Hey Phil,
As always, thanks for the interest, it's always a 'bump' in my energy level to hear people are looking forward to the new module.
So, here's the scoop... I'm running into some tough technology decisions. On the one hand, I want to be able to take advantage of all the latest toolkits and technologies like .Net 3.5, Linq, AjaxControlToolkit, WCF, etc. and there's some cool new stuff in DotNetNuke 5.0 (Cambrian). So the issue is .. do I target a moving train and require DNN 5.0 as the mininum version supported? and even tougher, do I use Linq and some of the other .Net 3.5 goodies. The highly dynamic nature of the module lends itself really, really well towards Linq, but DNN 5.0 initially will remain .Net 2.0, and there are some integration issues with Linq and WCF that still need to be worked out ( I believe there's a Linq issue if you are using an ObjectQualifier in your DNN installation ) as well as some expected installation issues if I target a platform greater than DNN itself.
It's not an impossible task, I am currently running verison 4.0 of the Repository module on my own site, http://www.gooddogs.com/dotnetnuke, which is running DNN 4.8. I just had to upgrade my site to .Net 3.5, then add the web.config sections for Linq. So it is possible. But I need to balance the advantages of developing using the newer technologies vs. the installation, configuration and support issues if I step too far ahead of the core platform.