Beta

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The Treachery of Fishes

"Beta" refers to a resource, site or application currently under active development, but deemed complete enough for public display and possibly use. The Beta phase serves to allow public testing and evaluation of the resource before a full official launch.

Many open source software products and modern web products are in a state acidly referred to as "perpetual beta" because they never quite seem to get out of beta phase. In reality, such products are often mature and complete but retain the "beta" tag because of percieved marketing benefits.

Alpha testing is less commonly heard of but usually precedes beta testing. Alpha software is considered experimental in nature and although sometimes publicly available often is not, or is made available with stern warnings.

Gamma, delta and epsilon testing are also periodically observed in increasing order of rareness; such labels are often percieved as a humorous. Photo sharing website Flickr was notorious for its everlasting "greek letter" testing which finally was replaced by "Flickr loves you", a roundabout declaration that the services was as complete as it ever would be.

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