...
No. We do not want this initiative to hinder the current development process. Upcoming releases of DSpace software will continue to include new features and resolve bugs/issues. Chances are much of the code changes coming out of this integration effort will be rolled out over several releases (some initially many may even be behind-the-scenes changes that you won't even noticebe architectural, "under the hood" changes).
Think of this initiative as a separately organized project, whose end goal is better collaboration between our communities and better integration between the software. DSpace software itself will continue to improve and change as this effort goes along. We fully expect there to be several releases of DSpace software before we are able to release a DSpace with "Fedora Inside".
...