As a Core member who is able to see the current progress of the Modules in the release tracker I can assure you that when the public is able to see it, it satisfy all your questions on the status of a release. A lot of work went into this. It is very impressive. Plus the release tracker module itself will eventually be released so you can use it for your own projects.

I think this is going to be a great milestone in DotNetNuke.

We can safely say that it will be approved or rejected in less than a month. I have submitted the Survey module and had it "bounced" a few times. One little thing and you have to start the process all over again. So even if the module was at the last stage that doesn't mean it wont get "bounced" for a small error and now need another week to start over.

The nice thing is you will be able to see what a module got "bounced" for. This will help you gage how it's chances will be when it is re-submitted. That sort of detailed info I'm not a liberty to disclose about the Forum module until the release tracker becomes public.

Until the release tracker is public, the project leader, at their discretion, will usually tell you what the situation is.