On 8/13/16 10:13 AM, 'John Woodgate' jmw1937@... [LTspice] wrote:
Alpha software versions are private trial versions. Beta versions are for public trial.
Note quite in my experience, there are public and private betas for different products.
Alpha is the first round of testing while the product is still under development. Often there are significant missing features and numerous known bugs in the alpha version, but parts are working well enough to get feedback. Because of the issues, Alpha testing tends to be confined to people close to the developer.
Beta is a second round of testing. At the Beta level, the product is largely feature complete, although for larger products, there may be some sub sections of the product which may still really be at the Alpha level. Generally there are few to no 'show stopper' bugs, and the product is basically usable, but maybe not reliable. Beta testing can be sent to a wide audience, looking for bug reports and usability issues.
At the end of the Beta cycle you get Release Candidates, which are feature complete, and generally believed bug free, and are looking for extensive testing to find any latent bugs.
When a Release Candidate passes Quality, it becomes the Released Version.
--
Richard Damon
