I don’t think there’s any particular “fast-track” about it. The bar to releasing a maintenance release should be low, assuming that someone is willing to spend the time going through the steps.
I would propose that:
- any /dev/3 or above should be able to do a maintenance release whenever they feel is appropriate
- the most common reason would probably be “my implementation wants it”, which is perfectly fine
- they should post on Talk in the Developers category with 1 working day’s notice before initiating the process
- (this isn’t strictly necessary because these branches should always be in a releasable state)
The Developer Stages page says that a /dev/3 has privileges to “Manage a release.” Unless there are any objections I’d also add “Initiate a maintenance release.”