Talk:Software release life cycle
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I believe, but cannot yet source, that we stole that from the music industry, in which I believe the vinyl stampers were gold-plated.
--Baylink00:11, 6 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The first use of the term "Golden CD" I heard was during the Windows 95 Beta. People who had reported a show-stopper bug were put of the "CD of the week" program, where they were sent a new build each week. To simplify referring to the different builds, each week the CDs were a different color. The second full beta release (which was more stable and went out to all beta testers, not just the weekly ones, as well as industry journalists) were black (jokingly referred to as "beta noir"). The final release, which was sent directly to the beta testers as a reward, at the same time it was sent to bulk reproduction (RTM) before retail distribution, were colored Gold.JamesCurran (talk)14:56, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The first time I ran across the alpha/beta/final development stages was in early Macintosh documentation from Apple. But where did it originally come from?— Precedingunsigned comment added by66.179.208.36 (talk)20:56, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
"Beta" goes back to at least the 1970s. I don't recall hearing "Alpha" in the context before the 2000s. (I wrote more about this in the "Contradiction with alpha" section, below)JamesCurran (talk)15:36, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The header summary claims that in the alpha stage, features are still being added. The pre-alpha section claims that "In contrast to alpha and beta versions, the pre-alpha is not feature complete." In practice, most alpha software is not feature complete. How to resolve this?—Precedingunsigned comment added by217.155.44.246 (talk)07:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The confusion is the result of "alpha phase" be a backronym. The term "Beta Test" existed for decades before "Alpha" phase was coined. The history goes something like this (I'd update the main article, but I have no sources, other than my own memories). Originally, there was the "beta test site", ie, the second place to use the code. Basically, someone would write something for their own purposes, and share it with someone in a different department/office/company. Since this person's use-case would be slightly different, they would find bugs the author had missed --- even though it is working fine for the original author's use-case. It wasn't until retail applications for the PC did beta testing become a wide-spread and formal process, and with it, the terms "beta tester" and "beta test phase" were created. Eventually, people started talking about an "alpha phase". I wrote a blog article about this (https://honestillusion.com/blog/2023/11/05/what-is-beta-software/). Can I cite that as a reference?JamesCurran (talk)15:24, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
