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Roberto wrote:
We try to use quite similar rules, but with different names. What you call "alfa" we call "work", your beta is our alpha, your "rc" is our beta, and "gold" is our "official" release. (Except that in no release we have "bugs expected and accepted" ;-)
These terms are open to interpretation, but please allow me to offer my view. What you call "work" is normally called "development". That is, you're trying new features, and not sure which will be selected to be released. It's similar to the odd versions of the Linux kernel. The way I've normally seen "alpha" used in software is to mean a feature-complete version. In other words, you've decided on the set of features you would like to make into a stable version. "Beta" is usually a debugged version of alpha, with maybe a few adjustments to the features. A "final" release is strictly bug fixes to the beta version. Usually "update" is not used-- when there is some bug fix you just make an incremental "final" release.
A problem with Lua's past release, for example, were the feature changes between 4.0 alpha, beta, and the final release. This made things difficult for people who decided to put a beta version in their project, possibly with customisations, and expected only small bug fixes going into the final release. I know because it happened to me.
Regards, -John -- OpenPGP encrypted mail welcome.