Criteria for Drupal 7 beta?

Now that some developers and companies are responding to Dries' Drupal 7: let's get it done, it's likely they will give more priority to fix and/or review beta blocker issues. So, it would be useful a clearer criteria about what's a beta blocker, and better consistency between the beta blocker list and the beta blocker tag.

The list in Drupal core improvements (6 issues) is more complete but updated every one or two weeks, and the tag in the issue queue (3 issues) is currently not complete but more real-time.

If we add tags step by step following the beta blocker criteria mentioned in the list, then the cumulative results are now the following for open, not fixed, critical D7 issues:

• beta blocker: 3 issues
• beta blocker, D7 upgrade path: 5 issues
• beta blocker, D7 upgrade path, API change: 8 issues
• beta blocker, D7 upgrade path, API change, Usability, d7ux: 12 issues
• Total D7 critical issues, including those not blocking beta: 22 issues

The only security issue is already tagged as beta blocker, and therefore included in the previous lists.

We should add a D6 issue that affects the D7 upgrade path and has this tag already. Total: 12 + 1 = 13 beta blocker issues if we follow the most strict criteria.

However, the core improvements list includes just one of the critical UI changes (Usability, d7ux tags) as a beta blocker, and the beta blocker tag of this issue was recently removed. So, are the UI issues blocking beta? If they blocked just the general D7 release and not the beta, the list would be reduced from 13 to 8 + 1 = 9 beta blocker issues.

Therefore, the question is: what is the current criteria for Drupal 7 beta? If there is a clear criteria, people can suitably tag or not issues as beta blockers. Or maybe this is something that needs to be decided case by case, for example by Dries and webchick, the D7 co-maintainer. In any case, a consistent beta blocker tag would be useful for developers to decide priorities, first things first, second things second.