"As of approximately 4:45pm PST, www.dotnetnuke.com is dogfooding release 4.06.00."

Much like I do with new Windows OS releases, I have been waiting a few weeks after each new DNN release to upgrade (reading the forums and trying to get a sense of the stability/outstanding issues before pulling the trigger). It seems like I just upgraded to 4.5.5 a few weeks ago.

Given that I am new to the world of DNN, I thought I would ask: is there typically a new upgrade made available every month or so, or is this a break from protocol in an effort to fix issues that have arisen since the previous release? More so, as the platform, for lack of a better word, matures, would the frequency of the upgrades start to decline and the "latest and greatest" will remain the latest and greatest for, say, months?

Lastly, do most people go ahead and upgrade, even if everything is working just fine on their sites? I hate to be left behind and always upgrade under the assumption that the latest is bigger and badder and more refined, but perhaps I should (after 4.6, of course) adopt the 'if it's not broken, don't fix it' mentality?

I really don't mind doing the upgrades, given that I am new and I learn more and more with each install/upgrade, so please don't take this as criticism...just trying to get a sense of the road ahead and adjust my plans accordingly.

Typically, I'll do:

1. Development Sites - Upgrade as latest releases come out.
2. Production Sites - After testing on DEV sites, I'll wait 2-3 weeks and keep up with the forums to see if there are issues I missed. Then I upgrade all prod. sites.

I did deviate with one client and only recently upgraded them from 3.2.2 to 4.5.5. I'll never let any  client get that far behind again.

I follow a similar pattern of others who have posted here.

As to the other items in yor post:
From experience, I would say, new 'point releases' (4.5.0, 4.6.0, 4.7.0, etc.) usually happen about every quarter or so with 'stabilization releases' (4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, etc) happenning as needed in between.  Effort is made (though not promised) to not make breaking changes that would cause problems in most 3rd party modules in these cycles.  'Major releases' (4.0.0, 5.0.0, etc)  are much less frequent - there have only been 4 since the product started in 2002. They usually correspond to a major data structure shift or a major change for development related items. (i.e ASP.Net membership providers, major API changes, changes to work with new versions of .Net/Visual Studio, etc.).  This usually means there may be breaking changes to 3rd party modules.

The process for upgrades is fairly painless, but I always test it first, everyones configuration is slightly different as are the combination of third party modules they have installed every function and every combination doesn't get tested so there is a possibility for problems but the code changes try to be limited especially on stabilization releases.  Theoretically, you can upgrade from 1.x to the latest 4.x but the realities are sometimes different, I find that once you start getting more than one major version behind can really start getting you into trouble with upgrades and 3rd party modules. I still have one site that runs DNN 1.x because there wasn't and upgrade for one of my 3rd party modules I use on that site and haven't had the time to write my own version that would work on a new version.

All of that said, I feel the platform is fairly mature now and many modules written for 3.x continue to work in 4.x.  The 'point releases' and 'major relases' have slowed down a bit over the past year (which is a good thing IMHO).  The people that make up DotNetNuke Corporation and many of the core and project teams are very good and have earned my respect several times over.  The development process is constantly improving and maturing to make better more bug free releases.