The
stage of testing
computer software after the
alpha test. A
thankless job often delegated to employees in
entry level positions as a way of
paying your dues. Game development companies are particularly fond of
public beta testing as a means of finding bugs without actually paying anyone to do so. A truly
ingenious scheme ...assuming 1000
beta testers won't submit 1000 reports of the same
bug.
For a lot of today's
proprietary software, the
distinction is blurry between
beta test and
final release.
Open Source software however, is in
perpetual beta.