I don't really see this as a bad thing, I see this as a necessity.
And why is that? And what is wrong with the direction?
It was supposed to be a bugfix and update of 3.1, instead it pulls in components from 3.5/3.9 as well as OS4 and introduces tons of new bugs and issues.
As in "which"? Just to give you ideas, what is wrong with a printer.device that prints correctly, an animation datatype that multitasks correctly and a CD file system that supports UDF? All these components came somehow into 3.1.4 through integration of 4.x components, just ,reviewed and bug-fixed to the amount necessary.
The 3.x series is a very conservative approach to the development, quite unlike 3.9 was and much less than 4.x attempted to be.
In fact, you really bewilder me: At the one hand, you ask for experimental components like 4-way adapter support, which we cannot test to the amount necessary to make it a product as robust as I would like to have it, at the other hand, you deny any development of components you don't appreciate and that are not even central to the Os experience. For example, the GUI will still be gadtools-based, thus rather lightweight, so why do you speak so hateful about reaction as it does not impact you at all. It may, however, improve the experience of other users that wait to have it.
You seem to have a very one-sided view on the development. "Only what I want, everything else is shit". The truth is that every Os development is a matter of compromises. Here it is "well, some people want reaction, so let's deliver it, but bind it very lightly into the Os, so we don't ruin the experience on low end machines".
I don't know what is wrong about this.
To make matters worse, many of these bugs are in the kickstart chips that still are being sold.
Oh, worse, Cloanto sells 3.1 ROMs or 3.x ROMs ("developped without a license" (tm)) with even more bugs in it. Why isn't that bad? I believe it is actually worse, selling the old shit again, with the old bugs in it.
We all understand, and you should appreciate this as well, that with a small developer group and - more important - a small group of beta-testers, our means are limited, yet we try the very best to fix what we broke. In 3.2, the System-Startup was designed to limit the impact of ROM bugs as many RAM components can be upgraded from disk without requiring the installation of a new ROM, and without requiring a reboot.
3.1.4.1 fixes many, but far from all these bugs, and 3.1.4.1 will be the last "free update",
Apparently, you know more about the 3.1.4 updates than I do.
as 3.2 will be another product, and one with a vast amount of changes that go well beyond what OS 3.9 did, more and more becoming "OS 4 for 68k".
I'm not quite sure what you mean. Don't you think it is necessary to advance the 3.x line a bit? It is a less radical update than 3.9, the GUI stays pretty much the same. Though what is wrong with a GUI that is no longer based on topaz.8, without the complexity of reaction? What is bad about iconification gadgets in system tools? What is wrong with windows you can drag out of the screen? What is wrong with TAB-expansion in the Shell?
None of these changes are radical, just slight tweaks, without impacting the overall "feel" of the Amiga.
Which brings me to...
OS 4.x is a terrible mess
Exactly.
I do not know, and I do not care too much. The reason why I don't care about 4.x is that I never understood what a re-development of a retro-os on another outdated CPU platform is supposed to become. I do not understand AROS for the same reason. If I would develop an Os from scratch, I would certainly not re-implement all the design errors of AmigaOs from scratch - so what's the point? There are better open portable operating systems than Amiga.
The only point in the 3.x development is to get rid of the "rough edges" of 3.1 and to integrate functionality into the Os that was otherwise provided by patches and hacks, with all the instabilities these provide. This is not about "creating a new operating system for 68K", because if I would want that, I would certainly not start from something as absurd as AmigaOs.