I'm a developer trying to choose what framework to use. I would like to give my perspective on the situation. I would personally like to see 0.9 released real soon with a roadmap of what is coming for the 1.0 release and what might not be backwards compatible. I can easily see that this framework has been proven on some high traffic sites and I feel it's stable. Rails hasn't released 1.0 and it certianly has had developer buy in. I think releasing the 0.9 and then the 1.0 will make you look active and agressive.
I also think ajax is is more important than some others think. This is probably just because there are a lot of other things that truly are more important. Ajax is really hot right now and I could see loosing some developers because it's not as on the forefront of the whole web 2.0 hyped up junk. Ajax is more about usability than eye candy or at least it should be. That being said. I know I can use ajax really easy inside of a django project but will anyone choose another framework based on most of the other ones having "ajax support". I think what you guys are going for is wanting developers to think that your project is stable, relevant, and has a rapidly growing community. I think you guys have done a great job and I look forward to seeing this project progress.
