Approaching pre-5.44 code freeze; some recommendations

In three weeks we reach our first critical milestone on the way to a 
production release of perl-5.44, currently scheduled for May 20 2026. 
That milestone is the "Contentious changes freeze" release of 
perl-5.43.8 on February 20.

At this time it behooves all of us who are active in development of the 
Perl core distribution -- particularly committers and members of the 
Perl Steering Council -- to ask:

* What changes from perl-5.42 have we already made in core -- and are we 
convinced those changes are no longer "contentious"?

* What changes have we scheduled or talked about for perl-5.44 but have 
not really implemented (*e.g.,* the fatalization of "Changing "use 
VERSION" while another "use VERSION" is in scope" 
(https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/23624))?

* What BBC damage have we sustained since the perl-5.43 dev cycle began, 
and what have we discovered from earlier dev cycles?  What part of this 
damage must be addressed by P5P, and what by CPAN authors/moderators? 
What part of this damage needs to be addressed before perl-5.44, and 
what are we prepared to live with?

Speaking for myself, I would really like to see us release on our target 
date and avoid deferring a production release until June or July.  But 
that would require us to begin addressing the questions above now rather 
than wait until April.