Cmarqu has pointed out that C't magazine is running an article in their next release promoting the Inkscape 0.44 release. This comes out in 2 days.
This means we have a huge opportunity here if 0.44 can be finished and windows packages made available by June 24th.
If we fail to achieve this, we will probably greatly disappoint a lot of readers who will come looking for this release.
As I understand it, there are no bugs left holding up the 0.44.0 release, and it's only cosmetic issues at this point (e.g. about screen tweaks). I know for an art tool that getting cosmetics well polished is important, but I would like to strongly suggest we release ASAP, and put a big priority on getting Windows and OSX packages generated of that within the next two days, so that we can take advantage of the C't publication.
We have planned a 0.44.1 exactly with the intention of avoiding allowing small issues like these from delaying a release. Let's go with whatever is easiest for the about screen for now, and leave perfecting it for 0.44.1.
Bryce