Nethack 3.4.4 / 3.5.0
Interesting:
September 21, 2014 Announcement
The NetHack Development Team feels it is necessary to publicly
address an issue that has surfaced in the last week.
Recently a NetHack source distribution has appeared, claiming to
be NetHack 3.5 or 3.5.0 or 3.4.4.
This claim is partially correct. This is our code. However it was
not released by us or with our authorization. This code is not
ready for release: it is unfinished, unpolished, and almost certainly
very buggy. It has not been play-tested for balance or functionality.
It is best considered a partial and unfinished rough draft. We
will not be supporting this code, nor will we be releasing binaries
or bugfixes for it. It will not be available through our website.
Due to this incident and to prevent confusion, we will not now nor
in the future release anything with a version number of 3.4.4, 3.5,
or 3.5.0.
We thank those of you who play and develop both NetHack and its
many variants for your support and encouragement at this time and
over the many years NetHack and its progeny have and continue to
evolve.
What amazes me most about this is the implication that the official branch of Nethack is still being developed, and that a new release may still happen (the last one's from 2003).
Mind you, I'm not blaming the DevTeam for the long period of development. I'm not even necessarily blaming them for the closed nature of said development, with no access to prereleases and nightly builds, source repos, bug trackers and more. I am unhappy about the culture of non-communication where there's no mailing lists for interested parties, no IRC channels, no way to get involved or help out, and so on.
That said, though, Nethack is a great game, and I sure hope to see a new official release soon.