From the Tor 0.2.4 schedule at

"""November 20, 2012: Big feature proposal freeze. Any big feature which requires a design proposal must have its design proposal finished by this date. If it needs changes after this date, then maybe we didn't design it well enough, and we probably shouldn't merge it.

December 10, 2012: Big feature merge freeze. No big features will be merged after this date.

December 15, 2012: Small feature proposal freeze. Any small feature which requires a design proposal must have its tiny little design proposal finished by this date.

January 10, 2013: Feature merge freeze. No features after this date. I mean it.

The definition of "big patch" is deliberately vague.

Note that the cutoffs above are merge freezes, not submission freezes."""

(I've just added 10 days to that first deadline, and 5 days to the third.)

Also, I'm currently thinking that, to give these deadlines teeth, I shouldn't self-enforce, since I've veered between "pushover" and "insane zealot" in the past in ways that didn't make a lot of sense. Rather, I'm going to say that in cases of doubt ("Is this a little feature") and cases where I'd like to violate freezes ("surely this can go in on December 12"), I'm not going to merge patches on my sole discretion any more. Rather, I'm going to say that at least two of me, Roger, and Andrea ought to agree to violate a freeze before we do so. (I will try not to forget and mess this up.) With any luck, this will let us get closer to a reasonable 6 month release cycle.