Final Candidate... Golden Master... what do they mean?

[MisterPresident]

I recently started work as an intern (not programming... luckily) at a software company and I keep hearing these terms. I know they are related to development/releases but what exactly do they mean?

 

[CubicZirconia]

The final copy that will be mass reproduced and distributed to the public.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Gold = a master that is ready to duplicate, if a game has "gone gold" is has / is about to be sent off to the CD pressing plant.

Final or Release Candidate = not quite gold yet, features are supposed to be frozen and there are supposed to be no known outstanding bugs (that are going to be fixed anyway). It's much closer to complete than just a beta, and ready for one last round of testing before declaring it gold.

For a really complex product like a Microsoft server, it might go through several release candidates before going gold, as people keep finding less obvious bugs that still need to be fixed before going to wide distribution.

 

[MisterPresident]

Thanks for the info DaveSimmons, it looks like they're starting me on software testing tomorrow. (Basically, the instructions were try to mess up the program as much as possible)