CESD does not release specific details of his plans for enhancements and feature additions or expected release dates partly because there is a risk of competing companies taking his ideas. From a posting by CESD in April 2004 on the Yahoo group (lightly edited):
[Posting details of future enhancements] makes it easier for a competitor to ensure that their product remains competitive<g>.
Another important reason for me is that if I post a list [of future enhancements], people will look at it and not bother to report their wish on the grounds it's already listed, so I don't get to gauge just how many people are really interested in an item. Some people will also post a request along with suggestions for implementation (not always too useful, but every now and then someone comes up with a really good idea that they might not bother with if the item was already on the list). And finally, even if someone is requesting the same feature that has been requested before, I often get a DIFFERENT explanation as for why this would be useful to the individual and that information can also be useful.
The list is long - it's close to some 300 items at this point so obviously one-offs are not likely to be implemented, but I do review this list on a regular basis.
CESD is also unable to provide specific dates for the release of new versions because there are factors that are out of his control. Below is a post from him (sent on 28 August 2005) explaining some of these factors; these were most relevant for the development of Datebk6 (now released), but they still indicate the kinds of problems he has to deal with:
> What's happening with DateBk6?
There are many priorities - not all of which can be discussed publicly. Much time has been spent on the issue of the Tasks database.
Now that PalmOne has officially declared that they have no intention of fixing the serious and fatal incompatibilities in their own software (yet still erroneously pretend that their devices are compatible with the standard PalmSource PIM apps), it is now going to be a requirement that Datebk5 support this last of the four, proprietary PIM databases. I still get dozens of emails every day from people running into DmWrite errors because of these bugs in PalmOne's DM patch code which does not work properly with NVFS memory. And I get dozens more emails from people running into problems because they try and install old versions of Datebk5 on these newer devices, and then get in horrible messes which can require several emails to resolve. It's not good enough for PalmOne to say that third party developers should update their software to read their proprietary databases, because the AVERAGE user is going to install the old software anyway - and I hate to think how many people just gave up on DateBk5 or the Palm OS in general just because PalmOne's new devices seemed to be incompatible or have too many problems.
Handling the proprietary tasks database is a non-trivial issue. PalmOne could do it because they have a much simpler application and do not handle the integrated displays of ToDo's as DateBk5 does and therefore had the room in the first 64k segment to put in the support code for that database. I had long since filled up that segment and so to handle the tasks database will require some new tricks to workaround this limitation in the Palm OS. Overall this will have chewed up at least another couple of months of development time.
Now you know why so many developers have just got fed up with PalmOne and PalmSource and moved to PocketPC which has a more rational development path at this point (sad to say). It used to be nice to program for the Palm OS because it was known and predictable, but with PalmOne going off on a tangent, they have probably shot themselves in the foot. Of course, it's entirely possible they don't care a whit about it - if the Treo670 for Windows Mobile is real (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000840053340/), maybe that's their answer to the problems they created ;)
I also spent quite a bit of time studying and preparing for OS/6 Cobalt devices - but now it seems those devices may never appear. A Palm GUI on top of Linux is definitely interesting, but if/when PalmSource finally gets that done - will there be anyone around licensing it?