I personally think that we would have an at least 70% drop on complainings about next patches if the "alpha" tag of LFS was removed.
People are complaining that they paid for S2 and it is still alpha, but as far as I remember, we have the following point:
What we pay is content (cars and tracks), and the stages (S1, S2, S3 and so on) are just about content (at least it was the original purpose, and it was clear on LFS website on the old days; today things looks a bit more mixed). Those who paid for S2 content have full access for it, and even got more content than anounced first (Formula BMW, and Scirocco when it's launched).
So, technically, we received (even more) what we paid for, and we can't complain for additional content.
The LFS core (physics, graphics, multiplayer systems and etc) is "free". Although nothing in real life is for free, and the licences pays for the core development also indirectly, the core part is what everyone have access without paying for, and is not directly linked with the stages.
The LFS core is on it's second stage of development, and the core is on an alpha stage. And to be fair, Scawen's standards for a final product is way higher than most software houses', because I personally think that, it may be called a finished product the way it is today although some features originally planned are not fully implemented.
So, although I still think that LFS needs improvements and new features, the arguments saying "we didn't get what we paid for" are not valid.