I've finally got some news for you on the state of the next compiler release.
Unfortunately, Iain Buclaw will be unavailable until sometime in January at the earliest. We look forward to his return.
In the meantime, he's provided us with some notes on the release process. Nicholas Wilson has volunteered to look into it and see if he can make it happen. It's a complicated process that only Iain knows inside and out, but hopefully we'll be able to get a release out in the near future.
Regardless, we'll make it a priority when Iain returns to revamp the process such that any one of us can push out a new release. Then we can avoid a repeat of this situation.