Well, I have bitten my tongue for quite awhile now as I tried to get a handle on the state of affairs.
I must say I was a surprised as everyone when the 'New Owner' thread appeared.
I've been privvy to snapshots of version 8 over the last year and must say that from what i saw, it was never going to make it off the ground in a timely manner.
As it currently stands, version 8 needs a _LOT_ of work. it's not even ready for alpha, as far as i can see. i also can see that Brooks might not have really known the FULL extent of what it is that he bought, other than the domains and their obvious SEO value..
yes, a converted version of ubbcentral is running on v8 and i have that code, but it is essentially a reworked admin, which you've all seen screenies of and a front end ( user side of things ) that is far from complete. i'm not saying that it doesn't have some nice new features either, because it does..
but... the list of things to be done is months away from completion and i'm not sure i'd be happy to release it if it was my product.
i'm advocating that instead we ( community + brooks ) find a way to quickly identify a version 7.6 that would include the 20 or so bugs/features that i know to exist in 7.5.6 PLUS maybe a top 10 or 15 most needed features ( within reason )...
no big architectural change, but at least a 7.6 that is more stable with all 5 browsers ( staying logged in for example ) and also has some key features..
this will buy enough time to decide just what version 8 is and _can_ be...
brooks will have to weigh all this, of course and decide on how his manpower / team might work with those who already know the code..
but to be realistic too.. Rick is moving, so he won't be able to spend much time on it, so just don't count on that resource for the next 3 months.
get 7.6 out in 2 months... have a stable product..
while at the same time have a valid plan for version 8 where milestones are clearly delineated and held to. and whenever some timeline is affected either adversely or positively, announce it to the community here.
a constant feedback loop is the only thing that i can see saving a disaster down the road. and this disaster might have already occurred to some degree already..
--- footnote ---
i wrote this in one pass and it's from the heart as i see things. there may be some inaccuracies, but i'll live with what i wrote...
i may add some stuff later in other posts..
