I find it hard to be critical of people writing open source stuff, they really are doing us all a service!
Indeed. It's natural to be impatient and to grumble, but the fact it that there is a rather small group of folks working on this in their spare time. If anyone out there can code Java I'm sure they'd appreciate some additional help. Sadly I am mostly Java-clueless but I'm hoping to learn a bit and get on board in the future. There are some UI bits that I'd like to work on.
My best estimate for the new version would be "sometime in 2018". I have a hope that it'll be the first half. But that is just a guess, could be sooner or later. There is no committed schedule.
Plus, I won't be able to run it until neil_w is kind enough to wrap it up as a stand-alone app, anyway
It is likely that the new version will be distributed that way, so I won't need to. Oracle is actually recommending this route for distribution of Java apps going forward.