BuddyPress.org

I’m going to take a stab at answering this. John has been actively involved as a core developer for almost a year. The post which you refer to did not change that in any way. We all love John and the commitment that he shows to BuddyPress is without question.

I feel the communication has improved. We’ve more posts on the .org blog about BuddyPress and its future in the last three months than we did almost all of last year. We also have the biweekly development chat which all are welcome to attend. Not to mention the variety of support and “Can I use BuddyPress for x, y and z” questions that we get on this forums, and at WordCamps. I’d like to segue briefly about WordCamps.

WordCamps are fab! There’s a central list at WordCamp.org, and I’d urge you to attend one if there’s one near where you are. This year’s events which covered BuddyPress:

@boonebgorges presented at WordCamp Boston (slides).
@johnjamesjacoby organised or presented or both at WordCamp Miami.
I presented at WordCamp Ireland (slides) and twice at WordCamp UK (slides).
@matt mentioned and answered several BuddyPress questions during his keynote at WordCamp San Francisco.
Henrik Hammer Berthelsen presented at WordCamp Denmark.
Esteban Garcia Bianchi and Juan Manuel Olivares presented at WordCamp Argentina.
Paolo Maffei presented at WordCamp Milan.
Jimmy Ngu presented at WordCamp Malaysia
@lisasabinwilson presented at WordCamp Raleigh.
Mitsuhiro Suwa presented at WordCamp Japan.
@danmilward presented at WordCamp Chicago. @wpmuguru did, too!
Annie Vranizan presented at Reno Tahoe WordCamp.
@lisasabinwilson presented again at WordCamp Boulder.
@gigalinux presented at WordCamp Berlin.
Robert Popovic presented at WordCamp NZ.
@johnjamesjacoby is presenting again this weekend at WordCamp Savannah.

There are BuddyPress talks scheduled for more WordCamps this year (including at two different WordCamps this coming weekend); the list above is of events which have already happened. I sometimes forget how popular BuddyPress is, and putting this list together has reminded me how awesome the software and our community is.

I would not hold much stock in the dates on the Trac timeline; it is a rough guide, just like the roadmap page is. Personally, I’m thankful for the extra time we have for 1.2.6; we’ve had a number of bugs fixed and enhancements reported and added to core which we only discovered after weeks’ worth of testing.
The best way for people to contribute to BuddyPress is to reports bugs, write patches and to test and leave feedback on them. The danger of topics like this one is that they have a tendency to go around in circles, and produce lots of talk but little action.