One example feature that I hope to support is OSGI. Direct support for OSGI will likely cause a significant performance loss. That is why I'm going to do a quick optimization of the entire system before I start working on the new features. I believe OSGI is scheduled to be included in Java 9, along with some new packaging facilities which I also hope to support when I can find adequate documentation on the subject. These are all features that belong in a fork because they can and probably will have a negative impact on the performance of applications that don't need those features. I hope to make these features pluggable eventually, but hard coding them initially is much easier.

Using ant instead of maven is also a limitation I'm not willing to accept. Most of the people I've talked to think I should skip maven and go directly to a gradle build system. Since gradle can utilize maven, maven is adequate for most development needs at this point.