Hello,
FYI I'm planning to tag a release branch for Maxima 5.17
in CVS in the early hours (UTC) of Dec 1.
As for the 5.16 release, the first release on the 5.17 branch
will be 5.17.0, with additional subminor releases following as
needed, and the last subminor release will be the last stable
(relatively speaking) release until the 5.18 branch.
The 5.18 release is planned for April 2009.
HTH
Robert Dodier