[kevincox]

I agree with all of your point except for the beta woes. If I'm building a production product I would much rather they be upfront about when products are still "beta" and under heavy development as opposed to shipping a buggy and unreliable product that I only realize is in that state after I stick x GB of data in it or start making x req/s.

For example at a previous job we were "early" adopters of Amazon Redshift and it gave us no end of troubles. That should definitely be labeled "beta" until they sort those issues out.