XFfm issue

[Joe Klemmer]

On Mon, 2003-08-25 at 22:36, Lionel Laratte wrote:

> Also, I didn't realize betas were for testing.  Thanks for the info. 
> Problem solved.

	This is one of the things that's getting very prevalent these days.  By
that I mean that completely blurred lines between what is really alpha,
beta, gama and release.  In the olden days, alpha was the designation
used when the initial proof-of-concept version was being worked on. 
Generally it was only available to internal developers and was extremely
unstable.  Beta was when you had the basics fairly solid but testing was
needed for usability and feature development.  This was tested by more
people but still in a fairly controlled way.  Gama was what we now call
release candidates.  They were for bug squashing only and were released
to an even wider test audience.  Then came the production release.

	This process has been completely changed due to two factors, IMNSHO: 1)
MS and their releasing of beta quality (at best) code for production
products and 2) the Open Source movement and their habit of releasing
production quality code as betas (gaim is an excellent example).  I'm
saying this not as a knock on anyone (well, except MS) but as an
explanation of why there is such a fuzzy understanding of what these
Greek letters mean.

	You may now return to your regularly scheduled list, which is still in
progress.