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The really big issue is that the work isn't only on the theme front, but mainly on the modules. Almost all of them have hard coded HTML, as Bleekk mentioned, and that needs to be removed to get everything working smoothly. That means all frequently used modules need to be rewritten in terms of layout, which is a huge task.
How can the theme designers be involved more into the development of 2.6? I've tried to get it to run on both my local PC and my remote developement server, but it won't run on either one (strangely).