Martin 53N 1W <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> writes:

Johan Kullstam wrote:
[...]

Not at all.  This is the definition I have always espoused.  You

[...]


My general understanding of alpha & beta trials are:

Alpha: New development, new features added, features updated, debuging;

Beta: Feature set 'freeze', continued system test and debug.

And then the world gets to test the final for 'shakedown' debugging
(:-))

In a usual software environment, alpha test is in-house testing.  The
developers release the software to the alpha testers who are people in
the company who run the stuff through their testing suites and try
pushing all the buttons and large scale installations and such.

New features are not being added in alpha.  It's the first line of
testing.  Once, alpha is done, you go to beta which involves having
(some) customers help you find more bugs.  Beta is software works for
your in-house cases, but you want to explore customers wacky
hardware/network setups and have users also push the buttons in their
usual ways.

When software is open source, all of it is in the open, the active
development, the alpha test and the beta are all out there.  This
makes it sometimes harder to distinguish the various phases.

I think seti/boinc seems to be about alpha test stage.  That is what I
would tell my friends who are interested.  Saying it's beta pretty
much implies works on most machines, most of the time with odd-ball
non-functionion cases being settled.

-- 
Johan KULLSTAM