Clearly we are not using the same definition of a "production" release. In my vocabulary, production release is a stable release that most businesses except maybe nuclear powerplants can rely on. A release that was thoroughly tested for data-loss bugs, will not break things with another update, has some bugfix schedule and so on. I know you find this definition overly restrictive, but you can't simply "squat" a word with a meaning different from the mainstream. (Or you will create more problems than you solve.) There are certainly people who will be able to use Rakudo Star in the core of their business, but I don't think that is what the release is mainly for.