It has been officially announced and confirmed VB4 will see further development. 4.2.1 will be released and even a 4.3 is planned. Also confirmed 4.x will get an update to make it PHP 5.4 compatible.
As for releasing your own patches, that can be done at anytime so long as you don't distribute already copyrighted code- the reality is it is unlikely anyone will and using such patches would nullify any official support someone had.
|