Of course, yeah Discord is a bit of a closed-source walled garden, but we're considering setting up a Matrix.org server some point soon as an open replacement for our current community.
We currently release all Alpha versions onto our site at https://liveg.tech/os/get, so there's no need to 'wait' as such to try out the system in its current state! As for being notified as to when we'll release the next version, we normally let everyone know through Mastodon, as well as on other social networks such as YouTube and even (dare I say it) Twitter — sorry, I mean X.
But it might be worth us setting up some sort of email-based notifier to let people know when new releases are available, so I'll take your advice onboard!
