"... the fact that it had major bugs. Like, yeah, that's what that means."

No, that's not what beta means. I expect core functionality to work properly in a beta. I expect there to be intermittent issues, and I expect advanced/fringe features to maybe sometimes not work. I expect there to be workarounds for most (but not all) issues that crop up. But the freakin' main menu didn't work. How is that beta-quality? I'd hesitate to call it alpha-quality.

And yes, I know, it's open source, it's free, you shouldn't feel entitled. I know. I wrote and maintained open source software for 5 years. But c'mon, from the perspective of the developer, have enough pride in your work to at least do a little testing before throwing a release over the fence.

1. I know definitions are a little hazy, but your definition of a "beta" is not really the traditional meaning. In a beta, core functionality should mostly be there, but it's expected to be buggy. Beta is the point at which most bugs are expected to be worked out, because that's the point when the software is mostly feature-complete. That's why people who use the beta are called "beta testers." I mean, you're welcome to your definitions, but it seems unfair to curse out free software developers for not adopting your personal jargon. (Here's a handy reference for the anonymous downvoter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Bet... ) At any rate, it is certainly not meant to be an end-user release, so if that's the worst accusation you can find to throw at them before you start swearnig, you're really being unfair.

2. The article is a bit vague (which doesn't help its case), but if the bug is the one I'm thinking of, saying that "the main menu didn't work" is a bit of an exaggeration. I believe the actual issue was that the main menu didn't work in Explorer. Broken Explorer support is very common among beta software unless they're specifically targeting Explorer specially.

> your definition of a "beta" is not really the traditional meaning. In a beta, core functionality should mostly be there, but it's expected to be buggy.

I expect bugs, yes, but the "traditional" meaning of beta is that core functionality is done and it's passed through QA and some form of alpha stage with internal and some trusted external testers to catch, at a minimum, glaringly obvious stupidity.

I'll excuse a beta release with some significant but not absolutely critical feature clearly walled off and labelled "this bit doesn't work yet". I'll not excuse one where critical functionality becomes clearly unusable just by virtue of running on a supported platform. That's so beyond the pale for what is -- even if in a twisted/attenuated sense -- a commercial product as to reflect nothing less than utter incompetence.

What disturbed me about this article is the lack of testing. For a major piece of software like Wordpress, ANY release (alpha, beta, whatever) should include a test phase that stalls the release if it doesn't pass.

If Wordpress was mission critical for my business, after reading this article I'd be investigating their build process very carefully. If it turns out that they don't have an effective test phase, I'd be migrating my customers to an alternative as fast as I could.