WRT the discussion about a few extra weeks of stabilising vs the need to release within cooee of schedule, I have a suggestion:
Cut a release, then keep Cooker in `stabilising things' mode (basically the same minimal-changes approach as during RC1->RC2) for, say, two weeks or a month. At the end of that time, drop the curtain on Cooker stability for another six months, pull out the changes that were real improvements and release them as both a file tree and a small ISO image. Call it a `tech pack', advertise it as being for perfectionists, and include it in later production of the boxed set (`now with Tech Pack'). That way it's not competing directly against the boxed set. When a security update happens to the main distro that impacts one of the `tech pack' RPMs, release the fixed tech-pack version and all dependencies as the update instead of the fixed main-distro version. This way, as time progresses, the `tech pack' improvements will get silently folded into the main distro. How say you? Cheers; Leon