We have done a few changes to be more compatible with PHP 4.4. There will be a RC release of 3.6.1 together with PHP 4.4 RC2 (late this week or early next week). Then the final release will follow soon after unless any big problems are found.
In PHP 4.4 the reference problem we have wrestled with for ages is finally fixed. The fix uncovered a few cases of erroneous reference usage in eZ publish. In addition some of our reference use will cause notices with PHP 4.4. As a result we have changed quite a lot of code with references. Because of the huge amount of changes we use RC releases to make sure people can test it properly first.
Yes, I see that they have finally fixed that bug -- that's great, as I have repeatedly run into problems occasioned by this bug in developing eZ sites.