There is more that goes into declaring a release as "stable" than just having it not crash.
For example, take the updated homepage, the licence upgrade process, the proper integration into linux package managers and more.
Couple that with the perception of users of things being "stable" having more reliability and them more likely trying it out and finding rare bugs or issues. Just looking at the forum today revealed a couple issues that nobody on the dev releases has discovered or reported.
That said, you still have to release a stable version every once in a while and they knew that. Unfortunately it took longer than anticipated.
For example, take the updated homepage, the licence upgrade process, the proper integration into linux package managers and more.
Couple that with the perception of users of things being "stable" having more reliability and them more likely trying it out and finding rare bugs or issues. Just looking at the forum today revealed a couple issues that nobody on the dev releases has discovered or reported.
That said, you still have to release a stable version every once in a while and they knew that. Unfortunately it took longer than anticipated.