I'm sorry, I was trying to be funny by referencing an earlier post in which the movie "The Money Pit" was mentioned. I honestly have no idea when EMC will be 1.8. The answer is: patience. The Sponge team basically has to create a new "Bukkit" from scratch, without using anything from Bukkit itself (to avoid legal issues). Maybe mid-to-late next year? Maybe later? Patience. Have faith in Aikar and the rest of the team
Already possible in Bukkit: Bukkit.getOfflinePlayer(name).getUniqueId(); - getOfflinePlayer will go look it up if the user hasn't been seen before, or use cache if its cached locally. It will hang the main thread though, don't spam call it sync.
seems to have died down quite a bit, not as many commits also, assuming Aikar's name on there is Aikar he hasn't committed anything
There have been a lot of staff changes and stuff: http://forums.spongepowered.org/t/status-update-26-october-2014/4009