Jakob Petsovis wrote:
>Even though Drupal is server software, a server is something that can be
>bought for a few euros (or $YOUR_CURRENCY) at your favorite shared host, and
>server software is deployed as easily as to copy some files over FTP. The
>easier it is to get it running, the more amateur users you'll get.

Well count me as someone who did their first CMS install via Fantastico..

I'd agree that a lot of users aren't going to know what a dev release is (certainly less so than they'd know what an Alpha or Beta or RC release is) - and the situation we're talking about is when the only release available is -dev, with no other context- and maybe no alternative module purporting to do the same thing to compare with.

I think the vast majority of people choose modules based on whether they do something that they need. It's only with a reasonable amount of experience that those specific needs get expanded to include abstract stuff like performant and secure code, upgrade paths etc. and often a part of getting that experience is having your site hosed a couple times.