For what's it worth, this was posted on a publicly accessible TextMate mailing list.

Not sure why he would think it wouldn't leak out.

Common courtesy? I know it's rather uncommon these days...

I know, right! My TextMate completely stopped working when it was just 3 years old. Don't make 'em like they used to.

How is the author taking his time to release a new version neglect?

People that were not happy with the wait migrated to other editors.

He owns us nothing.

That's why is it called "common" courtesy.

The "he did it too" defense?

Sorry, but "neglect" is a pretty obnoxious accusation you're leveling against Alan. He's dutifully maintained Textmate 1.5.x over those years and has released many many updates. That these releases have not also served to entertain you is simply not a legitimate complaint, let alone an excuse to suspend "common courtesy".

It's not that it's not supposed to leak like some big secret. It's that it makes you look bad when you get it into the general public's hands rather than a bunch of developers that know that it's of alpha quality and it goes around crashing all of the time, corrupting your data, etc. Things you'd expect alphas to do.

I was thinking the same thing. It's too good to be true, so people are too eager to share it, despite Alpha issues.

Can't wait to try it myself though...

I am starting to understand why Apple has provisioning of devices -- and now Macs -- for pre-release software.

At least as of the Lion developer previews, Macs are not in any way provisioned.

If anything, the request seems more ironic that actual...

As if there was a chance in hell it wouldn't get republished...