I'm curious, perhaps someone can answer this question for me...
Mojang has said the reason for the recent rate of updates has been a push to try and reach their release date (personally, I kinda hope it never gets officially finished. The longer it's in beta, the more free updates I get

).
1.8 was a major change to the way the game plays and was coded (look up the blog of dinnerbone, one of the main coders of the bukkit team, for an idea of just how big), and now 1.9 is
rumored to be out soon with 1.10 also rumored to be dropped after that.
What I'm wondering, is why would someone hold off on jumping on a server because of this? It's not like someone has to update to the latest version of the beta to keep playing.
There are many ways to play on servers that have not updated to the latest, and multiplayer servers don't suddenly stop working once a newer beta is released (unless you don't pay attention to the server admins who tell you not to update if you want to still play on the server).
So, why would someone want to 'hold off' on, well, doing anything with multiplayer minecraft just becasue a new update is rumored to be Out Any Day Now(tm)?