Hyperbole aside, would you consider this a smooth release process? Can you not understand that this would be frustrating for some? I haven’t bothered with betas this time but the first final candidate was released about 8 weeks ago (and I quote: “This is the Final Candidate version of RapidWeaver 8.1 - That basically means this version should be good enough to be released as the final version of RapidWeaver 8.1 
”).
It, presumably, had fixes for bugs found in 8.0.3 but non-beta users can’t take advantage of that.
The backwards compatibility seems odd to me as well. I can see it for major release (i.e. from 7 to 8) but within a version makes it seem like it wasn’t completely thought out. It happened with RW7 as well, so maybe that’s normal.
Lastly, if not a criticism but a request - can you consider “stable compatibility with Stacks” as a required checkmark? When one of the FC’s is yanked from the updater because it pulls a fast one on developer who’d I’d say is critical to your success, that doesn’t inspire confidence.
Now, I’m not in on any internal discussions so I can’t accuse you of penny-chasing or anything else (and I enjoy RW and the community around it) but you’re not being honest to be so dismissive.