There haven't been any new builds for a long time now. Are we dead? No, there is actually a lot going on. The reason there haven't been any new builds is that we're updating our infrastructure for doing the builds, and sadly that has taken a lot longer than expected. Now it has finally caught speed again though, so we hope to be able to push new builds to both stable and develop very soon.
Up until now, most launchers have implemented custom logic to install Minecraft, Forge, LiteLoader, etc. This logic is often fragile and repeated in the different projects, and all of them (Minecraft, Forge, LiteLoader etc.) need to be handled different. To solve this issue we have started working on WonkoTheSane, a script that handles all the specifics and outputs files in a common format, that launchers like MultiMC (and others) will be able to use. This means that all the hacks move to a easily controllable server, meaning we can fix issues faster, and hopefully without pushing a new build for a small change. You can view the output of the script here and track the work of implementing this in MultiMC here. A document with some more information is available here.
Now, what more does this result in? Since we get a common package format that will be able to handle all sorts of file downloads and installations, this will also be usable to download and install mods. Sound familiar to QuickMods? It is, very much actually, and it currently looks like QuickMods will be "replaced" by wonko files. This means we end up with a common system to handle everything Minecraft related. Do we stop there? Hell no, we have already started thinking about other games this could be used with...
If you have any thoughts or ideas about this feel free to join the discussion on IRC to voice you're opinions, we're looking for as much input as possible!
We sadly don't have any fancy screenshots of this yet, but we will hopefully have a demo very soon.