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."

Comments

God I hate that

[Proc6]

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.

Perpetual beta sucks

[DNS-and-BIND]

The old style of perpetual beta was lazy, perfectionistic, or excessively cautious programmers simply going on and on towards v1.0 and never reaching it. Not enough work was done - typical of the lazy programmer. It's never "good enough" to call v1.0, typical of the perfectionist view, despite the fact that the program has been out in general use for years.

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."

Fear of commitment

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Would you rather they release it as final?

[Halcyon-X]

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?

Re:Would you rather they release it as final?

[fm6]

You are quite correct. The truth is that the Google's "beta" software is really production quality. I've used (hell, I've helped release) "final" versions that had more kinks than Google Maps.

"Beta" is just a word, and Google is using it to play the "Underpromise and Overdeliver" game.

Re:This makes the term meaningless.

[trollzor]

It clarifies between "working" and "rock solid".

There is a reason NASA doesn't send the latest "working" laptops up to the space station, it's because you can only say something is "rock solid" after very extensive testing.

My gmail account isn't any better or worse that it would have been, it's just I know not to run anything mission critical off it.

More things should be in beta, there are too many things that claim to be rock solid that aren't.

At the same time, I don't condone the abuse of "beta" to avoid offering proper support... but we haven't seen widespread abuse (yet) whereas we have seen widespread abuse of people claiming things are solid and secure when they are not.

If you want to use debian unstable or fedora vs debian woody or red hat enterprise it's better to be making an informed decision than one based on marketing.

Does anyone know what beta means anymore?

[DingerX]

From the article:

Once considered the final stage of software development, beta versions ...

and

The beta version, named for the second letter of the Greek alphabet, typically refers to the second stage of software testing. Traditionally distributed to a limited group of testers, it follows the alpha version, which is tested in the lab.

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?

Re:In my mind:

[aussie_a]

If slashdot would conform to standards it would render correctly. When slashdot conforms to IE, non-IE browsers may have difficulty. It's that simple.

Having said that, I haven't ever had slashdot render incorrectly in firefox.

Re:GMail

[KinkifyTheNation]

Because with a limited number of invites, they have an idea of what kind of disk space can potentially could be filled up. I doubt that there is a specific Gigabyte of storage set aside for each account that has been created, (there's no way EVERYONE is going to use up an ENTIRE gig) But with invites they can control new account creation and prevent people from registering a million accounts.

The answer.

[mboverload]

When you are in beta you are invincible. When someone claims that it is beta, they can tell you to shove it because it's "BETA SOFTWARE!" Even if you complain some troll will also point out that it's "BETA SOFTWARE!".

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.

Re:Microsoft has done the opposite

[Stephen Samuel]

I really don't think it's a joke. I've been telling people that for years. Stuff that the Open Source world would consider "public Beta", Microsoft has been shipping on a regular basis. XP Service Pack 2 is an example of what happens when you do that -- lots of broken software due to changes in a so-called "production" product.