It's just about the LTS -- whether that's for IT governance issues or the desire for warm fuzzies. The LTS release is meant to be essentially no-touch for 3 years, so it won't be stamped "gold" until there is a significant public deployment of the normal stable release and time for bug testing in real-world user hands.
Anyone know why? Surely we're not adopting the 'wait for service pack 1' approach?