> I would like to see us devote a few weeks to eliminating all of the above. Everybody would agree to stop scratching 
> their own itches and would agree to help eliminate the above backlog.

That would be a good thing to do, if we really want to get R14 out of the door "soon".
I don't mind new bug reports and new apps, but if we don't focus on the existing open points, we can easily find ourselves in August still discussing whether it is time for RC1 or not :-(

When R14 is ready, we can look at integrating more apps, enhance the handbooks (Darrell has been doing a great job but there is simply too much to do and this will extend far beyond R14.0.0), general improvements and so on.

Actually, during the weekend I was considering the question "should we create a branch R14.0.0-alpha" ? The reason for that is to establish a "base" to work on for moving towards R14 release, with an eye in preventing new bugs to enter R14.0.0 code.
Until now whatever comes along goes into the trunk. This can easily introduce new bugs (for example see bug 1857 introduced in Dec 22, 2013). I am worry that the next fix for problem ABC will introduce new regression bugs for apps DEF and GHJ and so on...

Even though we are not ready for RC1, I feel the need for some kind of "milestone" to base our future work.
R14.0.0-alpha would be the first of such milestones. Then we make a list of bugs that need to be fixed for R14.0.0 and start working on those.
Whatever else (fixes, new developments) comes along would go into the trunk but not in the R14.0.0 branch, unless it is a proven problem for R14 users (ex. critical bugs, instabilities, major lack of functionalities...). 
In this way we will be able to get closer to a release date at a steady pace, without the risk of a new commit introducing bugs that would require two more months for new fixes and so on... (which is more or less what has been going on in 2013 :) )

Sometimes along the way, we will have a R14.0.0-beta and when most of the items have been worked on, we can discuss RC1.

Opinions are welcome as usual.

Cheers
  Michele

PS: if we mark "R14.0.0-alpha", we can also add that as a news on TDE website, which is a good thing as well.