Rob, I've been meaning to ask this for awhile. What the hell is the need for an "alpha team" nowadays when the product is now EOL? I get the feeling that there are features that have been "in the can" for months and years now that are held back because they haven't been fully tested. Are our empegs controlling missiles or space shuttles? I understand that the point of solid testing procedure is to get release-quality code so that consumers don't call in with stupid questions because they're running beta versions. But empeg users have been running beta versions *forever* and really, we're used to a few quirky things not working.

Like last year some time, I can't remember if it was 2.0b7, b11, or b13, but one of those.... Some stupid USB bug held up the entire release for god-knows-how-long. I use Ethernet, and couldn't give a damn about USB. Why couldn't it just be released with the caveat "if you run USB, you may experience problems."

I guess I just don't see the point anymore in holding these things back from release now that the product has been discontinued, and isn't going to be a mass-market product. Since we're kinda just a branch hanging off of the tree now (with the other current Rio products being at the trunk) why can't we get exprimental stuff without the hassle of a big test cycle to slow progress down even more? We already pay the penalty of having to wait for a back-port, and now we need to let the alpha team hang onto it for even longer?

I think the whole alpha test phase made sense back in the day, but nowadays, I just wish we could abandon the alpha and just go to wide beta testing, with maybe quarterly releases instead of yearly ones. Those who "can't stand the heat" of running the new version can go back to their last-known-good. Simple, yes?