Actually, the 2.x branch is what you get, when five out of the six people interested in working on this, who weren't core developers, prefer to evolve 2.5, and add in the things we feel are missing, toward a definitive 2.x core, before working on 3.x, which (for the record) still has no roadmap...
There is no reason that anything we want to add to 2.x can't make its way into 3.x, nor is there any reason that anything that has been considered for either is set in stone. The git repo is still a mess, too, and our group was hoping to put together a 2.53 release, with all clean code in its own repo, to fix this issue.
For the most part, no-one is going to work on an open source project that they can't download and compile; nor do most users want to start working based on unstable stuff. If you want more people involved, then the foundation should be 2.50.2/2.50.3-ish, stable, equal to what they have available as bins, or very close; and something they can compile without jumping through flaming rings, off of the backs of rabid leopards, whilst singing 'Daisy, Daisy'.
I'd say that the way it's packaged now is a prime reason that no-one is working on it except for a few zealots who want to add in all of our 'dream features' as our highest priority.
I'm certainly not here to dissuade any of you from working on 3.x. My main point is that the 2.future group doesn't ultimately care if it's an official release, or a fork. We just feel that by making an official 2.x series of releases, we'd be doing a greater service to the userbase, by not having two different ZCs with similar versioning.
@Saffith , I personally don't want to lose the bloke who's done almost all the debugging for the last four to five years, either. I just don't comprehend your objections to what we're doing, unless you just haven't read any of the threads, or PMs? We primarily discuss our agenda in a Skype channel, and then I handle documenting it, and presenting it to the public, so this isn't all simply a list of stuff that we expect you, or anyone else to do.
I really have no idea what you want to do, as everytime I ask, you don't answer. We all have better things to do with our time than argue about this though, which is why I told Gleeok back in January (?) that if we couldn't settle on a plan, our group would just work on 2.53, 2.55, and2.6, and release them on our own, user confusion be damned, because kicking a can back and forth for six months with no finality in decisions on what's going on, is about as close to pure timeiwasting as is possible.
i.e. It's time we could use to make this thing, instead of debating a 'plan', when we have a solid model that clearly differs from the deprecation philosophy. In a few months that we waste debating this, wasting mental energy to stress, and thus losing interest due to the conflict, we could have been at 2.55 with all the new drawing features, and new other things that people want.
Instead, whenever we make progress, this argument resurfaces, and honestly, as I've said before, we'll just do our own thing and release it if this continues. At least that means that something will be released in the next three to ten years. Do we really want 2.11 / 2.50 all over again?
P.S. The five of us involved with 2.future never have arguments like this. We all have similar interests in wat we wsh to accomplish, and are all in the loop. More often than not, problems like this arise from LoC. That's why we all stay in touch constantly, and why we actually plan out our goals in black and white.