Stop asking when things will be done and start contributing is one of the messages in Bert Boerland's post Done is a four letter word on the Drupal project. There is a lot of truth in what he says. Open source projects like Drupal are made better with more cooks, not less. This is true. As there usually is, however, there is more to the story.
Backtracking the Drupal project the code freeze for the next release (4.7.0) was scheduled for September 1 and then pushed back to September 15. In the same announcement it was noted that a 4.7.0 release might take "several weeks" after the code freeze. And, now several months later here we sit without a released 4.7 and little progress. Though the latter bit, about little progress, isn't correct. The feeling to many people, namely the many folks implementing Drupal on servers around the world, those folks checking to see if this next great version of this great tool, don't see much progress. November came and went with more hopeful talk and now we're into the new year with Beta 2 aging a few weeks.
While it can be really frustrating watching and waiting, helping out in the forums etc. the frustrating part is feeling like little progress is being made. The truth is that gobs of work are being done each and every day. However, if like many Drupal users you don't get into the nittiy gritty details it seems to be posts every few months, or weeks, that speak optimistically of an upcoming release punctuated by waits that grow ever longer in the mind's eye. While it takes a little digging at least with open development processes you can see proof of progress if you take the time to look for it. On the other hand with closed development processes it's a different deal.