The older forward branches are still heavily used, while the release branches are open for bug fixes by all. I think people should no longer use older forward branches and maybe these should even be deleted. The release branches (except for 4.4) are open for all committers. I don't think we have or should have a policy on those but we run the risk of losing work this way and people running old releases won't benefit from the fixes in those forward branches.
-- Daan
