In reply to Chip Bennett.

Indeed. WordPress is a lot of different things for a lot of different people, but each release should be a coherent set of new/improved features with some kind of plan behind them. It's great that some things just happen to be ready in time for a release and get "thrown in," but that's a bonus at best. Each actual version (as opposed to security bug fix releases) should have a reason to exist, an identity that can be explained and anticipated. We may not know where WordPress is going in the long run, since it is getting pulled in so many directions and is ultimately an expression of the mass of developers who are contributing to it, but at least in the short term (ie through the next major version) there should be a plan.