First, it would be my position that all software that is commonly available and used by end-users should be on topic. This specific piece of software has always been declared "alpha" by the creators. That's partly because they're so far from their own goal. The software saw its initial release in 1998. Over 20 years ago.
This seems like an somewhat eerie distinction because it's entirely subjective.
"Beta" (definition)
I don't believe people here have an understand of what "beta" means. It doesn't mean anything concrete. Most software is actually on a time-release which means a release only means "having support." It is not at all a statement on bugs, capability, or infrastructure. So for example, when you release software every 6-months the functionality you get from the bi-yearly release is only guaranteed to be "supported". It's not magically less-buggy or more capable, future releases often even future beta releases will usually be less buggy, more capable, etc.
Here is some software that is always in beta (unsupported) and never can be released such as
- Debian Testing (610 questions): https://superuser.com/search?q=Debian+Testing+is%3Aquestion
- Ubuntu Testing (18.10 is released in Oct 2018) https://superuser.com/search?q=Ubuntu+18.10
- Chrome Beta https://superuser.com/search?q=%22Chrome+Beta%22+is%3Aquestion
- Windows 8 Preview (392 Questions) https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/windows-8-preview
- Windows 10 Preview (332 Questions) https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/windows-10-preview
Clearly, none of this is any different than ReactOS. Or, MAME. MAME adopts a different definition of "beta" from the article from Wikipedia,
The developers of MAME do not intend to release a version 1.0 of their emulator program[28] because there will always be more arcade games to emulate and thus the project will never be truly "finished." Accordingly, version 0.99 was simply followed by version 0.100.
We still have 16 questions on MAME
So for MAME the goal is total emulation of Arcade games, and so long as any games can't be emulated the software is in "Beta".
Pre 1.0?
And the list of pre-1.0 software on my computer alone (list generated with dpkg -l | awk '{print $3, '\t', $2}' | grep '^0' | less) includes,
- camora
- dash
- i2p
- xfburn
- telnet & Linux NetKit (which includes telnet)
- ufraw
Not-niceness
Second, this is clearly an action made with prejudice. I was never made aware of even the conversation. After only 1 hour and one submitted answer the user (who doesn't like me) chose the mod's answer for supporting the close-hammer. For those watching this is the conversation in the chat that is/was allowed. Didn't want to put forward the effort to tag me, but did mention the conversation in chat!
This kind of stuff does not make for a "nice" community. This is about a specific user that doesn't like me.
Let's also look at this,
Before I vote to close a large number of questions from a single user, I wanted to get community input, especially since the closure reason isn't an official one. I don't want this to appear to be a vendetta.
There are 11 total questions on ReactOS. Most of which are still not closed. We even have a tag reactos that was created years ago!
Let's actually consider a policy here.
Thanks!
History
The last time this became a coordinated attack, Journeyman had to stand up and end the drama. And, it did end. My contributions even got more upvotes since then! We need the same statement again. This isn't productive and there is no rule against "beta" or "alpha" software. I am actually using and solving problems with ReactOS, and acting in good faith.