I have almost finished refactoring WPFF according to the outline detailed in my last post. The speed loss is minimal (around 10%, still 5-7x faster than a stock WP 1.3 installation) and the code is cleaner, has more features, and is much more developer-friendly.
The new release is already powering our medium-traffic commercial blogs (Mobileblog, etc.), and after the usual first-hour bugfixes everything seems to be running smoothly. I still have to finish converting the default template from the old version, and package everything before releasing the new code to the public. Stay tuned!
:)
Looking forward to it!