Ok - but if you are interested in .bit specifically, then that is not about Namecoin Core itself (but applications built on top of it). So wallet releases for Namecoin Core are not relevant here, neither are any plans for hard forks.
We already have good infrastructure for .bit lookups, thanks mainly to Jeremy's work on Electrum-NMC (for light lookups) and ncdns. So the issue here is not technical development (or lack thereof), but convincing people that they should go ahead and try using .bit. If you think you can help there, that would be awesome.
The point is that nobody uses Namecoin or the .bit technology and that the coin is dying on the exchanges for lack of liquidity, which also poses a vulnerability for the security of the network as a whole. It feels like a nerd project that looks awesome in the laboratory but has no real world applications, I actually came in contact with the chief developers at brave browser a year ago and suggested to implement the working of .bit address by default, the director said it was going to looked into it but did not hear from them again. It really seems like nobody cares about it.
Yes, I'm aware of your idea. And in fact, I don't think anyone in Namecoin actually opposes it. So feel free to go ahead and do it, or pay a developer to do it for you. The main point that Jeremy raised on the Namecoin forum was that Namecoin as a project has no interest in implementing your idea (because we personally don't think it is very useful, and would rather spend our time on improving Namecoin itself).
Yes, thank you for your reply, I'm wiling to pay in NMC