@Ben Cook - IMHO, I would rather see frequent releases as soon as security exploits are found rather than only major releases or even infrequent releases when batches of problems have been fixed.

I think the problem is that people are used to a different type of update schedule. One where known problems exist for weeks, months, or years even, and the developer does little or nothing to fix the problem.

I don't know why someone would see frequent security patches and think "scary" or "unstable". They should think that when they see a lack of frequent security patches. I certainly don't want the perception of security and stability from Joe Webmaster determining the release cycle of WordPress.

It is important to remember that there isn't such a thing as code without bugs. No amount of pouring over the code will catch everything. Even code launched into space on probes and satellites is often immediately found to have bugs. Thus, the best course of action is to be swift with patch releases when problems are found. Of course, it would be great if the software easily handled upgrades in order to make this update process relatively-simple and fast. Fortunately enough, that's been taken care of as well.

Note that I'm not claiming that the level of testing is sufficient. I'm merely stating that the fact that we are up to 2.8.4 doesn't mean that the level of testing is not sufficient.