Jcl has in fact admitted very often that he has no clue when A7/A8 will be out.
When I asked JCL about A9 he did not say he did not know when A9 would be released. He said this (and it is a quote):
We have no thoughts about A9 yet.
That would indicate that no work has begun on A9 at all. This would indicate that they have not (yet) considered A9 or what A9 would include as a feature set. This would indicate that there is NO A9 at all (at least not yet). And, so, if they do begin work on A9 it will be a long, long time before we see anything ... if at all.
And back at A6.31 there was a very, very long period without any updates (more then a year).
I remember this. Thanks for pointing it out. However, the BETA forum was active with many beta releases. So while there was a long period of time between official updates, beta updates were pretty regular. The last beta (v8.42) was released in early December. It is now May. I don't recall a space of 5 months between beta releases.
