Thank you Peter... regarding AS 6 Beta, I do believe they are now using a completely different method of doing things... no longer Beta testing, but instead using the Milestone method where they add features in a complete and tested way a few at a time until all features are added for the AS 6 release. I do believe that this means we can now count on the features that get added with each Milestone to be essentially complete and final. I watched a video of the lead developer for JBoss explain this, stating that they went to this new model precisely for the reason you state... they want people to be able to use the features as they come out, and not to have to wait until the features become "finalized" so to speak.
If anyone has any different understanding, please let me know.
Cheers!
!