Mozilla Clarifies Beta Plans

According to Mozilla.org's Mitchell Baker, "There's a beta coming. That much
is clear." This upcoming release, however, is not a beta of Mozilla itself, but of Netscape's mozilla-based product. Aimed at end users, the beta will not incorporate the Mozilla IRC client used by active developers, nor will it be based off frozen APIs, though both are expected soon.

Future releases of interest to developers will be marked by Mozilla.org. Exactly how the releases will be labeled is still undecided, as there has been some justifable confusion over the upcoming beta release. The word beta is just too nebulous a concept to sufficiently delineate differences in releases. Too many people have conflicting views on what makes a release beta -- be it frozen APIs, feature completeness, or its target audience.

It boils down to this: The implications of words like beta and alpha are necessitating the same type of evolution in release names as the
implications of software versions did before them.