"Stable" builds do not receive frequent updates or fast patches. As time goes on, bugs are fixed but it will take some time until these fixes make it into a "stable" build. We will also not accept or review any bug reports from "stable" builds. They are in fact just old development builds that seemed to run fine without any major issues.

:question: Why use a "stable" build then?
While "stable" builds most definitely contain more bugs than development builds due to their very slow update schedule. you can be sure that they will not include game-breaking issues, but rest assured that development builds almost never contain such issues either. If your server or business however heavily depends on a version of Slimefun that does not change/update a lot, you are forgiven if you choose the "stable" branch. But development builds will bring you the best experience, both in terms of features and bug fixes.

:question: What exactly are these "stable" builds then and why do you put them in quotes?
"Stable" builds are literally just outdated development builds that seemed to run fine without any major issues. But they are far from bug-free hence why actually calling them stable would be hypocritical. However these builds can only really stay "stable" if there are enough people using development builds and report any bugs they come across. Otherwise potential issues may go unnoticed and slip into a "stable" build. Again, we really recommend you to choose the development builds. But since a few people really wanted "stable" builds, they are now an option too.

Slimefun4 uses an Auto-Updater which connects to https://thebusybiscuit.github.io/builds/ to check for and download updates.
This behaviour is enabled by default but can be turned off under /plugins/Slimefun/config.yml.
We highly recommend you to keep this on at any time though, as you could be missing out on important patches.

Slimefun4 uses bStats to collect anonymous information about the usage of this plugin.
This is solely for statistical purposes, as we are interested in how Servers/Players use this plugin.
All available data is anonymous and aggregated, at no point can we see individual server or player information.
All of the collected data is publicly accessible: https://bstats.org/plugin/bukkit/Slimefun/4574

You can also disable this behaviour under /plugins/bStats/config.yml.
For more info see bStats' Privacy Policy

Our bStats Module is downloaded automatically when installing this Plugin, this module will automatically update on server starts independently from the main plugin. This way we can automatically roll out updates to the bStats module, in cases of severe performance issues for example where live data and insight into what is impacting performance can be crucial. These updates can of course be disabled under /plugins/Slimefun/config.yml. To disable metrics collection as a whole, see the paragraph above.

Slimefun also uses its own analytics system to collect anonymous information about the performance of this plugin.
This is solely for statistical purposes, as we are interested in how it's performing for all servers.
All available data is anonymous and aggregated, at no point can we see individual server information.

You can also disable this behaviour under /plugins/Slimefun/config.yml.

Lastly, Slimefun4 connects to https://api.github.com/ to gather information about this open-source project.
No information about you or your Minecraft Server is sent to GitHub.

This information includes (but is not limited to)

• list of contributors, their username and profile link (from the repositories Slimefun/Slimefun4, Slimefun/Slimefun-Wiki and Slimefun/Resourcepack)
• amount of open issues in this repository
• amount of pending pull requests in this repository
• amount of stars in this repository
• amount of forks of this repository
• amount of code-bytes in this repository
• date of the last commit to this repository