I am a fairly experienced senior engineer, during my career I used to interview and hire employees, contractors, and consultants.
I have NEVER experienced or seen an interviewing process like this one: over the period of 10 weeks, I was phone screened twice, face-to-face interviewed with panels of people twice (combined discussion time is, in my estimate, close to 12 hours) , ALL of my references checked and grilled about me and...nothing. Haven't heard from them since.
Usually, checking references is the last step after you already tentatively make-up your mind and feel you will extend an offer to the candidate. Of course, unless checking references unvails something really bad about the candidate, which does not happen very often.
Keep in mind that this is NOT a management position or any other strategically important administrative position, just a simple engineering position.
I have to say that they were all very nice and pleasent with me during this process, I have absolutely no complaints there...I am not in a particular hurry but after three months it would be nice to know what the outcome is, don't you think so? At this point of time, I think that even a rejection is better than no answer at all.
Somebody somewhere will have to make a decision at one point of time, and it almost seems that nobody is authorized or willing to do that.