Thanks @bld , I second everything in your post. Good to see that some people understand the place we are coming from! 
In fact, we heard you and did introduce a new setup with two master and develop branches yesterday (see here). Hopefully this allows everyone here to work with the newest tip and test it in advance, while also having a stable branch available (master) that is only updated for critical bugfixes and actual releases of well-tested code.
Please keep in mind that JUCE used to be a one-man show with extremely minimalistic project management for a very long time (and that used to work very well!). So if we are to transition to more defined processes around releases, potentially a third branch for “release candidates” etc., and all those other things people are suggesting here, it has to be gradually and can’t happen overnight. Our first step are the two braches instead of one. We may do more stuff along those lines soon. Watch this space