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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Technology
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Beta and moreso Alpha are tags that indicate a software is not ready for use in production environment, because it is either not secure or stable enough. Otherwise it wouldn't need to be tagged as Alpha or Beta.
From their site: "It is already deployable and useable, and it federates cleanly with many other Fediverse servers (not yet all). However, many things are not yet implemented, and there are plenty of bugs! We foresee entering beta around the beginning of 2024.". I would say it should be described more as beta by now from that description.
Gmail was in beta for many years whilst it was in production, and Meshtastic only has alpha and beta releases, with no "stable" release. I think some projects feel if they are still adding features it says in beta and never reall is in stable until they stop adding features. But yes they should actually iterate through alpha, beta, RC, stable. Not everyone does, though.
I don't get how a software can be in alpha or beta version and by the developers be called ready for production environments. It doesn't make sense by itself. In some way it's not an honest way of communication, telling us two contrary things at the same time.
Alpha versions are actually quite severe. It means that features can be removed or added breaking the whole system. It means not providing an upgrade path for database changes. It means new bugs will be introduced by new features. Beta normally means a feature freeze but still not considered stable enough for production, due to bugs and security issues. RC, a "release candidate" is almost ready but you give it a bit more of testing time to make sure no critical bugs are left. And after that you get the version that is safe for productive use.
They are far away from a productive version, but telling us to use their development version as such.
Yes I think they're meaning they're still adding lots of new features possibly, but it is a bit confusing as I think of Alpha as raw and not production ready. Beta can be ready for testing with brand new features, and stable is usually production ready and all features already passed beta testing. I get it is for home use but still. Maybe they're covering themselves legally, but then you can just say "use at your own risk". It's possible too they don't have separate branches at all, and just add/update/fix the "alpha" version.
If you go to the Meshtastic website, the Beta of the software is listed as Stable, with the Alpha branch considered the testing version: https://meshtastic.org/downloads/
Yes, but it is a bit unusual for a "beta" to be the stable version, when there is a such a thing as "stable". Beta is normally taken to be a testing version, between alpha and stable releases. But it shows we can't just go on our own assumptions about what alpha and beta mean.
It entirely depends, but I don't think "Stable" is necessarily synonymous with "Release" versions. You can have a "stable" version where it functions correctly and there's no critical bugs that crash the program.