Quoting Jack Bailey jjb@bcc.com:
Cedric Puddy wrote:
My experience is that the daemon performs much better than "alpha" would ordinarily indicate.
and there's the nomenclature itself. "Alpha" means (or at least it used to mean) testing under control of the developers. "Beta" means testing under control of the users. It looks like we all agree that Dovecot is beyond both.
Jack
While traditionally alpha testing was an internal process, it is often used now for external testing when there is no feature freeze. Beta testing would then mean that there is at least a partial feature freeze if not a total feature freeze.
I would not argue with the idea that the current code is beta quality, but it is the author's perogative to name it alpha or beta as the author chooses. The author's reputation is at stake, and he or she has to be the one to decide when and how to release the code because it is their reputation at stake.
What many want -- releasing it now as release quality code, when many like myself and apparently the author don't think it is release quality now -- is what is humorously called gamma testing, and should be avoided IMHO.
-- Eric Rostetter The Department of Physics The University of Texas at Austin
Go Longhorns!