Betas

From IeXwiki

In software development, Betas are releases of unfinished software products. The traditional stages of software development include the following:

• Alpha: Typically Alpha builds aren't released to external testers (people who aren't employees of the company or project). These builds are usually not stable enough to be considered a functional build.
• Beta: These are considered to work as expected at least some of the time. Beta builds are released in most cases to testers and their goal is to find bugs and incompatibilites with the product and report it back to the company.
• Release Candidate (RCx): These are feature-complete versions which, after testing, could become a final release.
• Release To Web (RTW): Much like the next one this also is the final revision of the Release Candidate. This build (the code of which is the same as GM/RTM) is released to the web, since online delivery sometimes is a faster method of delivering the final code to OEMs. Note that not all software manufacturers use this method. Microsoft for example does for their Windows family.
• Gold Master / Release To Manufacturing (GM/RTM): The final revision of the Release Candidate, this build is distrubted in either CD or ISO format (sometimes both) to OEMs, Stores, and End-Users.