Forgive me for nitpicking, but your second to last point is incorrect. Mojang/MS are working on version 1.9 but the latest version released (by default) to cli

Forgive me for nitpicking, but your second to last point is incorrect. Mojang/MS are working on version 1.9 but the latest version released (by default) to clients is 1.8.8, the rest are snapshots of 1.9 (IE not official version releases.. which means in turn modding tools and server frameworks will not upgrade until the full release of 1.9)