The original plan for getting some feedback about the app store was to send an email to developers with a special link that got them into the demo so they could poke around. A couple months ago, that got downgraded to "we'll throw basic auth in front of it". It was observed at the time that people could give the password out to anyone then but that wasn't determined to be a blocker as it just meant people were interested in the store. Now we're talking about gathering feedback from developers on our staging server in late November. The same questions of invitation only was brought up and this bug is to determine what we want to do there. I suggest that we gather a list of developers we'd like feedback from and simply send them a link to the staging site with some details about what it is and why we're excited. This gets the message out in a simple way which saves our time and their time. The staging site is essentially "invitation only" already in that it's not used for anything but developers, localizers, and people interested in the project, and it gives a first impression that is a lot friendlier and nicer looking than basic auth.

We're having a limit on number of people who can register.

The limit is in place. This is controlled by setting REGISTER_USER_LIMIT in the config