Slavek, Darrell, 
all three of us are saying the same thing: let's focus on the tasks needed to release R14.0.0

Highlighting both of your comments:

>> I suggest at this point to completely stop the debate on new applications and
>> pursue exclusively the tasks necessary for R14.0.0.

> At one time we were at feature freeze but that got lost soon thereafter.
> Perhaps we should again declare a feature freeze: all of us should focus on R14.0.0 and nothing else. 
> If we again declare feature freeze then that becomes R14-alpha.

That's exactly why I suggested tagging R14.0.0-alpha: to establish a point which is going to be the base of R14.0.0.
It is basically saying: "let's declare R14 feature-freeze, no more fancy stuff, no more new apps, no more enhancement will go in R14.0.0." But we make this "stick in the code", not just in words.
We focus on R14.0.0-alpha branch and try to get to R14.0.0 release in a timely manner.

Without a fixed base to work on, every new commit there is the possibility to add new bugs and new problems, which would cause even more delay to R14 :-( If you want an example: last year in Jul, soft and hard freeze were declared for R14. Then came some renames, then some fixes, then more renames, some enhancement and so on....
We need to avoid the same mistakes.

  Michele