Hacker News Reader

Comment by s1gnp0st | Hacker News Reader

If it was an experiment I'd like to know why I'm still paying for access to something claiming to be it.

Because you signed up to pay for a beta service???? You can stop paying at any time.

If you're paying for it, it's a released product, not a beta. No matter how much a company wants to claim it's a "beta", it's simply not. The company just wants to be able to adhere to lower standards.

OpenAI is hardly the only company that pulls these shenanigans, too.

No, beta has nothing to do with if it's paid or not. Lots of products are released, and you pay for them, with early access/ beta.

No one lied to you. No one tricked you. It is in beta. You chose to pay for it.

I never said anyone lied to or tricked anyone. I'm saying that "beta" is a term referring to pre-release testing. If people are paying for it, it's been released and is therefore no longer a beta.

Calling it a "beta" at that point is just pure PR.

> If people are paying for it, it's been released and is therefore no longer a beta.

You can define "beta" whatever weird way you want but don't complain when it's not how literally everyone else uses it and don't complain when you're paying for something that uses the term the way everyone else does

My "weird way" is old-school, I admit, but it's not weird. It used to be mainstream. Google led the charge to deprive "beta" of actual meaning. I won't stop pushing back on it, because the redefinition makes it more difficult to talk about technical issues.

> don't complain when you're paying for something that uses the term the way everyone else does

I won't, because I won't pay to be a beta tester in the first place. I don't care what others do.

> because I won't pay to be a beta tester in the first place.

Apparently you will, because you started this thread with "why am I paying for this beta software?".

this is just not at all true -- companies have private betas that they monetize all the time. yes, the company provides lower guarantees on the product being supported. but the customer gets to use a product far before they normally would if they waited for general availability. that's the core of the idea behind a beta, not related to if it's paid or not

As I said, doing this is not rare and is certainly not limited to OpenAI. But it's misusing the term "beta" pretty significantly.

Because you are getting value from it. Why else would you pay?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com