On Tue, 1 Aug 2000 14:48:28 +0200, Kirk McElhearn, kirk@MCELHEARN.COM, wrote: >Naturally, we are "sworn to secrecy" - it is a question of respecting a >company's product secrets until they are releseased. While many >companies do public beta testing, I can assure you that it is not the >norm. I work with software companies doing translations and writing >documentation, and I have not ever seen a company that really authorizes >beta testers to talk about the products (except for the rare public beta >programs). Key Kirk, While public beta programs may not be desirable, and secrecy about new product features may make sense for software that has huge-scale distribution, it seems to me that allowing customers who have bought the current version to beta-test the next makes good business sense for a company reliant on a small clientele. Because I have been testing the new version of Igor, I now have so many documents that rely on the added features that I'll have to buy the new version before the final beta expires. This translates into hard money for Wavemetrics. It also means that the product has been thoroughly tested by users at all levels, something a small company can't afford to do on its own. Ben
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