Don’t worry, I’ll try to fix as many bugs as I can in the 1.7 branch before making a 1.8.0 release. I know we’ve been lacking in our policies (huge gaps between releases, features being included in minor releases), but this is improving now.
Just keep in mind that there are few active Panda3D developers, and they only work part-time, so sometimes you’ll need to have a bit of patience as I can’t look at everything right away. Providing helpful feedback to bug reports is very helpful - it’s annoying when I track down a bug, ask someone to test a workaround, and then get no response whatsoever.
Furthermore, there are bugs that I cannot fix, such as ones related to Mac OS X or ATI hardware (neither of which I have access to). I don’t have the money to buy a mac at the moment (perhaps later this year), so for now I’ll have to rely on the community to provide patches for those problems.