Andrew, I very sincerely do not wish to cause offense, but I am starting to think I must be a really stupid person for believing this stuff. Remember, in your blog "When" on October 15 you said "We'll release RC1 by the end of next week" - whether that was a "promise" or a "commitment" I don't know, but it was a pretty firm statement so it should have been ready by October 23rd.

Then on mydatery's blog post last week you said you "really want to see more have the RC released next week" - this was not as firm as your statement the previous week but still sounded pretty positive. But next week is now - so it sounds like that wasn't true either. Now you are saying "It's most likely next week for RC1" - an even weaker statement for an again delayed date and unkept commitment. Can you understand why people are starting to freak out here?

At the risk of sounding like "Johnny one not" you can fix this by just giving us an upgrade script. Why even wait until the "RC" - just say you will do it for beta 8 rev 1. The upgrade script should be a part of the product anyway - it is even more important than the D6 conversion module, and your "testing" is going to be crappy until you do it.

I want to emphasize it doesn't matter what you call it as long as we have that upgrade script. Call it Beta 9 if you want, or Alpha 20, whatever. I think Gmail called itself a beta for five years or something like that. We just need to immediately end this horribly demoralizing practice of having to destroy our would every few weeks - in no one's worst nightmares did we think this would last this long.

I also really think you should find someone in your organization to act as "community liaison" - or webmasters liaison - some title like that. It would be their job to look at things from the perspective of the members who are using trying to use your software to build online communities. These is no one there like that now- you are all visionary developers, but the "vision" has now become more important than the people who are trying to use your software and it is really starting to show.