From the
‘
naming games‘
files:
Some vendors keep their software in Beta for a long period of time — even calling services used by millions Beta (Gmail is still a Beta).
Mozilla however is now taking its Firefox 3.5 browser out of beta with the first official Release Candidate (RC 1).
Though, if you happen to have upgraded and just look at the ‘About Mozilla Firefox’ window all is states is version 3.5 (pic left).
There has been some discussion on the Mozilla mailing lists over the last 24 hours about the naming conventions for this release, and whether or not Mozilla should have just named it Beta 6 (or 7). The last official Beta release was Beta 5 which was released in April
“We *did* consider calling it a beta, and decided not to,” Mozilla VP of Engineering Mike Shaver wrote. “One reason
is that we don’t want people evaluating it as “beta software” — they
should be holding it to the same standards as released software in
terms of what they would report as problems, and we have seen an
unfortunate number of “I would have reported it, but I figured it was
beta so I’d see if it just got fixed next time” on bugs we would have
rather heard about earlier.”