I guess I sympathize a little with some of the ire regarding development speed, but some of the updates for v7-8 are tectonic shifts in how Corona Renderer handles essential aspects of the rendering pipeline (e.g. physical material and tonemapping), so I can't say I'm surprised it could take nearly a year or longer to implement.
Last
really "tectonic" shift we saw was Interactive renderer IMO that generated large influx of new users as it was a blast in a workflow and something fresh.
Besides you can call something tectonic when it existst. As far as I remember people speak about tonemapping overhaul for years now and it is posponed for second time already. As is for example slicer - lost count already for how many releases it gets pushed back - 3 or 4 already, probably even more ?
Promises, promises. I'll believe it when I see it. So far I don't.
Pareto principle should be put into the development plan.
Interactive renderer, good shader, good tonemapping. This should be top priority at all times and 20-30% foundation. Rest 70-80% is more or less important noise.
I really do hope that tonemapping gets prioritized hard AF in the dailies after v7 release.
So far my all time point stands. How can you invest in something when it does not deliver (roadmap). Imagine a client coming back to you and comissioning another set of renders if the last time you screwed up and after agreeing on doing the job in 2 months you did it in 6 or 8 ? You might get a second chance if you screw up once. But do it again and you never see that client back. Moreover you can be sure he mentions to his colleagues in the field that it would be somewhat wise to maybe look for some other contractor than this particular company X as they fail to deliver.
This is so basic business ethics I can't even imagine how this can be of a discussion.
Basic thinking operating on the example of slicer is - OK, the renderer is cool, meets my requirements has this killer IR feature, lacks the feature I really need in my day to day work but there are workarounds and they say they will introduce the feature in the next release. I'm making a switch. Guess what. Promises.