Comment by qznc

The article is a little bit out of date. The 16bit colors will already be available in the next release (2.10). Michael Natterer and Øyvind Kolås had three-week hackathon and now 90% of the work is done.

source: http://gimpfoo.de/2012/04/17/goat-invasion-in-gimp/

This is also on the official GIMP, but you cannot link to individual news items there. :(