The following rant should be read tongue in cheek, but I hope it also causes a little soul searching.

<rant>
I was going to begin by saying, "perhaps it's just me," but I know it's not just me who is left wondering about the naming conventions of DotNetNuke with the 5.x series of releases.

If 5.0.0 and 5.0.1 are "beta" why are they carrying version numbers?  Shouldn't they say, "beta" or "RC"?  Shouldn't they be marked "5.0.0 beta 1" and "5.0.0 beta 2" - and so on until 5.0.0 is ready for release?  Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention, but I went ahead and upgraded my pre-production site to 5.0.0 when it was released - I didn't think to check to see if it was "production ready."  Who marks a release as "5.0.0" if it's really a beta?  I've since been burned and learned.  After making several hundred changes to my pre-production site, I learned I couldn't go back to 4.9 and had really done too many changes to roll back to my backup.  As the French would say, "C'est la vie." Alternatively, you could go with what my my coworker said: "You're an idiot."

What I'm really wondering is why the DNN team is labeling things as "5.0.0" and "5.0.1" if they are considered beta quality?  Now we have "5.1.0 beta."  Wait, did you say "5.1.0 beta"?  Yes, we're beta testing for an incremental update to a major version upgrade that isn't out of beta yet.  The mind reels with the possibilities! 

This doesn't follow any standard convention.  Unless you're talking about Windows Vista - or as most call it "Windows 7 beta".
</rant>

quality is always sth subjective, depending on the judge's measure. DNN 5.0 had internal versions, named beta and public versions named release candidates. after not showing up numerous issues (from the countable number of community members), the next version has been published as release - but soon after a number of issues have been unveiled. The most obvious have been fixed in 5.0.1. DNN 5.1.0 will fix most of the other issues and introduce a number of new features which should be tested widely in beta by the community to get most of the remaining issues fixed - i.e. It is your term NOW!

@Joe:  I definitely understand what you're saying - both about the expectations of the release and immediate issues.  This was definitely coupled with quite a bit of anger and frustration from developers about the lack of a publicly available pre-release version of 5.0.0 testing prior to it's short RC cycle.  I imagine this is why it seems like there has been a change in the way beta testing is done - private beta followed by public beta.  

Am I mistaken, or will this testing cycle now be a standard for DNN?