What does the name SNAPSHOT in jar mean? / What's wrong with *snapshot*.jars?

Question

I am using bitlyj snapshot jar to shorten URLs from the following link.

http://code.google.com/p/bitlyj/downloads/list

Will somebody explain me the term snapshot.jar? Are snapshot.jar files unstable or is there anything wrong with these kind of jars? What does 'snapshot' generally mean?

Answer 1

Yes, those files are usually automatically created from the current development branch without any manual testing.