[kerkeslager]

> Because regular, predictable releases mean that developers know they can always "catch the next train"

This is an argument for frequent releases, not regular, predictable releases.

> users know they can plan around predictable upgrade schedules.

I'm not sure this is actually how users plan upgrades.

The majority of individuals probably never turn off the auto-update flag. Planning doesn't enter the equation.

For organizations, my guess is that most organizations will try to build their upgrade process around security, but the reality will rarely be so clean. When I worked in IT we'd get computers into our shop that hadn't been updated. Period. We'd upgrade our provisioning images when there was a notable security patch, and besides that, we just would run updates on every machine every week at 2am Sunday night: that way it didn't interfere with users, but if something went wrong, we were on it with the full team first thing Monday morning. But if machines were turned off or whatever, they wouldn't run the updates. At no point did we ever even check the release schedule of a piece of software: the updates happened on our time, and theirs was irrelevant.

I didn't work in IT for very long, though, so someone with more IT experience should correct me if I'm wrong.