[jpollock]

The decision to make a software release public is (like the version number) a decision for the marketing and sales teams to make.

The software developer's job is to attack the features in priority order (hopefully defined by sales revenue estimates), and make sure the software is (reasonably) always releasable.

After that, it's a risk/reward, each new feature pulls in new bugs. Does the increased functionality offset the cost due to upgrade and stabilization?