Hi Alan,
Yes, i've created a release28 branch from the release26 branch (how weird is that).The reasoning is that we need another major release series in which much stuff will be deprecated and properly documented first before we remove it in 3.0 and cause a lot of user confusion and regressions. (eg. mysql, couchdb, ia64, maybe even packaging, etc, etc).
But first i'd like to get another 2.6 release out asap and then decide how to proceed from there. Time is, as always, very limited.
Opinions?
Cheers!