after a year of development
Although it's no help for the current situation, I think that one of the issues here is that our release cycle for this release is too long, and we've strayed from the "Release Early, Release Often" advice (http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html)
Over the last few months I've gotten a bit of a taste for what's involved in a release, and obviously it's a fair amount of overhead. Still, it seems like we should strive, whenever possible, to release substantially more frequently than once a year. thanks, bryan
