Slashdot Mirror
Are Betas Taking On Lives of Their Own?
Ant writes "CNET News.com's Paul Festa thinks the final stage of software development, beta versions, are taking on a life of their own, as companies tinker endlessly with their products in public according to a recent article. Google is one of the companies that keep using "beta" term for years for its products."
It's a bad idea to put two male betas in the same bowl as they WILL fight to the death..
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Ok, this reminds me of the endless beta of the old BBS software Renegade BBS. It's really nothing new.
In my mind firefox will always be better software until it renders slashdot correctly!
GMail is still "beta" yet I haven't seen in forever any new changes. Also, I don't think they would have released so many invites if they were still seriously working on it. You don't let that huge of a population use something that is truly still "beta."
All your searching needs (and free money!) - 4Lancer.net
ICQ was like that (I dont know if it still is, I haven't used it for years.). They'd just be in permanent beta. What a cop out. Grow a set and put a "release" stamp on it, bugs and all. Works for Microsoft.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
If everything's a beta, what the hell is the point of calling something a beta? Redundancy of use makes it useless.
I mean, what is better than getting an early version of a product? You get to try all out the features in advance, and the developer gets feedback to improve the software. It's like a win/win situation, kind of like a daisy chain with alternating boy/girl formation.
Have you ever noticed that when you submit a bug report (even one that complies with the IEEE829 spec) that companies usually don't know what to do with it? Quality QS?QA people are extremely hard to come by.
BBH
I'll post the final version of my comment. This one is still in beta.
There are two types of people in this world: those that categorize other people and those that don't.
it's just my Beta... Look for my release candidate post next month. Final release date hasn't been determined yet.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
Now, we have the new perpetual beta. Any company can, with a wave of the magic wand, make itself blameless when its software doesn't work. "But it's in beta!" they gleefully shout when you tell them about something that doesn't work correctly. "Refer it to our testing team, who will ignore your report."
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's a simple case of fear of commitment (or litigation). If a product is beta, you don't have to really support it, and if it breaks it's really no big deal. It is, after all, a beta version.
Once you make the jump to release versions then suddenly everything has to run (nearly) perfectly and any issues need to be properly dealt with. Perpetual beta has it's advantages in that you simple don't deal with these problems. Or you don't deal with them formally, but you do fix them.
Google News is stuck in beta because Google can and will be sued the instant they start trying to make money (via text ads or something) off other sites headlines and stories.
The term beta came from the second letter of the greek alphabet. But then why only stop till the second stage of software development ? Why not go to Gamma, Eta ,etc then we wont be seeing beta products for long. Maybe w'll start seeing GMail Zeta sometimr soon...
If Microsoft did this Windows 3.0 would still be beta.
I agree that selling software actually labeled as beta is a bad idea, but don't we already pay for software that require constant patching, such as the latest release versions of Windows, Microsoft Office, and nearly all of the latest games? Does release software even live up to the quality expected?
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Most of googles products, except for searching of course, deserve nothing more than "Beta" status. They are like me, they start great, impress people, but never finish the dang project and fail to realize potential. Froogle or Google News anyone?
Google's kind of more following the open source philosophy of "if it's 1.0, that means something". Just open source projects use 0.* version numbers and Google says "beta". None of this Microsoft crap of releasing something half finished as 1.0 and tinkering and maybe by version 3.1 it will be usable. No, Google is going with the idea that if you say it's done, [i]it's actually done.[/i] But in the meantime that isn't any reason to stop you from using it.
I myself am guilty of this, having written a fairly ingenious program that compresses the N64 rom set by about 60% (compressors likw zip/winrar only seem to get about 15%). After which I never really got it polished enough for the average joe to use.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You beta believe it..
I think "beta" is perfectly fine for services like Gmail, or for "new" OSS projects. Beta implies several things: an incomplete feature set, a possible instability, and "free". Google, being a company with proprietary source, might at any time decide to charge for Gmail, and I would expect that time to be when it transitions from "beta" to 1.0 or what have you. Well, it makes sense to me, and, frankly, its extended use doesn't bother me at all!
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)
>Google is one of the companies that keep using "beta" term for years for its products
You can't claim the other way around doesn't work either.
Microsoft has been shipping beta-quality products as "Final Release" for years and they've done sooo well for themselves!
P.S. I don't really think so, it's just a joke.
Yes, these prolonged betas are kinda strange, but they allow an organization to put out a less than perfect product without the complaints that would otherwise arise, and, prehaps equally importantly, grab marketsare early.
I've seen enough #%@&$y stuff put out without a beta test where one was really not even sure if there was even an alpha test that I've come to like "beta tests."
As ICQ counted down the seconds to release "in 3..2..1" ardent enemies postpone event by screaming "I call bullshit." No word yet on whether the popular chat software will ever be officially released or whether proc6's head has exploded from this offensive post.
More news at 5:00.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
and
What little training I had seemed to involve code existing in four stages of development, and beta was the second:
Alpha: the phase in the development cycle where code first comes into being. Subsystems are being built, and testing takes place on the that (subsystem) level.
Beta: the phase in the cycle where all subsystems are nominally in place, and testing occurs on the system level; not everything works, and features may be added, but we're looking at the whole code.
Final: features are locked down, the system is tested in the form it intends to be released. I believe, under the influence of someone like Microsoft, this is now referred to as "Release Candidate" stage.
Released: The software has been distributed.
On the other hand, this article implies another notion of software development stages, one that I see applied rather frequently:
Alpha: Testing done in house.
Beta: Product released to a group of testers who aren't in-house QA specialists.
So does someone have the answer? What the hell do these terms mean, and are they useful any more?
OpenSSL, included in many products and operating systems, isn't in beta. Yet the current version are 0.9.6m and 0.9.7e. You'd think after so many years it would reach 1.0.
It's better than taking your beta version, calling it the finished product and selling it as such. So Google isn't following Microsoft's example....
Google could go ahead and wipe off the Gmail slate today saying it'll now be shut off for a month while we work on it and reopen afresh a month when anyone can take up user names on a first-come-first-serve basis like any other email site - all because they've used the "beta" tag so far. The fact that it would be a disastrous PR exercise withstanding.
Though I guess any of the free (and many paid as well) could shut shop anyday if they decided to - actually reading the Terms and Conditions of any site is an indicator enough.
The beta tag helps them get the best of both worlds as I see it - make money off the product/ feature while they refine it, and still absolve themselves off a lot of blame.
If you lower expectations enough, you don't have to spend any money do to the last 10% of development that takes 90% of the time.
:)
It's so very modern
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
beta stages allow for a very simple way to make it public. giving people a glimpse, at the end, in the open.
a full open game devlopment process would be a nice standard.
but this end beta we are use to, is a hands on taste test or marketing tool. even leading to investors the cancel the game.
Anybody who lived through it will know what I'm talking about. I ran Public Beta as my primary OS from its introduction till the 10.0 release, and for $100 I didn't get much of an improvement.
:)
All has been forgiven since then, though.
Good thing I already converted my betas to DVD...
One of Google's long-running beta services is the Google News site. It's been in Beta for years now, but there's a reason for it. Google can't switch to a subscription service, or even try to put advertisements up on the site. If they do, they face the legal hurdles that come from making money off other news organizations' work. There exist very few bugs still left in the service, but yet it still remains in beta. On a side note -- ironically, Google has been sending out cease-and-desist letters to people creating RSS feeds that scour and present the results of Google News.
In Germany, Google has already been found guilty of copyright infringement as a result of providing other websites' images in their Google image search. The potential legal obstacles could be multiplied exponentially if the American news services got a whiff of Google making money as a result of providing their hard work.
I've heard (I admit I don't know how reliable the info is, so this is typical Slashdot gossip) that a lot of google features remain "beta" so they don't have to deliver them to certain technology alliance subscribers. Ever.
I dont think this is so much of a trend into keeping things in beta as a cop out for bugs or to be lazy, but more of the definitaion of beta changing. i see beta today as refering to the program as a work in progress, and when it emerges, its more of a totally finished product. I know this is not the case for a lot(or even most) programs, but it seems to me like the definition is shifting that way
That's one place to insert a "rock-solid reliability" joke in. I would have also poked (pun unintended) fun at NASA's inaccuracy with Mars missions if their last two didn't do so well; those must have some really hard, long-lasting software.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Imagine if a new rollercoaster opened downtown, and they offered free rides. One day, the rails break, and twenty people die - however, the company that built the railroad takes no blame, as the riders were simply "testing" a "beta" of the rollercoaster, and thus knew full well something like this could have happened. Yes, extremist. Same train of thought, however.
That little suffix of 'beta' can do a lot. It magically relases software providers of the yet unfound problems. Bugs are no longer flaws, rather simply 'unresolved issues'.
Whatever happened to the good old days when users *expected* version 1 to be the unstable version and that version 2 or 3 is when the good stuff comes out? In the time it took for Phoenix/Fire(bird|fox) finally exited beta, Netscape had gone from version 1 to version 2 to version 3... anyway, my thoughts on this...
1/ Overuse of betas will lead to a diminishing of the meaning of beta. Favorite examples would be ICQ and Firefox. I used Firefox since 0.6, and it's worked beautifully for me ever since. But *despite the fact that it worked fine enough to serve as my primary browser*, it was considered beta. As more and more people discover this little fact that "beta doesn't really mean beta" then its meaning will diminish. Next thing we know, we'll be talking about long alpha periods.
2/ The versioning system is supposed to give people a good idea of what kinds of changes there have been. The use of beta names diminishes and distorts that. Once again, I return to Firefox. The amount of changes made between 0.6 and 1.0 of FF is tremendous. Based on what is seen on paper, it was more substantial than what 1.0->1.5 would be. With perpetual betas, people have that magical 1.0 barrier that they can't break. So there is a compression and thus distortion of version numbering.
3/ It's a cute new way to push aside blame. Well, it's a beta product, so if it's broke, it's not our fault. Of course, there are time when this *should* have been used (and not used), like Netscape 6. But it's being overused.
4/ This is just pure nostalgia, but I miss the good old days when version numbers would leap ahead and people would be in anticipation of exciting new features. Now, version numbers creep from beta1 to beta2 to beta3 and while there are still cool and exciting changes, they seem marginalized.
I strongly believe that betas should be used for things that are legitimately under development. As soon as it's stable enough that the developer would feel comfortable with using it on a regular basis without it completely blowing up, it's 1.0. Save the perfection and endless tweaking and bugfixing for 1.1 or 2.0; I have yet to see a perfect 1.0, even if eons of time have been funneled into perfection.
if you do not charge for it and people still rely on it you may still be liable (in negligance) if it does not work.
If it is in "beta" there is one further barrier that someone must jump over to successfully sue you.
J
BTW IAAL and I know I can't spell
what's the big deal?! I have used programs that were very functional that never reached version 1. But I was happy, so what it's version 0.8, it met all my needs! Better than the version 5.5 that doesn't!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
to a computer scientist, a hacker is someone who tinkers with access to a supposedly secure system, for not necessarily malicious intent... in fact, such testing of the defenses can even be construed as beneficial
to the general public, a hacker is tantamount to an online terrorist, period
to a computer scientist, p2p is an evolving paradigm, where everything from spare processor cycles to segments of larger files that can be reassembled on the fly can be traded to amplify the power of the internet
to the general public, p2p is where you get free music, period
to a computer scientist, beta connotes a program that isn't ready for final release yet
to the general public, beta connotes an offering from a large computer company/ gateway portal that is just unsupported
now some may see these changing word definitions as some sort of repugnant dumbing down of vital concepts, concepts important to areas of endeavour that some care passionately about, and they resent it
but i assert, from the standpoint of a realist, that since the internet is a phenomenon whose impact reaches beyond the realm of ivory tower computer scientists, such a dumbing down effect of certain terms previously secluded to the realm of computer science is just inevitable, unavoidable, and shouldn't be a reason for any reaction except a rolling of the eyes and maybe some laughter
all words evolve in terms of meaning and usage over time, and computer scientists, even if they invented the terminology, don't own word definitions
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Software being 'beta' is at least better than:
* 'alpha' software that does not work or give BOSD/mem dumps
* which is better than 'vapourware'.
Surely the reverse is also true, Windows XP seems beta-ish considering the number of patches required to make it work as intended. (and there's no way this is six sigma testing) Obviously the marketing dept steps in at some point and says "draw the line here guys and ship it out". As far as I can see that's the only difference between a beta and "fully working" these days.
billg made an industry standard of releasing betas as product, but others use funky names like cheetah, puma, jaguar, panther & tiger. same-same....
I agree that "beta" no longer means what it used to. I remember when you had to be someone special to get a beta version of a program, back when my friends would come over and say, "Guess what I managed to get my hands on?" and they'd be waving around a beta version of some popular product and we'd all go, "Wow, how did you manage that?"
However, I also remember the days when a "syndicated" television program meant network reruns. A show that was original in syndication would have confused everyone.
So although I completely agree with you that "beta doesn't really mean beta" anymore, and that we also need a reliable way to know exactly how stable a product is (and whether or not the developers are taking any responsibility for its failings), I don't know that it's a disaster that this is happening. I'm not willing to cry, "No, that's not what beta means, you're violating the ancient traditions of software development!"
Maybe that's going to be what beta comes to mean next. Maybe the new beta is going to be a product perpetually in development with users responsible for quality control. Maybe it's going to become "open testing, no liability" software. Maybe instead of being a phase of software development, beta will become a style of software development.
I can't predict the future, so I can't say, but I do know there are some marginally decent original syndicated television programs these days. So yes, while I note the word isn't the same beta I grew up with, I'm willing to sit back and see what evolves out of this. I do want a word which clearly expresses to me what I can expect from a given level of a product, but if "beta" is no longer that word, well, no disaster.
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.
Beta prevents the need for support but allows you to sell/release your product. This is a dream as it prevents those damn leeches called "consumers" from harassing them.
I think betas are very nice fish and we should recognize that they do have a life of their own. And we shouldn't make them spend it in those little glass jars with stinky water.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No way. I don't do betas, mind you.
I'll stick to my trustworthy 0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1 versions, you blasphemers!
Perhaps the reason most software keeps the "beta" suffix is because of security. Microsoft has an extremely bad reputation for creating software dubbed "final versions" that have tons of serious security flaws and IMHO should not be "final" at all. At the same time, software companies want people to use their software, so dubbing them "alpha" is completely out of the question. "Beta" is probably a good average of the two and generally speaking, is pretty "stable." In Microsoft's case, I wouldn't touch "beta" software with a 10 foot pole. Give me Google betas any day.
It would seem even Slashdot is caught up in the Beta craze.
c m2000
http://developers.slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#
^_^
0.1 - 0.5 - 1.0 - 1.1.1
Why aren't just the dates (and perhaps even hours) when the software was build, used as version name?
The article largely faults Google, Mozilla, and other recent products, but IMHO, Microsoft are as much to blame as anyone.
A Microsoft "beta" is more of an early alpha or first-run-able release put out for marketing purposes. Certainly not a feature-complete release needing bug-fixes, as the beta tag normally suggests.
This is typically followed by a number of "release candidates," which Microsoft ships for months or even YEARS before the product is finalized and boxed. The industry traditionally considers a release-candidate a final product that could potentially be boxed and shipped if it successfully meets the testing and quality guidelines. Microsoft seem to call their betas "release candidates," where none but the last few builds might merit that title.
These releases are occasionally supplemented by "preview releases," "early experience" releases, and similar euphemistic builds.
What all this amounts to is that the public testing period is lengthened and the status of the product is artificially inflated in order to keep the product in the press. This has the neat (for Microsoft) side-effect of creating plenty of FUD around competing products.
Witness the endless steam of Longhorn early releases, stories, and leaks. Every one intended to keep corporate and other buyers from even *considering* adopting strategies involving Linux, MacOS X, or other alternate platforms.
Longhorn (or insert next great Microsoft product here) is *always* coming "just around the bend." Just wait a little longer. There's no need to switch to something else. Have a look at this cool new "Longhorn preview release." What? No, of course we haven't been promising a new database file system since at least the Cairo beta days......
Still, I'm glad I'm not an alpha.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
.. is to get product out the door before someone patents it. Now that google has a dozen or so 'beta' things displayed in their labs.google.com site, they can claim prior art in the event that someone wants to patent something 'new' with a search engine.
Personally, I don't mind Google's services being labelled as beta. That's great, it gives them tiem to iron out bugs whilst being sure that nobody mistakes them for final, finished products.
The problem arises when people shipping software release a product that isn't final. Most software companies do it. Many games are barely of beta quality. It used to be that it was rare for a product to require a patch. Now many software products that I buy require a patch to even work at all.
The thing that I object to is paying to be a tester for a software company. The pressure of yearly release cycles and marketing schedules overrides any concerns that developers and testers might have about the stage of development.
Over here in the UK we have laws about consumer goods being reasonably fit for purpose. Most other countries probably have them too. When you buy a product and it's not fit for purpose, don't just wait for a patch, take it back to the retailer and demand a refund.
Of course, they might try to prevent you from exercising your statutory rights by claiming that the click-wrap license prevents you from returning the goods. This is normally incorrect. Again, most countries have laws that state your contract for sale of goods with a retailer cannot be modified later by the terms of a license that you can't see until after the sale.
In summary, consumers need to stop accepting bad products. Bitterly complaining about the quality of software is meaningless if you keep buying bad products.
I for one welcome our new Beta version overlords.
Have you metaroderated recently?
1. Most beta is free. gmail for instance rocks and is free.... do I care if they call it beta?
;-)
... v10 already and lo and behold it's still crap. Was there a 9.1, 9.2, 9....?
2. If more than 1% of the software you use on your computer is in it's first "release" and has zero bugs in it. Please let me know.
Maybe people are just too quick to get a "version" out? I do my software in increments of 0.01 that way when I hit 1.00 chances are the software is very stable.
I think the larger problem is simply abandonware specially on exotic stuff like say a GBC cart flasher program made in China...
But programs like WMP
No they just jumped to v10 because it sounds more impressive. Did they even change the code base or just change some labels in a few files?
I mean real software like GCC or the linux kernel actually have different trees for different versions. You don't see
-v2.4.31
+v2.6.11
In the Linux kernel anywhere...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Community-based testing is rapidly gaining acceptance as the methodology of choice for testing web services and applications. The audience delivers feedback to developers directly. The product evolves. The QA and testing house layer is redundant. It makes a lot of sense.
Come on ! I prefer something already pretty stable to be called 'beta' that something potentially buggy/insecure to be tagged 'stable'. This is, IMHO, a responsible choice from the maintainers.
If I really want to use it, I still can, but at least I am aware of the risks I'm taking. For example, I use gmail as my main e-mail account, and I find it quite reliable. But a security flaw has been found some weeks ago, and it clearly justified the "beta" stage ; I was aware it could possibly happen, so I didn't use it for anything critical.
It's not up to Google/Mozilla/Microsoft/... to decide if the software is stable enough for you. I like when I'm considered intelligent enough to decide by myself.
I'm an Aussie, we're not that fussy about spacing out words when we speak.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Many of the beta programs out there are very stable. At least more stable then most Software M$ puts into sale.
And as to the support:
Most of these programs are free. That means there is no support even if it were a 1.0.
'beta' these days seems to be used as a label reading 'there will be new features soon'.
No problem so far.
Who cares how a program is labeled anyway?
POV is the real issue.
from the developers point of view, the FINALity is reached when they don't have to look at the code any more. This is the current naming standard, and the issue at hand.
From the users point of view though, the finality of the product isn't reach until they stop using the software. (because it becomes outdated therefore no longer patched ie win 95)
So by google leaving their projects in beta, they are actually keeping the user's POV in perspective. IMO a very appropriate buisness practice.
as a user, there is probally a subconcious negativity arrived at when their favorite "final" software requires tideous and time consuming updates so it works properly. It just feels... deceptive. (even if it is the truth)
Yeah I dont know of any extended beta that took on a life of its own *cough*Slashdot*cough*.
Now that I think about it, the first three letters of the Greek alphabet: Alpha = First stage, not all features impleneted Beta = Second stage, all features implemented, now we test Gamma = Final stage of software. The Greek verb Gamma also means f**k, maybe an M$ stage? (Ask any Greek) G
How about, after 6 months in Beta we rename it Betta!
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
If you can see there is progress happening on the beta, and some prospect of eventually making it to 1.0, then that's fine. Xine and Gaim are good examples of this. But when they call it beta and just leave it like that, it's pure laziness.
I am trolling
Now, the problem comes in when you have games (think MMORPGs) released that should STILL BE in beta testing, yet they get passed off as retail and you pay 50 bucks and then 15/month for the priviledge of playing a game who which should still be in beta considering the state of it.
If its a free MMORPG beta, I'm all for it though. I've been in some fun beta events, and some crumby ones, but they provide what is ABSOLUTELY necessary for any new competing MMORPGs coming along. We need a preview. With so many to choose from, we can't be asked to buy the retail box of one just to try it out for the free month since we can't return the box.
Some games offer the client download for free on highspeed servers (you could do it through bittorrent though), and give you a month (or year in the case of AO) free. I'd like to see more of the games out there do this.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
For as long as I can remember the meanings were something along the lines of...
Delta - Very early development. Planning phase.
Alpha - Still adding features. Doing basic testing.
Beta - Features frozen. Only fixing bugs. Lots of heavy testing.
Doesn't this mean anything to anyone any more?
The term beta doesn't mean anything anymore. Look at games that are being put out lately. It's basically a beta version for a year or so until they decide not to release patches for it. Companies are concerned about bottom lines and not the quality of their products. And it will keep being this way for as long as people continue to put up with it.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
A biogeek joke - brilliant! Proper clicky. Mod parent up!
go and see your doctor, he should be able to provide you with some beta blockers - then you will not be troubled by those pesky betas again....oh wait
...I obey the laws of physics....
Maybe it's just my perception, but Beta's have increasingly become about what the developers think is wrong, not about what actually needs changed or about what is broke if it's against their core rational. It's also about agenda. They may have no intention of repairing some issues before the final product is shipped an you, the tester, will never know it as you continually do your best to make them aware of some back breaking issues, rendering Beta for all intents and purposes worthless from a participation standpoint. Obviously, I've taken a negative view of participation in Beta's as off late because I seem to be encountering more and more of these situations. It's not about what needs to be fixed anymore it would seem. As such, more than a few Beta's are there for nothing but product promotion and their participation user bragging rights.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
beta is the third or fourth patch in the computer games industry! OSS quake2 is still beta...
Guess when Microsoft decided we could do their beta testing for them, it all kinda fell into place for the rest of us...
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Whilst lesser mortals would simply start coding, for PhD holders there's work to be done beforehand - analyses, case studies, lots of graphs, research down the pub ...
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
i believe the complexity of things is the cause that betas get released to the public more and longer.
the days when everything was simple and easy to control and predict are over, it is almost impossible for in-house-testers to come up with every scenario possible, and so things are made available to the public to help test and seek out those 'strange cases'.
beta runs will become more important i think, even in games. i think beta periods in mmorpgs are important in every ascept and not only bugs but also performance etc.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Betazoids are making my dickie have a life of his own, I am telling you! Nothing like these in old Bollywood.
select * from base where originalOwner = 'you' and currentOwner != 'us'.
0 rows returned.
.., a description with a changing meaning. Once it was a technical description for a incomplete software, now (like the "RC" in popular stuff like firefox) it seems to mean "new, innovative" rather then "untestet, not to use in productive environments". maybe there will be a shift in the previously know descriptions. maybe there will be soon something like a "LM" -> Latest Milestone.
It's like that scene from Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail where they all look to the castle and say "Camelot". Then, just before the song and dance routine, Patsy mumbles: "it's only a model."
;)
When a product is in Beta, devs get to deny everything. Well, even in final, they usually slither their way out, but that's not the point. At the end of the day, if the software breaks down, they just have to hire Patsy as their support agent to say: "it's only a beta."
Just think of the money being saved by not releasing final software. Could you imagine Microsoft coming along and reasing the final version of office? "Well," they'd say. "This really is it. We're really done now. You can't get any better than this." We wouldn't believe it.
Software is never finished. Programs go through a continious development cycle. If, at a point during the endless cycle, the product happens to co-incide with something the developer thinks people want, it gets released.
And, of course, no one really wants to support software anyway. I mean... except for those aftermarket guys... uh... consultants. Yeah. those guys. No, they only want to install it for you and then, when it breaks down, emit: "It's only a beta."
Releasing software as beta is just an admission that instead of finishing the job, they've done a good enough job and have now nipped off to the pub for a drink. Can you blame them for that?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.
Under these circumstances, I don't mind a beta - but arguably, that doesn't justify many of the other betas mentioned in the article.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I don't know the details, but have heard that this trend, at least in the case of some things like Google News, is a legal ploy. Once they release and make money on the product, they open themselves to a wider range of lawsuits. On the plus side, this is also supposedly why we get to enjoy Google News sans advertisements.
Just look at windows, is someone going to tell me that it hasn't been a beta all these years ?
One of these days MS will let us in on the joke they've been playing on us.
This was the first article I saw when I woke up this morning, and for a minute I thought I'd woken up in Brave New World...
A pretty large percentage of the distros we use are some kind of sub-1.0 or another and they never or almost never reach '1.0' status. Usually this is the decision of the developer his/herself because they believe there isn't any time or money for QA, documentation, better bugfix, fit&finish to achieve 1.0 status. But on the other hand every developer carries around in his/her head a lis of features they'd like to implement someday but either it's technically over their head or takes too much time. Yesterday I was installing various desktop distros like ELX which failed once for an no obvious reason, and a couple of Vector versions which didn't have partition and hardware detection bugs completely worked out. And these were versions named much higher than beta. So clearly the difference between this distro at 'version 4' and that distro at version '0.6a beta' is pretty abtract. No need to worry unless you rely on it and you know it has the same persistant bug which makes it unstable time after time.
The article is entirely about how google does betas. A single company, let alone one of the top 5 in the industry, is hardly representative of the industry as a whole. Though the submission tries to make it sound like it's an industry trend.
MS does betas in public as well, but usually not nearly as long as the Google betas. I work for a commercial software vendor. We don't beta in public, and I think most companies don't. Some of the large companies do, and for good reason. MS pretty much has to beta in public. Their software is used by people with such varied software and hardware configurations it would be nearly impossible to set up a lab that's representative of that.
So a company can release a product under the umbrella of a beta release to test the waters and see how much demand there is for the product. If the demand isn't there, the beta "test version" is pulled back in.
These betas are testing the market as much as they are testing the software.
It's funny this topic comes up, because in two days we're about to have our Betta Fish Royale. 27 of us bought betta fish a week and a half ago, and now they're "training" for the big day. (which means they're just sitting in little tanks/tins/whatever.) However, we're just going to stick them all in one big tank, and have a huge fight, instead of several small ones.
Of course, its our freshman year in college as well, and of course we're going to video this whole thing.
This is news?
Microsoft has been BETA since day one.
Nothing to see here...
I mean, really. What percentage of my software is still version 0.xxxxx?
Speaking of beta versions, I found that not only did my 13 year old sister not know what MSN stood for (neither did any of her online buddys), but she assumed that the word BETA in the program's title bar meant 'better' thanks to the current trend in teenage moronic spellings.. I fear for our future.
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
This is mildly unrelated, but I am irritated as to how much the word "beta" is thrown around. It is not so much an issue with professional developers, but an issue with individuals that mis-classify an alpha, or even just a concept demo as "beta." Admittedly, this mistake is most often made outside the realm of software development and more in the area of 3rd party maps for FPS games, and in flash portals (such as Newgrounds). The term "beta" is often used in these realms as an excuse for laziness.
My point is ultimately that the misuse of the term "beta" to describe anything other than a software project that is ready for public testing in order to repair bugs and refine operation actually devalues the term. (at least in the world of software anyway) It does NOT mean that you were lazy and didn't feel like finishing something, and it does not excuse:
-Poor animation.
-BSP errors.
-Infinitely repeating textures.
-100% saturation lighting.
-Excessive use of colored lighting.
-Using your pre-pubescent voice for your animation recorded via your OEM computer mic.
-Hard P's into a microphone, and while we are at it, hard S's as well.
-General sucktitude.
-Bad level concept.
-Being anywhere between the ages of 11-17. (I don't care if you are "only 12" if your movie sucked, it sucked, and unless you stop sucking you should stop acting as though you don't)
-Completely lacking skill.
I could go on forever as to what the term "beta" does not describe, but that would mean no breakfast and that would be the real tragedy around here.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
Game demos are now being hoarded into exclusive deals by the file-download-subscription-we-sell-your-address-to -spammers-to-break-even sites, and when that can't happen they just take over their competition.
Soon it looks like you'll have to pay to access demos. I wouldn't be surprised if one day people are paying to watch TV commercials, too.
Many of the free software projects I follow have a big problem making releases. They cultivate a nice little community around the CVS version, and never get around to the boring job of making a release. Especially as this also often require a feature stop and other stuff that creates internal friction.
Of course, non-commercial free software have no obligation for anything than having fun, but I think it is a shame that lots of cool stuff out there never get out to the larger community. And even free software programmers and enthusiasts can't follow the projects for all their software closely.
This all started with ICQ I think in the mid-to-late 90's. There was no profit model to make money, and until they came up with a way (ads now), it was wide open to change (hence Beta).
The other advantage, of course with free software, is that there is no warranty. If everything goes wrong, it was a 'beta' version and you can change your whole protocol in a day and force an upgrade to all users.
The actual name means nothing- it's what's implied with the sureness of the functionality and warranty that matters.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Back in the early 90s, Renegade BBS was ALWAYS beta. There was never any official release, you just got like 12-25-94 Beta or whatever.
How does making fish fight qualify as ignorance? Remember, Kurt Cobain says, "...fish, they don't have any feelings."
I'm amazed. What has happened to /.?
Sveasoft is the big bad "beta for life as an end run around GPL" firmware for Wireless-G routers provider. They claim their final version will be free for the public including sources, but in the meantime, they continue to release binary builds to their customers who have paid $20 to get the beta releases... no that's not right since the GPL forbids it... so its $20 for support which happens to include free access to the betas, yea that's what we'll tell them...
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
This is the big advantage of betas, especially with services (as there is already a lot of good, non-beta free software).
Still, a service like GMail isn't free in the same sense as ICQ or Google News: It has the same text ads as the main search engine, and I imagine it brings in just as much revenue for Google.
Not that I'm really complaining: GMail is probably the only Web site that I'd really miss if it suddenly shut down. (And not just because it would take my data with it!) I'd even pay for it if I could have even more storage, more labels, etc.
Google has already struck deals with some news sites regarding registration: The NY Times likes getting traffic from Google News, and so it lets people who click on the Google links read the stories withotu registering.
Similar deals could prevent lawsuits: News sites who want to get linked to would have to agree not to sue for copyright infringement when Google summarizes their stories. (I'm referrring only to Google News itself, of course: Cutting a deal with a search engine shouldn't affect a site's ranking in the main index.)
"You beta, you beta, your bet..wooooo
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
thbey called them by there pet project name, and a completion title.
example:
Pet project - Beta
Pet project - release
put a disclaimer say pet projet is unsupported.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Firefox doesn't stay beta forever: The beta versions are quickly (within weeks to months) followed by the full, final product.
If a beta version is stable enough to use every day, that's a good thing. (And really how it should be: Alphas are for versions that lack major chunks of code and crash all the time.) Firefox is something of a special case because the competition (IE) had set the bar really low.
UNless it's appearing in your computer with magic fey dust, the information does have to pas through systems you don't control. Your ISP could very well have a copy of everything you get.
If major email houses make it known that they are forwarding emails to the government, all that will happen is people will start putting 'catch phrases' in there emails so ALL the email is red flagged. Thus rendering the system useless.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now if a company is charging money for a 'beta' product then imo it is not beta, or at the least Caveat Emptor.
The only draw back to a long beta is you give your competition plenty of time to catch up.
slrn has been asymtotically approaching a v1.0 release (it's at v0.9.8.1 now). It has fewer bugs than other news readers like Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook. Who cares that it's not "production"?
When I was younger, we used to do that testing before we released our software at all. If it hadn't been through our own test suite and passed everything, it didn't even get labelled alpha, and certainly didn't go to any (potential) customers. These days, everyone seems determined to release half-baked crap and then hope their customers/dev team could make up for it with some sort of on-line update system.
I've recently discovered that the clock on my fairly standard digital TV box is well-known not to be reliable, essentially making the whole timer feature useless. While I was out over the weekend, my friend's mobile phone crashed. I took my car in to be serviced a couple of weeks ago, and the guy in front of me at the desk was being told how his problem was caused by the electronics controlling his fuel injection system. This is what you get for accepting shoddy quality software and a "we'll fix it later" approach. The more serious accidents -- cars locking up at speed and causing KSI RTAs, phones not being able to make an emergency call because a trojan has taken them out, etc. -- will follow all too soon.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It used to be much simpler than that, with just three pretty clear phases for testing and QA.
Obviously you start with your in-house testing, hopefully a constant background activity as you write new code. This is just routine development activity, and might include unit testing, regression testing, and more. A lot of this will be done locally on specific areas of the software.
As you reach the end of the new feature development for your coming release, you bring everything together to build a complete version of the whole product. This is your first alpha release, and you run all the system tests, integration tests, etc. If there are serious failures identified here, they get passed back to the relevant dev teams, and we go back to the previous step until everyone brings their revised contributions together for the next alpha.
As an aside, obviously for smaller projects you might be working with complete builds from almost day one. In this case calling something an "alpha release" is giving it rather more significance than it really has: you're just identifying a "mental marker" where you switch focus from localised to global testing.
When we have what we believe is a solid alpha build, we might want to ship it to a select group of customers and prospects. This is a beta release. It's not supposed to be a marketing exercise; it's an opportunity to get feature-complete code tested in a wider variety of realistic contexts than you can ever create in-house, so that you have a better chance of finding any subtle bugs before release: hardware incompatibilities, interoperability problems with data from other applications, etc. As with alphas, if serious flaws are identified, we go right back to the dev teams at step 1 to get them fixed, and then go through the process of localised testing, global testing, and potentially (but this used to be a rare event) running a second beta test.
Note that further formal alpha tests should never be necessary at this stage. Once a project has passed an alpha test, no code changes should ever come through in the future that don't. If they do, they weren't properly regression tested. Hence you re-run all the system and integration tests as part of the next beta/final release testing just to be safe, but you don't expect to have another alpha cycle.
When you've run a beta test and are happy that you've got enough bugs for your software to be a product your customers want to buy from you, you make the release. The problem today is that marketing droids have taken over the beta release process; it's no longer about improving code quality in partnership with carefully chosen customers/prospects for everyone's benefit, it's about promoting your software before it's ready to manage customer expectations and get community support built up so you don't have to support it yourself. The additional testing and consequent quality improvement is often negligible.
For those who missed it, this implies that you ought to be feature-complete before going into alpha, though you might change something significant if your system tests identify a weakness you hadn't noticed before (e.g., the combination of features written in practice doesn't meet a requirement completely). Anything going out as a beta should be both feature-complete and very well tested internally. A lot of places would assume you'd get some significant flaws identified during the beta programme -- that's why you run it, after all -- but certainly anything beyond the first beta release should be a "release candidate".
I have no idea where this notion of several beta builds then several release candidates came from. Nor do I know when it became a Good Idea(TM) to make major functionality changes after you've entered the beta phase; doing so pretty much negates the point of the previous alpha and beta tests. It's certainly not a good approach to QA, and perhaps it's also why so many companies now seem determined to run year-long, 17-release beta programmes instead of shipping a finished product, and then a new release with the extra features customers requested six months later.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What is your penile percentile?
"This is an unwelcome trend, IMHO; it is the "Wal-mart" of attitudes, applied to software, an industry that can scarcely afford it."
Why not? F/OSS is "Wal-Mart"-ing the software industry. The attitude is just coming in line with the "new business model" that "/."'s feel everyone should adopt.*
*For examples see any "/." story concerning businesses trying to make money.
"Whatever happened to the good old days when users *expected* version 1 to be the unstable version and that version 2 or 3 is when the good stuff comes out?"
The same thing that happened to people's legendary patience. Sacrificed to the god of instant gratification.
I thought alpha meant that major functionality can still change. Beta I thought was reserved for field testing and allowing for some minor functionality change.
..and it's lead to a hundreds of billions of dollars industry that has no warranties for it's products, yet they insist on full legal protection for their products as regards "profits".
It's one thing to give away free software and ask people to be beta tester/users, quite another to charge serious folding cash and inflict that "no warranty" crap bogus "license", which is a license to be lied to and abused by these software corps and force people to pay for it. And I don't want to hear about "choice", that's a strawman, waltz into any generic mainstream computer store and they have peecess with software on them that you pay for, and there is no choice on that shelf, and people know exactly what I am alluding to, so I am not going to respond to any trolls who insist there's an alternative. Of course there is, you just have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get it, it's barely on the shelf buried deep down the dusty cobweb area if it's there at all, and most places it's not even there, and 99% of the computers sold have no warranty software "products" on them that come from a small number of monopolists who profit greatly from not having to put a warranty on their perpetual cash cow beta ware scribblings.
Enoughs enough, take away the training wheels and let paid-for software compete in the same arena all other products compete in, with a suitability of purpose warranty and a protection against defects warranty. Either that or stop charging money for it, one or the other. No other industry gets to get away with that noise.
google put beta version of its software out, and people rush to download it. are we a free QA of google? If the software is free or open-soure, it doesn't matter though. but the company might just turns the software into a paid software right after the program matures and start selling it. so, make sure your effort of using a beta version is not tottally wasted. just don't download whatever free beta out there!!!
Actually I find that the expectation is a moving target, because release software you buy is of varying quality. You may not be able to get it 100% right on the first go but isn't the point to be pretty damn sure that you did? There are a lot of thoughtless final release products though.
Sorry, but if you are worried about strangers (ie the Feds) rooting through your email servers, then you'd best disconnect them from the net, find a nice hole with concrete, dump them in, let it harden, then blow them up with something that will vaporize them like a nuke. Yes, that is taking it to the ludicrous extreme. But As another poster noted, your ISP could already have tagged onto your email as could many other servers along the way. Technologies exist to pickup what you are typing or reading from a distance - stuff that appears on your monitor or goes through your keyboard. Not to mention, would you really know if the CIA had snuck in and installed a little RF tap inside your keyboard? I think not likely. So, yes, you may have a slightly more detailed illusion of personal data security than the vast bulk of people, but all that does is make your tinfoil hat more stylish.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
But it is still considered the best audio extractor out there.
Damn beta units, they should stick to what they're good at: ineptly mimicking lifeforms that are away from their home planets battling Zur and the Kodan Armada.
google and friends have learnt a new word, and think themselves cool putting beta next to everything they're now producing.
how can a website be in beta? it's ridiculous.