Oh well, sorry about the abandonware stuff. Getting back to the more prosaic subject, I do think it'd be better to do more coding in a branch off RE24 than off master - except stuff intended for RE25 in the first place. Or code which starts intended for RE24 but ends up waiting for RE25, which is maybe what I remember as abandonware:-(
Once everything intended for RE24 is in the RE24 branch, we can merge that branch (or its descendant maintenance branch) to master but not the other way around, and the code can hopefully be merged instead of cherry-picked into RE24.
Also holding the door open for 'hotfix' branches should help, and killing old CVS branches, like mentioned in the original mail.