"Mozilla did say why it is waiting so long before making these changes: Firefox 24 is an Extended Support Release (ESR), so major changes have been pushed after it to minimize any potential impact."Ah, this makes sense. Previously I had suspected that Mozilla was saving Australis as the impetus for a big "Whole New Firefox" marketing initiative, what with all the new goodies like IonMonkey (tantalizingly close to V8 now, http://arewefastyet.com/) and the native developer tools.
Considering that Australis was proposed sometime mid-2011, I'll be happy to finally see it land (if indeed it does land in 25, I haven't actually seen any official announcement yet).