The process of developing, releasing, and maintaining Asterisk 1.4 has certainly been a learning experience. I have been putting a lot of thought into the things that we have been dealing with and would like to propose some changes to the way that we manage releases.
Over the past few years we have gone from not having managed releases, to Asterisk 1.0, 1.2, and now 1.4. Over this time period we have transitioned from everyone using the development code directly to now nobody using the development code for any real purpose. This has both been a great thing and a curse at the same time, as I have come to realize.
Russell Bryant 
Excellent idea!!
We’ve been using Asterisk for years, but recently we became quite frustrated with your release management, especially since there are SO many compelling improvements in the 1.6 development branch (like device state, the new event system, the bridge action, mwi improvements, etc…) which we can’t use because there is no proper release available.
But we’re dying to put all these new features into use (some are even needed badly), and will definitely do so if and when a 1.5 comes out!
So please go ahead with this plan, you have our full support!
Thanks, and keep posting on this blog, it’s very interesting (I don’t have time to read the mailing lists but thanks to this blog, I can hopefully stay updated on the most important topics).