Diverging branches? 0.9.33 vs master

[Ed W]

Hi, forgive possibly a dim question, but is there an amount of 
divergence between 0.9.33 and master? As in bug fixes/changes being 
checked into 0.9.33 which are NOT checked into master?  For example some 
recent commits into master appear to have previously been committed to 
0.9.33 (possibly elsewhere also).

What is the typical policy here? Some other projects demand that all 
changes go first into master and then get pulled into sub branches - 
this policy tries to avoid the case that some bug fix is included in a 
release but does not get into the master branch - do we have that policy 
here?

Also, 0.9.33 seems to have dried up on commits, but there seems to be no 
release? Are we waiting on anything? Anything should be pulled from master?

Right now am I better to just build against master than 0.9.33 branch... 
Is master currently fairly stable (interested in x86), are there any 
known breakages or is there stuff missing from 0.9.33?  I don't see any 
big WIP type changes in there right now?

Thanks

Ed W