MS: Beta Software Good Enough for Production Use

RMX writes "CNet is reporting that Microsoft is starting to license test software for real-world use . In particular, Visual Studio 2005 and the April "community technology preview" of SQL Server 2005 are both supposed to be released sometime in the second half of the year. But Microsoft is claiming the pre-release versions are stable already, so they're licensing the pre-released versions on the grounds that they 'are already suitable for running production business applications.'"

Bold

[someonewhois]

That's an awfully bold assumption, but I guess they don't want to give away the betas, as then most people would just use the beta all the way through. Good logic, I don't see why not.

Re:Soo...

[Eric Smith]

If I program something in Visual Studio 05, and there is a beta bug in it and my enterprise server app with 100000 customers fails, can I sue M$?

Yes. The real question is whether you can win the suit and collect damages. The EULA you clicked on probably said that you can't. But did you actually read the EULA? And is it enforceable?

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, let's stop bashing windows for being unstable. It's usually stable enough these days, it's just slow and cumbersome to use and expensive. It also sports poor performance in the same applications on the same hardware when compared to Linux, a lot of times even when running through wine.

But yeah, let's leave the stability alone. Most users are ok with a little bit of crashing, particularly if it's just an application now and then. It's just too bad so few of them realize how much easier their lives would be with a better system that could actually take advantage of their hardware.

Re:Read your EULA:

[quarkscat]

MSFT did, apparently, think highly enough of your data to make each incident of data loss (due to MSFT's OSes or applications) worth $5.00 USD.

It hasn't been as if MSFT would actually put the $40 Billion USD they have stashed away at risk . They have offered to stand behind their products by exactly $5.00 USD worth. Considering that they should know better than anyone else what the quality of their software is, I don't see how this posting is even considered "news".

All of MSFT's code is "beta", and they know it.

Re:Accountability

[InvalidError]

I have a friend who happens to be working at M$. He told me they started to use VS2005 internally late last summer, that would be beta-1 I think. Beta-2 has been around for a few months, apparently a must-have from what I was told.

Some betas are worth other's releases and vice-versa.