With the abundance of distributions, and the burden and confusion that too much choice can cause, that is a very appropriate question :) The main purpose of Kiwi is promoting free software among users to whom even switching to Ubuntu is a challenge. The modifications included, which for various reasons are not on the Ubuntu CD, aim to overcome the main obstacles that we have seen novice users bump into while trying Ubuntu, such as lack of local language support on the CD, inability to easily connect to some ISP's networks and missing multimedia features out of the box. As such, with limited effort and a small amount of nonintrusive changes Kiwi is an easier to set up Ubuntu system.
It seemed like a sweet and easy to remember name, and from a certain distance, in adverse lighting conditions, the cross-section of a kiwi fruit looks like the Ubuntu logo. So it was an obvious choice even if in hindsight, it was not the most fortunate one as it caused a bit of confusion regarding the distribution's country of origin. It may imply that it is a Kiwi (from New Zealand) distro. FWIW there are also a few other software projects named Kiwi, the most popular being SUSE's derivative distro builder tool.
Ubuntu 'remix' derivatives are required to only use software available in the official repos. With the use of some packages that do not qualify (speedtouch, libdvdcss2), as much as I would have liked calling it Ubuntu Eastern European (or whatever) edition, it is not a fair use of the Ubuntu trademark.
In the spirit of minimal and mostly functional changes, the artwork is almost identical to Ubuntu's. Among the few places that were changed are the usplash logo and the login greeter screen. This way the difference is clear and Ubuntu does not get undeserved criticism in the unlikely case of a Kiwi-only major SNAFU, but the overall feel is familiar to those already used to Ubuntu.
As of 10.08 new releases are only planned based on Ubuntu LTS releases so every two years.
As for Ubuntu, the version number reflects the year and the month of release always being based on the most recent Ubuntu stable release.
Kiwi is for i386, live image only and Ubuntu/GNOME based.
Kiwi Linux is built from the official Ubuntu and the Kiwi Linux PPA PPA in Launchpad.
As of 12.08, full language support for German, English, Romanian and Hungarian are included on the CD.
Contribute to Ubuntu or to other upstream projects! :)
To Launchpad on the specific package you think is buggy, just as for Ubuntu.