Linus Torvalds said right from the beginning “Release early, release often”. This seems to be a critical requirement for open source projects to attract collaborators. There is a whole chapter on this in The Cathedral & The Bazaar, the classic open source text.
Having released ehcache-1.2beta3 with the distributed stuff in, some old collaborators and new ones have come forward. Making the beta release is a symbol that the new version will be released. Collaborators know their efforts will not be wasted.
Apart from releases here is what has been going on with lines of code:
Fisheye is cool. See the whole ehcache fisheye here. The steeper the line the more you have been doing. The flat lines represent periods of inactivity.
I am now driving ehcache-1.2 to final release. If anyone else is interested in helping out contact me at gluck _ A T _ gregluck.com.