Why not?

Why not?

No beta announcement should ever contain a line like "As heavy bug fixing and development is going on, please make sure your bug still exists in cvs HEAD before reporting."

Millions of people out there know what the "cvs HEAD" is. Tiny fraction of them are gnash developers. May be one per thousand but probably less. How the heck will you call version which is ready to be tested by someone who is a software engineer but not developer of gnash? This is not alpha - people outside of usual circle (potentially millions) are invited. I'd say it's kind of private beta: version not yet intended for general public, but good enough to be tested by millions. The fact that selection is by knowledge and not by some other random characteristic is irrelevant.

P.S. Not so long ago the fact that anyone who's not familiar with gcc or cvs will even try to use Linux was laughable. Times are changing but IMNSHO it's still not too much to ask from average Linux beta-tester: Jor Averages who don't know about cvs can wait for a later beta or a release...

Two terms I've heard used for that is "engineering beta" or "internal beta." Good enough for
engineers other than the original developers, but not users.

-- John.