For most of the organizations that needed it, it comes a few years to late (when i started Tinymail, they wanted it yesterday). I promised to start the process of making early releases the first time one full year ago. I completely underestimated it, indeed.
Finally, a first pre-release of Tinymail. I hear people think “What? Just a pre-release? Not even a final release?!”. The pre-releases are to aid people like the packagers with preparing their environments and to give a solid basis for application developers who want to start focusing on an API that will not change a lot anymore.
It also means that everything involved with releasing a final will now start. You can find the announcement with all the information on the mailing list.
ps. I have no idea when or if a pre-release of Modest will be made. I have no idea when or if packages will be made available.