WordPress 4.9 to Focus on Managing Plugins and Themes, Gutenberg Targeted for 5.0

Matt Mullenweg, the overall product lead for core releases in 2017, has published an overview for what users can expect in WordPress versions 4.9 and 5.0. After the success of 4.8 and the initial release of Gutenberg last week, Mullenweg is aiming to see the plugin installed on 100K+ sites during the next few months before merging it into core. He also suggested that WordPress could put a promo for the plugin in the upcoming 4.8.1 release. “In the meantime I think we can do another user-focused 4.9 release with the theme of editing code and managing plugins and themes, doing v2s and polishing some features we brought into WP last year,” Mullenweg said. “Weston and Mel already have some good ideas there, and we can start to discuss and brainstorm at the Dev chat next week. This will also allow the Gutenberg-driven release to be 5.0, which is a nice-to-have but not the primary driver of this decision.”
Mullenweg elaborated on changes to the release process in a post on his personal blog. The original idea was for releases to be driven by improvements to the three focus areas (the editor, customizer, and REST API), but the radical changes that Gutenberg introduces
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15402/wordpress-4-9-to-focus-on-managing-plugins-and-themes-gutenberg-targeted-for-5-0

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/wordpress-4-9-to-focus-on-managing-plugins-and-themes-gutenberg-targeted-for-5-0/