Experimental vs Preview in Meltano Core

[tayloramurphy]

Spinning off a discussion from this PR #392

• Experimental: Experimental features are features that we have made available to everyone to use, but they may not be completely finished or stable yet. We may still be adding new things and making changes while they are in experimental mode. We'll try to let you know ahead of time about any big changes, but sometimes we may not be able to. Also, keep in mind that these features may not have complete instructions or technical support.

comments from AJ:

I take it this is a mindful decision to not also have Preview in Meltano Core?

I have no complaints on this, but curious your logic on preferring Experimental over Preview. I remember @WillDaSilva had some concerns on the "experimental" moniker - I'll let him speak to any concerns there.

I don't personally have a strong preference between Preview or Experimental - as I've seen examples of both "in the wild" - and generally (to me at least) both seem to communicate to me that I can use the feature, but I shouldn't expect it to be final/permanent. If anything, Experimental does seem to imply the feature might be removed, which doesn't often apply - although sometimes it does. Most likely, in both cases, the feature is just not to be assumed to be in its final state.

Will's comment:

I don't have any noteworthy concerns about "experimental" over "preview" aside from what you mentioned:

Experimental does seem to imply the feature might be removed

My reply:

@aaronsteers it was intentional, but I'm open to changing it. To me part of the difference is in how much control we have over the experience. Once we cut a release for something on Core, it's just out there. In Cloud we have more control (in theory) over which accounts have access to a feature and we may have a higher bar for releasing it.

Do you think it would make sense to also have Preview as an option for Core? It felt a little bit overkill but I'm not opposed to it. I just don't know of anything that we've done that we might have moved through an Experimental --> Preview --> Released stages.