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Google Releases Android 4.1 Source Code
Unlike previous releases, where months passed between Google announcing a new version and the code being released, Google has made good on their promise to release the source code to Jelly Bean in record time. Unfortunately, the gitweb instance on kernel.org is still down so you'll have to download the entire thing to take a peek. Hopefully the Cyanogenmod team will find time to start on a community enhanced version soon.
If I remember correctly, the issue was that app developers were hiding vital functions behind the menu button, and there was no way to know whether the menu button actually worked on certain screens. Take the Android WiFi settings as a prime example - to enter the advanced WiFi settings, you had to press Menu and then Advanced, even though there was no indication to the user, and there is no menu as such (i.e. the menu button does nothing) in any of the other Android settings dialogs - how is the user supposed to know that he can access a whole other dialog by pressing Menu and hitting "Advanced"? The only way to find out (unless someone tells you) is to go through every single screen of a new app and press the menu button on each one, to see if a different menu pops up somewhere - and this really was the case on MANY Android apps... you'd get access to an entirely different menu from screen A than from screen B, and certain settings would only be available by pressing menu when already in the settings dialog - very confusing for end users.
I do agree that they should have kept the menu button in the same place though. Maybe just make the backlight (on devices where applicable) only light up when there's actually a menu available... and a better icon would have been nice... but tbh - I don't think I could have thought up a better one...