I think Asobo MS should implement public betas the same way Blackmagic Design release Beta releases for their products, notably Davinci Resolve. To all licence holders anybody can test the latest public beta releases, these Betas are in a pretty good functional state and downloaded in one large Zip file, and Blackmagic take the information and reports they get from the users and implement the requested changes and work on the reported bugs. It’s up to you whether you want to use the beta versions, or stay on the current final release version. There maybe up to 10 beta releases through the year before final version release, maybe a stable version release of MSFS every 6 months. It works very well with BMD, take a looking at their download page and you will see a history of available Beta versions that were available for download before final version release. And they, like the Devs at Asobo, interact with the users on their forums. If MS/Asobo truly want a platform that is community driven, they are going to have to look at more interaction with users, and this will help third party development too as information can be shared by everyone, and I do feel sorry for the third party devs at the moment, as they are all playing catch-up as changes happen so frequently, especially those who may not get the same support input from Asobo as Aerosoft get. It’s nice to have surprise announcements (the annoucement that FS was coming back was enough for me), but if that is one of the causes of releases not being fully ready or tested because of a 'behind closed doors policy, I would rather not have the surprises and have as much community input as possible before any update release.
We all want MSFS to succeed and move forward, we all need this sim, and there is no community stronger as a tech hobby, as flight simmers, I’m sure we all want to help and be apart of the MSFS success story.