Why Does Beta Last So Long?

Carl Bialik writes "Noting that Google News has been labeled 'beta' for nearly three years, and Microsoft's antispyware program for nearly a year, the Wall Street Journal looks at why 'beta' lasts so long these days. The article mentions the usefulness of getting the masses to test the product, but also notices another possible reason: 'Betas also have become a marketing device in a fiercely competitive industry, allowing software and Internet firms to release new products or services sooner and cultivate early buzz. Betas, which once had been quietly distributed, are trumpeted in press releases and at news conferences. "I deplore it as a consumer; I admire it as a marketing professional," said Peter Sealey, a marketing professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola Co. "I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base." '"

Comments

To stay out of court.

[CDPatten]

Well sometimes it is so they don't get sued. Google News has been in beta for 4 years, and the consensus is that it will stay that way for years to come.

From this article:
"The reason: 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. "

Re:Err, not VHS?

[yobbo]

I still can't figure out how ICQ didn't get a mention in the /. article summary! That's been in beta as long as beta has been around.

Re:Betas are the best!

[david.given]

Isn't that a bit high-brow for Slashdot?
</snobbery>

Nice one. Must reread that sometime... it's a fun book (unlike 1984 which is miserable and harrowing and really unpleasant).

Re:Nothing Deplorable about Betas

[pizzaman100]

Maybe it helps them avoid lawsuits?

libraries

[bcrowell]

From my perspective as a small-time OSS applications programmer, one of the big issues is the stability of libraries. I have one app, for instance, written in Perl, that I've been labeling as stable for years now, and yet within the last six months or so, I noticed that it had started crashing occasionally with a segfault inside one of the libraries it uses (Perl/Tk). Apparently the new version of the library that I've got installed now dereferences a null pointer now and then. The library is OSS, so sure, theoretically I could track down the problem and submit a patch. But realistically that's not going to happen (huge codebase, I haven't programmed in C or used a debugger in 10 years, ...). (Yes, I've tried to submit a usable bug report, but I've failed, due to my lack of C skills and the difficulty of reproducing the bug.)

Whatever bad things you might say about proprietary software, one good thing in terms of reliability is that it's typically statically linked. That means someone who sells a proprietary app can test with a particular version of a library, and then just keep on shipping the app with that version linked in. If a later version of the library comes along that they do want to switch to, they can test it carefully, and then roll it out. But as an OSS programmer, you're at the mercy of your users -- they could install any version of a library, and if it doesn't work right, they consider it to be your fault.