Thomas raised the idea of extending the release schedule by 1 month and consulted developers about it.
Animation & Rigging: handy but not critical, bone collections should make it regardless.
Pipeline, Assets & I/O: some asset API breaking changes and USD targets could benefit from more time, but not considered critical.
User Interface: some breaking API changes to deprecate old functionality would be good to get in, but not critical.
Render & Cycles: many things in progress and more time always useful, but nothing critical that can’t be postponed to 4.1 or 5.0.
Grease Pencil v3 will not make it even with an extra month or two. This will definitely be for 4.1 earliest.
Eevee Next could maybe make it, but stability and performance would still be a concern. Recommend to postpone to 4.1 also to avoid too much stress on the team.
Core: on track.
Conclusion is that we will stick to the existing 4.0 release schedule, as adding another month or two does not make a big difference. This means there will be more breaking changes in 4.1, which we had hoped to avoid. But this seems unavoidable unless we extend the schedule even further. There will be a significant number of big features in 4.0 regardless.
Face maps removal was discussed. There seem to be some users still relying on this, and the design for replacement functionality is still unclear. General consensus is that it would be better to restore this. Dalai and Campbell will follow up.
User interface development needs to be better coordinated, Fiona and Brecht will get involved to help planning and organizing.