Let me clarify then.
We could take any nightly build, rename the file, and go “there, have your release”. It would get some media attention, which is a good thing. But people would soon find out about the many problems with it. As a result, two months later we would be telling people to use the nightlies because they are better. So, the release wouldn’t accomplish anything in terms of providing a stable platform for developers.
The important things in “making a release” is not the release, but the making. It is all the work that has been going on for years to set up proper tools, and get everything running smoothly. As a result of all these efforts, we will be able to ship something great, a stable platform that devs can base their apps on. There will of course still be bugs, but we will have a plan to get them fixed and the fixes sent to our users, without bringing in regressions at the same time.
If we are succesful in this, then yes, a release is a good thing. Otherwise, you could consider any of our nightly builds to be a release, but that won’t get you any further than the current situation.
Also, I still don’t believe that making a release will suddenly attract dozens of developers who were just waiting for it and refraining from touching Haiku because “oh no, it’s still in alpha”. If people are interested in Haiku, they should be contributing now and sharing their nice apps 