There's probably more weight on the side of the argument for Rust 2019, but I'd like to add one for calling it 2018, just for the sake of weighing the options. Businesses (aka the bean counters in businesses) have a tendency to want to be late adopters of something. This is why you get Advanced Design System 2017 as the latest edition for all of 2018 PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS) Software | Keysight
This is an argument in favour of not getting too far ahead with the release names in the future more than anything else though, and counterweights the car dealership example:
I suppose it depends on who the target audience is. 2018/2019 Rust is surely targeted at users, but if ever the target audience is corporations in the future, going with the earlier date as edition name would be advisable from a marketing perspective based on how the software industry does it.
The Core Team discussed this briefly yesterday; we had already discussed this issue at length earlier in the year. Regardless of the tradeoffs, the decision was already made and the name has been publicly announced (and entrenched at this point), so this is not something we plan to revisit.
Well, in that case, you’d get the benefits of the language appearing more stable to the (sizeable) population who don’t like living on the edge so much. I have no real preference either way. Others may have a different opinion on what should have happened, or what should happen next time. A new discussion on the merits/demerits in hindsight doesn’t harm anyone though.