Here's what I think and you guys can look at it and slap me around to get me straightened out if I'm getting it wrong. I'm like a hard piece of tempered steel. So you may have to hit me with an anvil on a stick to drill it in meh.... here we go!
Alpha is when the product is being tested by the company and close friends (closed alpha?) or the outside in a bold move (open alpha). This is the stage of the product that different platforms are being tested to iron out bugs across different OS's and compatibility issues.
Beta is when the product is tested by the outside, an audience (open beta) or maybe a confined group (closed betas). This stage is to tweak any of the performance on some systems lower end and higher end on any of the different OS's.
when the x in this case changes "x.1.0" it means that all, if not, the majority of the goals are reached with the project in this phase. (usually from 0 to 1. "0.3.4" means a majority of the goals have not been reached. "1.0.0" means yes, a majority or all goals have been reached)
when x in this case changes "1.x.0" then it means implementations have been added into the product and it works as far as they know... but usually in the next couple days of release.......
"1.1.x" happens and these are bug fixes for the implementation increment. (1.1.01 may or may not be hot fixes (a rush to get serious bugs and errors fixed [happy all nighter
]))you reach 1.0.0 when everything you wanted is done. And ya can't think anymore. And you just want to sit down for about a month and eat pizza having felt accomplished you finished something.
So then If I'm right... then something like dwarf fortress is in a beta state (maybe?). He hasn't reached a majority/all his goals (as seen here) because the first number is a 0. he's had 34 implementations into the game. And has put out 11 patch iterations for that 34th implementation. As seen because he has a 0.34.11 (At least at the time I wrote this post).
Let me know what you think, I tried to break this down with as much logic as I can.
