The future

Gimp 1.4 will be a cleanup-version.
objectified lots of the Gimp internals
prepared stuff to be incorporated in a Gimp 2.0

Gimp 2.0 will need time. Gimp 1.4 is in a good shape -
but we do want to tackle interesting stuff.

Gimp 2.0 is completely vaporware yet. Targets for it include:
Colorspace-stuff (GEGL: 16 bit, CMYK)
New rendering pipeline (pupus)
Layer Effects, Layer hierarchy

Lots of fun ahead!