Fedora 11: Why force beta versions of Firefox and Thunderbird on users?

Another thing I really dislike about Fedora 11 is the decision to replace the stable versions of Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2 present in Fedora 10 with beta versions of Firefox 3.5 and Thunderbird 3 in Fedora 11. I'm certainly not the only one who doesn't like it.

This statement (in bold) features prominently in the Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 release notes:

Please do not use Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 in a production environment.

Yet the FESCo went ahead and approved putting the beta in the full release (this is not Rawhide we're talking about).

I haven't had any trouble (yet) with Thunderbird 3b2, but I'm already frustrated after only two days experience with Firefox 3.5 beta 4: page loading will occasionally randomly hang for no obvious reason, in a few cases so badly that I've even been forced to kill -9 the browser. And its only been two days!

Of course, criticism of the decision to put betas in the official distribution generates snarky comments from some people (the full thread is worth reading):

2009/5/11 Stephen Gallagher :
> OK, first off, why in $DEITY's name are we including Firefox 3.5b4 and
> Thunderbird 3.0b2 in Fedora 11?

These were planned features waaaaay back.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Thunderbird_3
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Firefox_3.1

I don't recall you raising your objection at the time. Both have had
considerable review by FESCO and others so please don't complain about
this so late in the day.

--
Christopher Brown

There are some people think that being cutting edge is synonymous with including beta beta versions of software in official OS releases (e.g. see the /bin/bash blog's overly glowing preview of Fedora 11 written before its official release), but I am not one of them.

Betas are fine in rawhide versions, but only if there is a real possibility of the full non-beta version being available in time for the full Fedora release, and the ability to revert to a older stable version if the beta is still beta - yet these are the contingency plans presented to and accepted by the Fedora FESCo:

Thunderbird 3:
Contingency Plan
There is no turning back.

Firefox 3.5:
Contingency Plan
There is no turning back.

Ah well, I'm sure its just as bad over in Ubuntu or Gentoo land...