These are helpful suggestions. Both have been noted.

The functionality in this mod is planned to be taken into core Zen Cart in the next major release. However, this will hopefully be a re-write as the mod is creaking under the weight of some dodgy historical design choices (it has a long history dating back to osCommerce since when it has passed through the hands of several developers) and lacks the flexibility to cope with many of the features that store owners would like.

Zen Cart releases don't come out on a schedule. I suspect that this is because the Zen Cart developers have to work around their other commitments (e.g. their day jobs) and prefer to get each release right, rather than cut corners to meet a deadline. However, as a generalisation, there's a major release about once a year and several minor releases. It's an active project whose roadmap can be seen here.