In reply to Jeff Chandler.

I love your passion for this issue Jeff but you can't deny the problems auto-updates would cause. You seem to go on a lot about having 'pretty stats' for Wordpress and that people are running older versions by choice. But how does that affect you? If people do run older versions by choice, let them. It IS their choice. It's also their issue if something goes wrong or they get hacked. But we have the right to make the choice for ourselves. Wordpress depends on plugins, themes and the WP core playing nice...but we all know that doesn't always happen. For those of us who manage heaps of sites, if auto-updates become mandatory and there is a conflict or bug - that is much more of an issue then not having auto-updates.

Allow people to test updates in the sandbox before deploying. It's the professional thing to do.