Microsoft embracing "perpetual beta"?

[GomJabbar]

CNNMoney.com: The man who could fix Windows

Microsoft's new OS chief has to get Redmond to embrace a new model of programming, in which software is constantly being improved instead of updated every 5 years.
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One of Sinofsky's main tasks in his new role will be to revamp the way that software is developed and pushed out the door. And it won't be enough to just crack the whip on deadlines. He'll also have to get Microsoft (Research) to embrace a new model of programming born on the Web -- the "perpetual beta" -- in which programmers continuously improve software with new features rather than wait to roll them up into a big release every few years.

[christopher_wolf]

Oh goody; the Perpetual Beta, another horror brought to you by Web 2.0.

Beta describes a state of operation of the code and predicts an official release candidate; but if you keep everything in a perpetual beta, you have the quite conveinent ability to put off fixing bugs, either by yourself or the community, into the far future because, hey... "It is still in Beta."

Keeping a product in beta and purposefully not finalizing it gives you the ability to, if so desired, back up alot of the hype with some ofrm of a product whilst not supporting any of the development costs that are associated with maintaining it. Hence, you sometimes see stuff that has been in beta for a long time, Google is a good example of this.

I am not impressed by that line of thought; the only place I can see it leading us to is giving the makers an excuse for buggy software that isn't fixed and ginving them even *more* leeway into hyping something up and then, once they have a half-baked product, brush off the claims of instability from the "Naysayers" by essentially saying "Hey give us a break, it is still in Beta!"

Not good...