The Biz of Coding

Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly and the “Perpetual Beta”

by Ujwal Tickoo on April 1st, 2006

Tim O’Reilly in his often referred article considered the "Perpetual Beta" amongst 8 important attributes of Web 2.0 software, services, and web sites. I have never been comfortable with the view of software (or services or websites) being in Perpetual Beta — whether these be conventional desktop software, Web 1.0 , or Web 2.0. Why?

The reason is that it gives an absurd and dangerous license to software developers to not fix enough bugs to take beta software to "release quality" and become accountable and receive flak if released software turns out to be too buggy. It is all too easy for a Product Manager to say "sorry to know that your hard disk got deleted due to our software. Thanks for reporting the bug. This is very serious and we are grateful to you for reporting this issue to us. As you know our software is still in beta and not yet released. We continue to work toward reaching release state by fixing all such known bugs."

By definition software that is in Beta is not yet release quality for a broad audience and therefore can be expected to be buggy and the user is responsible for all problems when he/she downloads and tries beta software! If beta software works fine — all credit goes to the software developer – but if it doesn’t the user damn well blame himself/herself for downloading beta software and bear all the problems resulting from it.

In any case the legalease of software license reduces the liability of even released software on developer companies. Therefore this permanent beta causes me a lot of concern specially as I notice that Google keeps a lot of software "beta" for an unduly long time.

Google launched GMail with much fanfare: text advertisements, 2.5 GB of storage space etc. but over 2 years after launch the mail service is still in beta! Gabriel Mihalache on his blog "The Burden of Proof" states that:

The licensing agreement of beta software (or the terms of service, in the case of web sites and web-based software) clearly specifies that the software is not to be used for critical tasks and that the producer doesn’t accept any liability for any damages caused by the software (such as the recent case in which a man lost his Google/Gmail account following one of Gmail’s more-or-less frequent downtimes).

We can’t be so naive as to consider that Google keeps its products in beta testing for years at a time because of genuine concern for security, stability and performance. So, why do their still mark their service as “beta”?

First of all, “beta” licensing allows Google to shrug-off any responsibility for any potential loses. Users accept the terms of service and, arguably, accept the risks associated with testing a pre-release software….The “beta” tag should act as a signaling mechanism, but in these cases the signal is broken. Most people simply don’t take Google’s warnings and legalese disclaimers seriously because it kept Gmail as beta for so long, and because the novelty of trying the invite you get outweighs the caution the “beta” label should trigger. Once you start using Gmail and you see how convenient and trendy it is, you soon forget about the limited service and guarantees and start using it for your primary email….

Most people are not international CEOs which receive multi-million dollar deals over email, that’s true. But even the casual user which is now unwillingly and unknowingly exposed to risks should think of the consequences of relying on beta software.

Google has been using the novelty and buzz of its products to get people to sign up but then it keep them on beta software, instead of putting its money where its mouth is and take responsibility for the occasional failures of its products….Are you afraid that the beta status of Gmail will mean that you can lose your email without anyone at Google caring? Have Google and the open source crowd undermined the original seriousness of the “beta” label?

In a different post Chris Fullman agrees when he says:

With Google’s recent perversion of the term "Beta™", in which a great majority of their services either never leave the beta status or spend forever in that status, they’re almost begging for consumers to slough off any hardships or inconveniences when things break or don’t work as intended. I feel this, in terms of consumer loyalty and overall stability of the technology, is a step in the wrong direction.

Clearly, untill consumers don’t resist software provider’s attempts to escape responsibility they continue to expose themselves to unwanted consequences of using software thats in perpetual beta. Meanwhile, I hope Tim takes this "perpetual beta" attribute off his definition of Web 2.0. A large user community takes his ideas seriously and gets introduced by Search Engines to Tim’s Web 2.0 definition when they search for this term.

POSTED IN: Google, Software, Tim O'Reilly