About Beta forums and software

[Petar Petrenko]

Hi,

my opinion is that we don't need beta forums and software, because:

1. we would be able to start using all new features in our production work, without asking ourselves: "when it will show up in retail version to use it";
2. you will have ALL the users to test it instead of a "small" group of beta testers. At least, all other software companies work without beta software.

[wonderings]

7 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Hi,

my opinion is that we don't need beta forums and software, because:

1. we would be able to start using all new features in our production work, without asking ourselves: "when it will show up in retail version to use it";
2. you will have ALL the users to test it instead of a "small" group of beta testers. At least, all other software companies work without beta software.

You clearly know when you install beta software that it is not complete and subject to change. Why anyone would use beta software for production is beyond me. The only time I install beta software is on the side from the main app. Same goes with an OS, I will install the beta as a virtual machine but never as my main OS. People know when they are using beta it is for testing and there are countless issues and glitches that could been the software. 

[GarryP]

1. What would happen if some features were introduced but needed to be removed because they caused too many problems, as has happened more than once? Any documents using those features would be potentially unusable. Not a good situation for production documents.

2a. Making all users into ‘guinea pigs’ for new functionalities, whether they like it or not, isn’t a nice thing to do.

2b. I don’t know of any software development organisation which doesn’t have beta (testing) versions of their software (no matter what that 'beta' software is called).

-----

As far as I understand it, the user beta testing programme is not for some users to get a ‘preview’ of future functionalities.

Rather it is there for us to:
1. Help Serif with some ‘real-world’ testing and, maybe, offer suggestions as to how to proceed with certain things before any changes or new functionalities are ‘set in stone’.
2. Help Serif to check whether bug fixes have really worked with ‘real-world’ documents on systems/set-ups/configurations that they don’t have access to.

As such, the beta software should only be used for testing the software, not for getting to use some ‘cool new stuff’ earlier than some other people.

Edited October 21 by GarryP
Added more details.