While Twenty Twelve has been an anticipated feature of the upcoming WordPress 3.4 release, some will be disappointed to hear that the new default theme for this year will not ship with WordPress 3.4. Instead, it will likely come with WordPress 3.5. However, if you’re interested in playing around with the theme as is, you can download the source via GitHub. While no direct reasoning was given as to why the theme was punted, I’m going to guess that because 3.4 development is already behind, it made sense to postpone it to speed up the development of everything else going into 3.4.
Experimental Method For Contributing To WordPress 3.4
Contributing to the development of WordPress looks like it will be completely different than in the past. According to the dev chat notes published on January 4th on the developer blog, the team has come up with an experimental method to not only create more accountability for everyone involved, but to also try and keep things on track when it comes to schedules. Aside from the team approach, the post also highlights the overall theme for WordPress 3.4, Making it easier to make your site look how you want it to look. Those of you hoping to make a splash in contributing to the development of WordPress 3.4 should read that post and consider filling out the survey attached to it.
This process is an experiment. It’s either going to work out wonderfully or turn into a ball of flames. I hope it works out for the best.