A few notes on this:

1. Dolphin 8 is not a "new" project. We've been working on 7.1 and realized that the updates we plan to include are well beyond the scope of .x update number. You will still see .0.7 though.

2. $600-$1000 won't buy you an assurance of a stable platform. Trust me, we have those platforms on our PC, we constantly analyse them and we know a lot about level of service as well. The money you pay for a license won't make much of a difference. it mosre a matter of what see more works for you and what's closer to your specific idea. Dolphin stacks up very favourably compared to to those "$600-$1000" platforms. In fact Dolphin used to be a paid product, costing exactly in that range.

3. This development is planned to be very transparent. It's in public SVN and we'll be updating people about progress regularly.