[Tres Seaver]
Agreed, in theory. In practice, the usual handwave has been to construe the absence of the feature as a bug (with greater or lesser justification).
Like that's going to change <wink>.
Perhaps we can be more hard-nosed about a "no new features in third-dot releases" policy *after* we get a timeboxed release process in place? I have some recollection that a hard-nosed application of such a policy in ZODB land contributed to the creation of the "dead-end" 3.3 release line, never incorporated in any released Zope2 / Zope3 version.
Various versions of ZODB 3.3 were shipped with various ZopeX3-3.0.0 releases, but ZODB is also used by people who don't run Zope. The latter is why I make "standalone" ZODB releases, which have no dependence at all on Zope. While I have timed ZODB releases entirely based on what various Zopes seem to need, I try to do that in ways that make good sense for standalone-ZODB users too. Starting a ZODB 3.4 for new features (and new deprecations) was necessary for ZODB's "other" users (despite not being crucial for Zope's purposes).