When the term Beta went Gold

In the packaged software world, software products go through the following stages of life:

- Pre-Alpha,
- Alpha,

- Beta,

- Release Candidate,

- Gold (General Release), and
- EOL (End of Life).

In our new web world, Beta has stolen the show. You do see sites listed with the "Alpha" name, but mostly you see "Beta". The term Beta also has two primary sub-divisions, closed-Beta and open-Beta.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry regarding the "software release life cycle". The entry talks more in terms of boxed software, and does not specifically reference the use of software life cycle labels as it related to web-sites.

So who first coined the use of the "beta" label for software? Wikipedia attributes the term to IBM, who first began using the term back in the punch card machine days.

The release cycle labels work well for boxed software, but with web software, the appropriate label for a site's development stage is much more difficult to determine. There are no standard guidelines when to promote a product from Alpha to Beta, and Beta to Gold. The result is a major difference in user experience from one beta site to another. Web companies are constantly improving and enhancing their sites, so there is never a "final product." Along the way, the company must deliver a gold product. Constant and vigilant updates are required to keep a site competitive and vibrant. On the Internet, a static site is as close to EOL as you can get.