7.5 months later he says, tentatively, and not really believing it himself, "I think it works. At least it mostly seems to, at least well enough to try to use."
Tomorrow may be the day to finally set all these caged bugs free ...
I'm hoping, at the very least, that everyone isn't completely locked out. I found one showstopper bug that I have to fix before install, but otherwise things are looking pretty good.
There will, of course, be endless rounds of bug fixes and improvement but I think this release should, once it stabilizes, be a much needed improvement.