The official release of Sakai 2.5.0 is being delayed to the week of 3 March 2008 due to unforeseen complications in upgrading our build management software. In the meantime, a second release candidate for Sakai 2.5.0 is now available from the Sakai source repository:
https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/sakai/tags/sakai_2-5-0_RC02a
This release candidate incorporates 26 additional bug fixes since the last release candidate, eliminates all remaining blocking issues associated with the functionality of the release itself, and will be very close, if not identical, to the official 2.5.0 release. At this point we are simply working on the mechanics of and documentation for the release. Indeed, the University of Cape Town has been running Sakai 2.5 in production since it became available as a beta release, and has contributed a great deal of assistance and leadership in vetting the release and managing the 2.5.x branch.
For an overview of new and enhanced functionality in Sakai 2.5, please see the Sakai 2.5 Release Highlights page. For a more detailed view, you can also check out the "Sakai 2.5.0" filters in Jira, where you will note that so far the Sakai development community has addressed over 1200 bugs and completed over 300 enhancements for the 2.5 release.
There are also currently 306 unresolved bugs affecting Sakai 2.5, and I'm sure we'll continue to get new bug reports, however, for those that do not have the resources to follow along and locally incorporate bug fixes from the 2.5.x maintenance branch, there will be maintenance releases. The maintenance releases will be tagged from the maintenance branch at periodic intervals, with the first one likely to be released in April or May. The maintenance branch and releases will be maintained for Sakai 2.5 for a period of two-years after it is release, or longer, if there is sufficient community interest.