Published at LXer:

The developers behind the GNOME project have gathered in the Netherlands this week for the annual GUADEC conference. During a meeting that took place at the event, the GNOME release team made the difficult decision to delay the launch of GNOME 3, the next major version of the popular open source desktop environment. The new version has been deemed unready for mass consumption and will need another round of refinements before it can achieve the level of maturity and robustness that is expected by the software's users.

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Thank you, developers. KDE tried to release their 4th version too quickly, and results are known. Seems like it was acknowledged by the writer too,

I hope they use the time well, because it looks like I won't be a Gnome user after 2011 if things are really going the way they seem to go (viewing what is available of Gnome 3 as of now).

The really unfortunate part about KDE4 is that a truly valuable aspect of FOSS was immolated at the stake by too many clueless people, and people who should have known better didn't come to their defense. One of the major tenets of FOSS development is to release early and often. That allows, and encourages, participation in the development. However, when it came to KDE4, they got roasted for doing exactly that. Was KDE4 ready for prime time? No, it wasn't, and while the KDE team could have been clearer about that, they did state it at the time. Instead, they ran into a buzzsaw of criticism because it wasn't 150% done.

Personally, I think it is a tragedy that Gnome has delayed release 3 because it does deprive them of useful feedback.

That's why alpha-, beta-, RC- and such versions exist: if developers want to release something early, they can call those early versions something that differentiates them from the "final" or "well working" version, and the users then know for sure what is to be expected. Of course there is no must to use that kind of versioning, but personally I think saying "this should be good for everyday use, but you might encounter some problems" equals to saying "this is software", nothing more.

I'm not saying Gnome folks should keep back the release as such, but keep back the release of a usable version, called Gnome 3.0 or something equal, until it was truly usable. The resources probably limit their options, but in a perfect world they'd release Gnome 3.0-beta versions along with usable, stable 2.xx for some time, until it was more or less obvious that people can indeed move on. Or release only important patches for the 2.xx series, but at least keep it alive until 3.xx was something more than a cool new shell.