[General] Alpha and Beta

[Katie Capps Parlante]

I have consistently used the terms this way, across the projects 
(Chandler, Cosmo, hosted service):

Alpha => intended for use inside OSAF, or "dogfood"
Beta => solid enough and with a coherent enough feature set that people 
can use it outside of OSAF

As Heikki noted, the use of the term "Beta" is more consistent with a 
"Google Beta". In more of a waterfall process "Beta" would imply that 
the product is feature complete. We are explicitly choosing *not* to 
follow such a waterfall process. One of our assumptions here is that we 
want to get the product in front of users well *before* we are feature 
complete, as we think we will learn a lot by having people try to use 
it. The roadmap and feature set may change in unexpected ways once we 
start getting feedback from real users outside of OSAF.

For the desktop, our main goal right now is to get to the point where 
people outside of OSAF are using Chandler (Beta). We're currently 
targeting March 2007. This does not imply that Chandler will be feature 
complete for a 1.0 release in March. We hope to iterate and adjust the 
feature set based on what we learn, and have set no target date yet for 1.0.

For Cosmo, the server will need to support the desktop in the same 
timeframe, and we hope to have a limited set of UI features that are 
solid and useful enough to be used by people outside of OSAF. This set 
of features needs to go through an "Alpha" cycle and hit a "Beta" stage 
in the same timeframe. (Ted and Priscilla are working on a realistic 
plan for Cosmo given those constraints.)

Cosmo's roadmap will likely extend beyond this timeframe, so the 
alpha/beta milestone naming scheme for the releases might not make as 
much sense.

I'm open to different alternatives on the numbering schemes, but wanted 
to set this context for making decisions about release management from here.

Cheers,
Katie

Priscilla Chung wrote:
> On Aug 29, 2006, at 11:41 AM, Heikki Toivonen wrote:
>> What is Cosmo's milestone numbering scheme?
>>
> So far there has been a proposal on the Cosmo-dev list to call each 
> milestone 0.5M1, 0.5M2 etc. though nothing is set yet. Perhaps I was the 
> only one who was unfamiliar with the use of 'M's, but as Ted pointed 
> out, it is used in the Eclipse Foundation among other's. If it is widely 
> used in the development community then I'm fine with it. 
> 
>> Next are the terms alpha and beta. Chandler uses alpha to mark a product
>> that is usable inside of OSAF. Beta is something we want the public to
>> give a try; think "Google Beta".
>>
>> I believe Cosmo is using beta to mean feature complete; can you confirm?
>>
> No, I believe the term beta would mean people outside the OSAF 
> organization will be able to use Cosmo, but it is NOT feature complete. 
> Opposed to Alpha, which people inside the OSAF organization, everyone 
> would be encouraged to 'dog-food' Cosmo.
> 
>> I believe we should unify what alpha and beta mean between the projects.