Well ... I don't know of any such plans that aren't being communicated, but then again this whole governance issue sort of cascaded down out of nowhere from my personal point of view. I don't claim to be entirely on top of the situation at this point in time.
Open Force has, in the past, set out some target dates for an "official" release but I don't know where we stand on those. Perhaps Yon or Arjun can give us an idea of what OF has had in mind as a release roadmap?
I'm afraid we're going to be kinda stuck on this until Ben returns, though...
Our goal should be obvious - "first release ASAP after OpenACS 4.6 releases". I just have no way to plug in numbers at this point.
Note that 4.6 will include many pieces that are critical to dotLRN, i.e. new-portals and other packages like notifications and attachments and the new forums software, plus the improved calendar package.