upstream KDE, I'm not sure I'd go as far as calling it a bug though.
Did a search of bugs.kde.org and could find no bug/feature requests matching this report. Please submit upstream and add submission info to this report.
Okay, I did so. The upstream bug report is here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161098
Thanks, we will continue to track this upstream. (I've added myself and the 3 other KDE maintainers to the CC list for the upstream bug report.)