I am one of those people that do actually have fun participating in Beta's and I do understand that things break in situations. This goes more for the more serious Beta testers as I know there is a crowd of people that do not understand the process... There is a very important concept when it comes to participating in beta's; the people that are participating want to be taken seriously and have their voice heard too.

The reason for dropping out of the Windows 11 Beta would more or less come down to the fact I don't really feel they are listening over there. Maybe some of the devlopers are, but I get the impression that their hands are tied all the same. In this case where Start 11 and explorerpatcher stop working but all Microsoft's features work perfectly well, I think there is a fear people have that Microsoft is being anti-competitive and broke things intentionally to force people to use windows their way. There is reason for this. In some aspects Microsoft is being a bit anti competitive when it comes things like windows edge and bing search by trying to force people to use it when they can. Also, at one point in development for Windows 11 there was a registry edit that could be done to make the Windows 10 start menu return. In later releases this feature was removed and this is another reason people could be anxious about Windows 11 removing features and forcing people to use Windows their way.

Although Microsoft did not intentionally break explorer patcher in their latest update, I do think there is a reason for peoples worry when they do update Windows 11.

Stardock's Object Desktop subscription was the way [in GUI modding] to stay ahead of the pack with alphas and betas.  They weren't otherwise available...so anyone willing to pay the sub fee could be expected to understand the process of 'alphas break things' and 'betas break things more obscurely'.

Unfortunately, I think that when alphas and betas are more readily accessible to all the result is it catches novices offguard and it is they who DEMAND fixes, not realizing they are supposed to be part of the cure...not the problem...;)

Yeah, I can see the frustration there to build a product. But, it is a double edged sword in that regard. I think it was steam that originally discovered that you can make money to fund your beta projects and make games / software that could not otherwise be developed by selling your stuff as early releases. I do not think the Beta funding model is going anywhere anytime soon as more companies are adopting that strategy. As a developer though, I am sure it creates a lot of head aches as you have pointed out. Not everyone understands what a Beta is anymore and perhaps there is more pressure to fix things earlier then to actually create features that was originally planned. It is a trade off, more funding for more pressure to keep things fixed.

Maybe, the one thing Microsoft is doing right is creating separate channels, a release channel and a beta testing channel. Maybe, the beta funding models should incorporate that so developers can keep their creative approach without so much pressure of breaking things? A stable release or a test release for the more open Betas?