Author: Daniel Clausen
Date: 09:32:07 03/12/03
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On March 12, 2003 at 12:21:06, Louis Fagliano wrote: >How did the term "beta-test" come to be used for the through test of a program >(usually by many indidviduls paid for this purpose) to catch bugs and errors >before it's offical commercial release? > >Where did the greek letter "beta" come from? > >Why not "alpha-test" or "gamma-test" or "delta-test"? It's called beta-testing, because it's indeed the 2nd phase of testing. The first phase is the alpha-test. Such a product is not feature-complete, has lots of known bugs etc. The target audience is typically early adoptors, developers, people within the company, usually a rather small group. The 2nd phase is the beta-test. Ideally, a product which is in beta-test is feature-complete but just not ready for prime-time yet, since it's not tested very well. The number of beta-testers is typically much bigger than the number of alpha-testers. Of course, thanks to all the marketing guys, the pure 'meanings' are not really followed anymore. (similar to version-numbers - see the browsers...) Well, in open-source projects it's different, because the marketing guys are non-existant there.. Sargon
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