marketing disaster? not so.

the article quotes christoph hellwig that a feature-removal-only release with a major version number bump would be a "marketing disaster".
i don't really think so. all else failing, it is weird enough to generate some press. maybe some burnt-out microsoft marketing guy will jump on it with the usual uninspired advertisement, but among the informed public and the press it might serve to make a really valid point: janitorial work is valuable, and users profit from it in the medium to long term.
and it also makes another point: open source is (or should be, or can be) about beauty and sound engineering under the hood, not just on the UI layer.

of course, that doesn't invalidate the other concerns about a 3.0 as envisioned by alan cox.