Release Alpha Client?

While posting a reply to someone in another forum, discussing the new renderer prospects, I came up with a rather odd and obvious question. We've got a linux alpha client, and linux users gleefully use it dispite its shortcomings, would LL be against releasing an alpha client of the mac/windows versions that are being coded in house for advanced tech, like the new renderer with the provision that "it comes as is, if it doesn't work today don't blame us"? It could be limited to the preview grid if necessary, but I think it would answer a lot of questions about what progress is being made if we could actually see what's going on.

Intriguing notion! I'm asking Karen about this.

While many new projects are currently in development for addition to future versions of Second Life, it is only once they have gone through testing that we open then up for resident Preview.

The difference with the Linux and Mac UB alphas currently available is that the code required to build those clients is specific to each platform. We can safely release the linux alpha, for instance, because the libraries and other source files required affect only that build. The main development line is being used, along with those special changes, to produce a viewer that can be used against the main grid as it exists now.

Preparing special, non-Preview builds for major feature changes is just not possible right now due to server-client dependencies. That is why we have Preview grids pared with Preview client applications. Once new projects have been tested internally, integrated with other projects, and then tested as a whole by QA, we open up for resident testing on the Preview grids. Until the server-client dependencies are weakened or removed altogether, that is how Preview will (need to) operate.