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

agreed

[qewl]

It's a bad idea to put two male betas in the same bowl as they WILL fight to the death..

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.

In an hour

[mrshoe]

I'll post the final version of my comment. This one is still in beta.

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?

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:Does anyone know what beta means anymore?

[Yaztromo]

So does someone have the answer? What the hell do these terms mean, and are they useful any more?

I've always had a (slightly) different definition (and number of letters) for the various "greek letter" status elements (which I use in my Open Source project, the jSyncManager):

1. alpha - A work in progress which is feature incomplete.
2. beta - the product is now feature complete, and requires rigourous testing.
3. gamma - All bugs found in the beta phase have been fixed, with a last opportunity to detect any problems with the fixes themselves (effectively what others call the "Release Candidate").
4. final - Done like dinner. Package it up and get it into the hands of customers.

The problem I run into isn't the never-ending beta -- it's the never-ending alpha stage :P. A big part of this tends to have to do with trying to fit in user requests for enhancement, and simply not having the time nor manpower to get it all done in a timely manner (as we're not a project that attracts a lot of developers willing to contribute to the core). Our beta phases tend to be fairly short, in large part because once we hit beta, we've typically hit a feature freeze as well, and are only going to fix bugs.

IMO, if it's not feature complete, you have no right calling it a "beta", as much of your high-level testing is going to be useless if you're going to be adding code during the beta phase. Adding new features effectively "resets" the status back to the beginning of "beta" -- making the term effectively meaningless.

But I guess I'm just old fashioned that way...

Yaz.

The good 'ol days...

[code65536]

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.

the changing definitions of words

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:Microsoft has done the opposite

[Drantin]

That would have been funnier with the comma over one word to the left...

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.

Et tu Slashdot?

[Dorm41Baggins]

It would seem even Slashdot is caught up in the Beta craze.

http://developers.slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#c m2000

^_^