At least more bug fix releases would be expected. I understand that an old language like Object Pascal cannot grow as new ones...but as said the release process explains well why it's not possible. When you see the list it's obvious. I don't blame you, I just tried to understand. It's ok now.
The release pressure from the commercial product is something from the last few years.
When I repeatedly reported the release was not ready because of open bugs that was ignored under the pressure to release at least something new.
Subsequently I did not wanted to be associated by said product as a tester.
These commercial releases are
eye-candy and money makers,
not bug fix releases.
They only supply hot-fixes when something is really broken.
That also happens with FPC in the maintenance release. Consider these hot-fixes based on back-ports from trunk that are compatible between the versions.
As Marco said: you can always use the fixes branch to keep current ((which is just like the commercial product + hot-fixes and even a bit more).
But a major release is ready when it is ready.
Looking at future versions will get you disapointed even more, because these features in trunk are not guaranteed to be propagated into a release.
Same goes for the commercial product by the way: I have seen many a feature disappear or implemented differently
You have the wrong mindset to understand release management. Be it commercial or open source.