[wpietri]

That is pretty fucked up. The point of declaring a release, rather than just shipping nightlies, is to let people know when it's ready. Having a dog's breakfast of a major release (which 12.04 certainly was out of the gate) substantially decreases my trust in Canonical.

[derefr]

Think of it like this--if they waited to ship the release until it was stable enough for corporations to use... then corporations would still take four months to evaluate it, so they'd only start using it was it was four months more stable than necessary. It's a bit like cooking a steak: if you wait for it to look medium-done in the pan, it'll actually be well-done by the time it hits the plate, because it'll keep cooking in its own hot juices after you take it off. You need to take it off when it looks medium-rare, if you want to serve it medium.

[wpietri]

It's absurd.

Late adopters wait because they'd like somebody else to flush out the early bugs. If this is actually Canonical's plans, that 14.04.1 is the first release expected to be stable, then if I were a late adopter, I'd just wait for 14.04.2.

The let's-trick-people-into-adopting-something bit is basically an attitude of customer contempt. It's assuming that the release knows the customer's business better than the customer does. Whether it's right or wrong, it's a dick move, and acts to decrease trust.