x.0 releases often occur because it's the only way to get a sufficient number of testers. I remember reading this as the rationale for pushing KDE 4.0 when they

x.0 releases often occur because it's the only way to get a sufficient number of testers. I remember reading this as the rationale for pushing KDE 4.0 when they did, and it's generally true in all software no matter how well funded the QA department is. You may experience a shoddier x.0 with OSS since most QA budgets are around $0, but even products released by big companies (OS X and Windows are two comparable products ;) ) have some serious problems when a new major version is released.