It's probably a good idea to concentrate maintenance efforts on fewer kernel trees. There should probably be some kind of synchronization going on, i.e. declaring a new "stable" kernel when there are enough major Linux distros currently basing on it.
This is a good idea. I have been on 2.6.32 forever in Debian <i>un</i>stable, and it's starting to get old. Yes, I could compile my own newer kernel, but then udev breaks, and then I've wasted 5 hours :)