This was a topic of discussion in the past (off line?)
I thought a decision had been to reduce the headache of so many upgrades a year and allow the eZ Crew to work on improving the product as we transition away from eZ Publish kernel libs, classes towards the eZ Components integration replacing core parts of the kernel.
This does leave more responsibility I'd imagine to the support folks tracking issues and awaiting updates.
I think a sentiment at the time was let those who can do. If you need a patch, get involved take responsibility in the interim until the official packaged release is made, the svn release / update is made or a patch is shared in the issue tracker.
It just seems the years of hand holding through frequent releases may have shifted for quite some time.
Much as I understand and support the decision to move on, bugs don't seem to pop-up on demand ;) And I believe those found in early minor versions are especially expected because substantial portion of new functionality was introduced. It would be better to have 1-2 releases that are more frequent, and only then move to smaller update frequency.