Break down the NDA wall
A couple of days ago, coinciding with TechEd Europe, .NET Framework 3.0
was released. Despite the importance of the event, it didn't come as much of a
change for many people. Not because they were not using .NET 3.0, but because
they had been for the past 8 or more months. In fact, other than knowing that it
was released, those using the latest CTP's weren't affected at all. This
reminded me of a topic that has been beaten to death numerous times:
restricting beta and alpha versions to a limited audience. I've heard many
reasons for why this is done the way it is, however at this day and age, I don't
think that many of them are relevant, let alone effective. Here's a list of some
of the myths or IMHO, misconceptions
1. Field tests are expensive to distribute. Yes, 5 years ago when you
used to have them delivered to your door with DHL or some other courier
service, this was true. In this day and age, that's no longer a problem.
2.
There are legal problems, documents need signing. Again, with
the technology available today, license agreements can be signed
online
3. People can discuss topics still in R&D. And? So
what if they do? I've not heard of one good reason why this would be
bad
4. People can copy it and release their own product. Ideas are always
copied. The hard part is to stay one step ahead of the game and generate new
ideas.
5. People will get disappointed with an early version. I'm a
developer and my main focus is developer tools, and this post is mostly directed
at developer tools. As a developer I know what a beta product is. I know what I
can and cannot expect. If people are using mainstream products such as
Windows or Office in beta, I'm sure developers will come to terms with the
notion of what a beta is.
6. There will be many false bug reports. Sure, the
more people using it, the more issues will be reported. Whether or not
those issues turn out to be bugs or not is irrelevant. It's simple
mathematics. Just because a bug is not reported, doesn't mean it's not there. In
fact I prefer to track 5 dead ends and find one serious bug,
than ignore incorrect reports.
7. We need to select 'elite' people. Give
me a break. There are so many elite people on field tests that have too many
other things to take care of that their "knowledge" goes to waste. On the other
hand, there are so many talented 'undiscovered' people that would provide a lot
of input to field tests.
There are many advantages to opening up private field tests to the mainstream public. We've realized this with Intraweb and now only limit the first few alphas to certain customers. At Atozed, since we have two types of customers (those with subscriptions and those without), one of the advantages of being a subscription based customer is that you get access to early betas before others. However, this is not the case with many companies.