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I am sure that I'm not the only one for whom one of the most compelling reasons that I have been an EPS customer is that EPrints is an open source  project, and paying for EPS support meant contributing to the open source community.  This move, towards "managed availability", will drive those customers who hold open source as a core value away from EPS; and it should be obvious that as a community, we tend to hold open source as a core value   

"The notion of Managed Availability is that rather than having an open beta or preview, that the software is released in a controlled way, until eventually it is at a point where it will become fully open."

Thank  you for posting this information, but it still doesn't answer the question that I asked.  What license is the code that you do distribute 3.4 under, right now, before it is "open"?  The GPL license, gives those people who have the code the right to share it, add to it, etc.  it guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software.

Can an EPS customer share and modify the software that it got from EPS, during the "managed availability"  period?  If not, then this is not open source software.   To be open source, it has to have an open source license.

Right now, the "managed  availability" source sounds like a license that is much like a publisher embargo with no expiry date set.  EPS will decide when the embargo expiry will be.  That is very difficult to accept, and possibly legally problematic.  I  know that I  would be very reluctant to include source code under those conditions, in any open repository.