Just to update people on the current (subject to change!) calendar
for the 1.4 release. Note that all dates are approximate!

The pre-branch quiet period (before which all major 1.4 related
projects are to be finished) begins at the end of day (GMT) March
26th.

The branch itself occurs sometime in the seven days following the 26th
at a point where release engineering feels the tree is stable, but no
later than April 2nd. At the branch, the -current tree on the ftp site 
(and available by SUP) starts tracking the branch until the end of the 
release cycle.

The ALPHA phase of the release cycle begins at the branch, with
1.4_ALPHA snapshots to appear on the ftp site as soon as the build
masters can finish their jobs (between 8 hours and six days, depending
on the port).

The BETA phase begins on (or perhaps a bit before) April 16th. Again,
1.4_BETA binaries will appear as soon thereafter as the people
building them can manage.

The final code freeze is currently scheduled for April 30th
(approximately). Final release binaries and a final release may take a 
couple of weeks past that point, in order to get full builds done on
all platforms and in order to get them distributed to all the mirror
sites.

Perry