I don’t have the urls handy but I am sure there are other orgs providing way more tiling window managers, etc. than we do. You wouldn’t use these repos as the example, the instructions you should follow are in the image template.
Yes, you deserve an explanation.
First the practical ones:
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In general we take the time after a release to go after tech debt, sometimes it piles up all at once because sometimes more people are around than are on chillops. Here in the US it’s summer and I want to be outside because I hate computers.
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uCore: this is a result of enough usage where the community has a feel for what uCore feels like, there’s lots of conversations in discord from users who have always wanted a CentOS based uCore to begin with. So I chalk this one up as getting feedback from that audience, and then adjusting accordingly. Some people just aren’t built for ignition and prefer other ways to configure and provision, and that’s still a large amount of people. bsherman will keep the ucore thread updated, but you can track its evolution here (and it’s a rebrand): GitHub - ublue-os/server: work in progress server project
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Bluefin LTS and GDX are in Beta. Though if anyone’s been looking at the repo since it basically just works we can likely just leave it and see how long it takes for it to break, heh. However, I tend to be more upfront about expectations, especially with support expectations, we can’t commit until we know we can last the distance. This isn’t a technical reason it’s still a scope and project management issue. Though … it’s a beta that really feels finished. I love this thing. Achillobator is only dormant, eventually life finds a way.
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The base images we’ve always wanted to not do. We usually say “we’re not bitnami”, it’s not our job to make one of everything. We’re deliberately moving towards more focus on things like working more closely with flathub and GNOME/KDE since we’ve solved the OS problem enough for us to focus on more important things. That’s that “maintenance mode” parts. If people want a wide variety of desktops then they should ask Fedora to provide those, we’re effectively getting out of this business because …
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With bootc in the CNCF the excitement around the industry explodes. This is a common thing, the data will be interesting in a year. This is hard to explain to desktop users who are unaware of how large cloud native is. Millions and millions of developers can now do this, and RHEL10 ships with image mode. Work for debian/arch support is happening upstream. So in a way we accomplished part of our mission.
As you know we monitor our contribution statistics very closely, this kind of thing is my day job. I want to reassure you that we have more contributors than ever, and most of our development is shifting more towards larger problems than the operating system.
Here’s the data:
(That last dip is because the chart measures partial months, that’s just a bug)
What I am trying to get at is, there’s nothing to worry about from our workload/contributor load perspective. Just because we’re in maintenance mode doesn’t mean we’re not moving forward, it just means the OS is basically “complete” for us. Bazzite is an exception to this due to the nature of its goal and purpose - it’s probably always going to be in feature development.
And lastly, now’s probably a good time to link to our mission statement. There’s a bunch in there but I’ll concentrate on the main point:
Accelerate operating system development by integrating with the cloud native ecosystem, in order to provide an on-ramp for new open source contributors.
Our primary purpose is to provide a place for people to join the club. We’re just the tour guide. For example, Tulip recently got a new job, a good one too. Bluefin LTS helped, the ultimate thing you can see someone achieve: “Look what I did, here it is”, have someone look at it, and immediately see your value. But it also means that she’ll be ramping down.
A cynical take would be “ublue bit off more than it can chew”. Because of course we’ll miss that level of engagement. Building LTS with tulip is one of my favorite stories to share with other oss contributors! But, the data says otherwise, we’re attracting more and more talent, which is only good for us.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter because of course she automated everything anyway. Hell, it might take more effort to turn it off than leave it running. 
And since the CNCF announcement it’s attracting a lot more pros and those sorts of folks have started contributing - there’s a reason we targeted cloud native - KubeCon is not just the largest cloud native conference in Europe, it is the largest open source conference in Europe overall! Here’s the transparency report.
I hope this gives you some insight in the thought process.