Thanks, Josh. Overall I am *+1 to this proposal* and thank you for starting/driving this important discussion.
It also aligns with the question I raised on the backport branch discussion thread: "I am wondering, what is the signal of having the need for such a branch? Our current release cycle needs revision? (Of course, that is an independent activity of what we discuss here)." My only question is the naming: are we certain we want to call these quarterly releases *'alpha'*? Given how we define and document our official release stages, particularly alpha releases, here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CASSANDRA/Release+Lifecycle If the goal is to produce a stable-enough-to-test artifact from a releasable trunk (with unstable features disabled behind a feature flag) and that artifact goes through a *vote* and is *advertised* (even if only on the dev list), then it *should be an official Alpha release* (e.g., Alpha 1, 2, 3, 4). This would set clear expectations and predictability (we know there are at least four alphas per year). However, if these artifacts are* voted upon* but *not advertised on the user list*, calling them 'alpha' could be confusing and misleading to the community compared to our documented lifecycle. In that case, a different term like *'snapshot'* might be better suited? If we keep those being called alpha, how do we call an officially advertised alpha (on @dev and Downloads page)? What do others think? Best regards, Ekaterina
