What is the facination with people keeping betas unleaked?

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Andy
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What is the facination with people keeping betas unleaked?

Post by Andy »

Quick note before you start reading:
This is to be a discussion, not a flame war. Thank you.


Hello all,

I have been having a discussion with several people over MSN this afternoon and this question occurred to me... What is the fascination with people keeping betas unleaked? What good does it do? Why these people like to annoy people by keeping something unleaked that a lot of people want?

But my real question is, why do people do it? I have been talking to a lot of people to try and discover the real reason. We have come up with many ideas, but even so, is there any real answer to that question?

It all comes down to what each individual feels about leaking something or not leaking something. Is it down to greed? Are they just out to get satisfaction knowing they have annoyed yet another person because someone wants the beta so badly? Are they just out to rub it in other peoples faces, so they can say "I have something you don't"? Or in some cases, is it about the money that was put into obtaining the beta that they want something of equal value in return?

I can understand if a beta cost a lot of money to obtain, or a file was tagged to a particular person. In the case of a lot of Microsoft OS betas, thats fair enough, the person could lose their beta tester status for that. But all the same, where is the fairness in all of this?

Beta groups such as BetaArchive should have a known status where people know that when they come to such a site, they can expect the latest files, screenshots, and information about files they have been wanting to get their hands on. Communities thrive because of new input from its members. In recent months, BA has slowed down. There have been no new releases, nobody is sharing as much as they used to, and there hasn't been a single upload to the FTP server in over 2 months.

If this continues, BetaArchive might not even have a place left in the beta scene. Its members would leave out of boredom, its daily post count would drop, until eventually nobody will come to BetaArchive because there is nothing left for them there.

I want everyone to think about it. Try to come to terms with yourself; Is it really worth being selfish and keeping all these unleaked betas to yourself?

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Post by DanielC »

In most cases it's probably just that they like to feel special/better/privileged/lucky by being the only one to have something rare. It's theirs, part of their collection, something that makes their collection different from yours. Then there are the other lot who are just attention seeking up-their-own-arse twats. My opinion, share your stuff, you've got nothing to loose, and everything to gain, because you will be the one who provided the beta everbody wanted, giving you a better reputation and more respect in the community. Surely that's better than just being a selfish arse ... That's my view anyway, and that's comming from somebody who doesn't collect or even use beta stuff in general, so it's an unbiased view in some kind of a way ...
~ Dan

Namronia

Post by Namronia »

well, if every thing would leak, beta scene would be totally boring...

never had that? i actually have most betas i always wanted, lots of unleaked too, and its now getting boring for me because there is no "hunt" for them anymore, if animals just get meals without hunting them, theyll be bored soon, "we" need that hunt too as human, andy, believe me, if everything would be leaked we all would be bored of betas

hounsell

Post by hounsell »

Namronia wrote:well, if every thing would leak, beta scene would be totally boring...

never had that? i actually have most betas i always wanted, lots of unleaked too, and its now getting boring for me because there is no "hunt" for them anymore, if animals just get meals without hunting them, theyll be bored soon, "we" need that hunt too as human, andy, believe me, if everything would be leaked we all would be bored of betas
And while people like this exist, who dedicate half their life to keeping the builds they have as close to their penis as possible, it's never going to be within the reach of most people.

You screwed up with 6519 though, didn't you. Who knows with that. Could be a leak any time. With the number of people that have it.

Namronia

Post by Namronia »

hounsell wrote:
Namronia wrote:well, if every thing would leak, beta scene would be totally boring...

never had that? i actually have most betas i always wanted, lots of unleaked too, and its now getting boring for me because there is no "hunt" for them anymore, if animals just get meals without hunting them, theyll be bored soon, "we" need that hunt too as human, andy, believe me, if everything would be leaked we all would be bored of betas
And while people like this exist, who dedicate half their life to keeping the builds they have as close to their penis as possible, it's never going to be within the reach of most people.

You screwed up with 6519 though, didn't you. Who knows with that. Could be a leak any time. With the number of people that have it.
its not 6519, i was very exciting to have that at the beginning, but it really bores me... 9x are much better, they dont even need to be unleaked

all those modern betas are boring for me, all nts are pretty much the same, but at 9x that REALLY different

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Post by Beta_Train »

I've been asking this question for years, even before the OSBA days. I'm not saying give us all the unleaked in one lump sum, I'm saying make it a game like the release a fortnight. If an animal had to wait a fortnight for its next meal, it would be pretty excited to get it don't you think

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Post by mrpijey »

Well, to try to narrow things down....:

The reason because people form small closed communities can be a lot of things.... one being that friends "join forces" and work together. They don't want outsiders to join and voilá, closed community. Every community is closed to some degree: some needs a mere registration. Some, like BA, needs a registration AND post count to access the good stuff. Some others need payment for stuff. And some won't accept outsiders at all no matter what.

Sure one reason can be because of what you say, they want to collect stuff and then brag about it, shove it in everyone elses face and think they are better than others. But those communities will quickly be loathed and ignored, not to mention the respect of it will vanish. But a lot of these communities simply are closed because of a very simple and valid reason... they simply don't want everyone to barge right in and take it all away, stuff people worked hard for to get, all downloaded and ripped apart by people that don't even say thank you for you trouble. They want only trusted people to get access to it... It's not so hard to believe really. If you spent countless hours (all relative speaking of course) on building something you don't want someone else to just come along, run the blueprints through the xerox machine and run out of your door before you say "screwed". It may not be so drastic in the beta scene, but people do spend time at finding the stuff, fixing, packaging and also paying for the stuff, and they may not simply want to see that spread out on The Pirate Bay 10 minutes after. It's a tough world, but it's not very uncommon. Everything on Internet is closed community-based, even Internet itself is a closed community to those that doesn't have access to it.

To your remark about dropping posts and releases on the forum... Not so very odd either. There are a few examples that comes to mind...

- Seasonal activity A. This time of year people are preparing for the summer. A lot of members are still in school, so I bet this time is packed with tests, essays and a lot of homework. Which means they spend less time on the net collecting betas and chatting. Same applies to working people, a lot of action just before everyone goes on summer holidays.

- Season activity B. It's summer time for christ sake. Not everyone (like me) sit indoors bashing away on the keyboard when the trees are green outside, birds are singing, girls are wearing waaay too thin and skimpy outfits (:P) and the sun is heating up the air. During winter most just heat themselves in front of their oversized desktops instead.

- "Simon Says" behavior. Some people on the forums are old members, and well known in the community. When they leave so does some action, since people tend to get active if someone else is. Once these "key members" get offline the rest tend to do the same. They don't chat so often, the pop in every now and then to see what's new etc. I myself (even if i am not a key person) has stopped updating my FTP log for several reasons... I have a lot of work at the moment, so i don't have much time for downloading stuff. I have a LOT of new stuff downloaded which will be up soon, but until I go on break there won't be any time to go through it.

- Fading interest. Some people join and dive right into the action. They do 10-20-30 posts a day and drive themselves crazy. After a while they get tired and stop replying to everything and activity goes down. If things get really boring the don't visit for a while. Natural behavior.

There are a lot more reasons, and no one can say why it happens. One week Facebook and all other communities are all the rage. Next week it's dead and someone else is all the rage. Fact is that BA is still around, after a full season. It will slow down, and it will pickup the pace again. New members arrive, old members leave.... it's just regular business on a community forum.

Don't worry, nothing stands still in the beta scene, and stuff will get out. And hopefully we'll have a new mirroring layout too which should help .

Addition: Personally I would prefer that all betas and stuff get out in the public. It will then be preserves for the future, and a lot of people will help doing so. Beta software is a part of computer history and shouldn't be hoarded for private eyes only. But as with everything else it's up to the individual to make this decision, and apparently many of us has done so considering the amount of stuff BA has. But there will always be people that don't want to share their stuff freely (for the reasons I mentioned), and we just have to live with that.
Last edited by mrpijey on Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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leonbollerup
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Leaks and understand the grounds for it

Post by leonbollerup »

Hi,

While i do understand that some people "want to keep it to themself" - i cant help asking myself, what the h*ll you are doing on a site like this ?

Ok, so i am not a collector, but i do enjoy to test beta software, either to remember the "good old times" or to play with new stuff - being a PM of StartForce.com where we develop a live desktop, its kinda interesting to study how other devleopers was thinking, maybe pick a couple of good idea.

Anyway, back to the point.

You might find pleasure in hunting for special leak, but good is there at having it, if you cant share it... except for the envy from everyone you talk to ?

So people, straithen up get started leaking.

//Leon
PM - www.startforce.com
Owner - www.r2x2.com
Owner - www.mail4u.se

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Post by hypr »

Hmm, we could always try and encourage people more to share I don't really have any special or rare betas, just that Tabworks thing I pulled off the old dying Hard drive that I need to find a FTP to upload it to.

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Re: Leaks and understand the grounds for it

Post by mrpijey »

leonbollerup wrote: You might find pleasure in hunting for special leak, but good is there at having it, if you cant share it... except for the envy from everyone you talk to ?
Well, perhaps the reason of having it is... because they want to have it? =D They want to try it themselves, but they don't want to give it away further... and that for a billion possible reasons. It doesn't have to be for greedy purposes either, just that they spent resources on getting it, and they want something in return.

I doubt many people here get in the beta community for the PRIMARY reason of distributing it further. The primary reason will be that THEY (I, YOU) want a particular release, to test it, play with it, experiment etc. Then if you want to give it away to someone else will be a choice you make, but most likely not the main reason of why you got the release in the first place.

And I agree, keep sharing the goods! But don't get in trouble doing so, it's not worth it and it's bad for the community as a whole.
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Post by Beta_Train »

mrpijey: Det var en bra post Jag håller med dig.

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Post by Ludacris »

Actually it is not the fascination about keeping builds unleaked but more the fear that names get out or that your sources dont trust you anymore and such stuff...

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About leaking

Post by Radar- »

Well before when i was hardcore into getting unleaked builds, some of those builds were aquired under the understanding that it wouldnt go public, and to keep a source for future alpha and/or beta releases i had wanted to keep a trust between the sources and myself, so i didnt release them.. but it wasnt for greed or for braging rights at all. and i do believe that things that arent extemely sensitive towards a source, or cant be easily traced back to the origin of the leak, yes should be shared among the beta community as a whole (and yes once i aquire my old collection from a friend of mine, who had a complete backup of it, i will be sharing them with BetaArchive

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Re: What is the facination with people keeping betas unleake

Post by fzajac »

Andy wrote:What is the fascination with people keeping betas unleaked? What good does it do? Why these people like to annoy people by keeping something unleaked that a lot of people want?
Kind of fetish, i guess
j/k but some peope just find it exciting to have somethig that others don't.

Well, yeah i can understand the reason of not leaking that is that the 'source' doesnt want it to be leaked and making a promise but it starts somewhere...

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Post by Beta Freak »

Give the Beta to someone they trust, and they can leak it and claim they found it to cover the person who doesn't want to be found.
Problem solved there.

feck111

Post by feck111 »

I think we should leak betas, if they are unleaked and you have them, why keep them? Its not really doing you good...

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Post by NAX »

That is indeed an interesting issue.
I've been watching this forum for quite some time (More then one year) now, without posting much. ^^

I can understand those people who got unleaked stuff, and are not able to, or willing to leak them, whatever the reason might be.

On the other hand, new leaks will help to keep the community alive. It will attract new people, who came here looking for a beta, yet found a nice community. Others might even have their own, possibly unleaked beta stuff on some Floppies, or CD-Roms, without knowing their value... (not very likely, but hey... )

Conclusion: "Leaks will save the world. Amen" -Raiker

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Post by Koptor »

Ludacris wrote:Actually it is not the fascination about keeping builds unleaked but more the fear that names get out or that your sources dont trust you anymore and such stuff...
Radar- wrote:Well before when i was hardcore into getting unleaked builds, some of those builds were aquired under the understanding that it wouldnt go public, and to keep a source for future alpha and/or beta releases i had wanted to keep a trust between the sources and myself, so i didnt release them.. but it wasnt for greed or for braging rights at all. and i do believe that things that arent extemely sensitive towards a source, or cant be easily traced back to the origin of the leak, yes should be shared among the beta community as a whole (and yes once i aquire my old collection from a friend of mine, who had a complete backup of it, i will be sharing them with BetaArchive
These points are all true - however I will also add that most leaks can be traced - if it wasn't "publicly" released (i.e. TAP, beta testers, etc) then it can be deduced where that particular build got distributed to, and then people's heads get put on the line. So getting people fired just for leaking a few builds doesn't really seem worth it....

There's also the issue with TAP builds - I believe in the Vista beta, MS said that if any more TAP builds got leaked, there would be no more builds released to TAP whatsoever...

So yeah, what's unleaked will more than likely stay that way for a very long time...
lol, internet

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Post by OG »

You'd think people would want to get as much feedback as possible from those likely to be users of the thing being developed. As it is, keeping it under wraps means that when eventualy leaks occur, and we all know they do, there is an entire sub section of unauthorized beta testers with nowhere to provide feedback. This isn't helped of course when the final product hits the shelves only for the first paying customers to find they are unwittingly part of some bug testing group themselves, something that perhaps may have been avoided if the original pool of beta users was of sufficient size to catch almot all problems before the release date. Or... Maybe they just dont care about that and are perfectly happy to release buggy software on the open market and hope the retterick goes away with a service pack.

Its hard to build up hype if everyone knows whats coming.

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Post by grabberslasher »

It's amazing how much people don't understand or refuse to listen. If you strip it down to its bare point, is that people don't leak out of respect for whomever gave them something. They don't break that fundamental trust, much like you don't stab your friends in the back.

Once it progresses further, if they DO happen to pass it on to a third party, then it becomes about exclusivity and jealousy and the morals get watered down. The people who end up leaking are usually further down the chain, because they have no idea what sacrifices have been made to get a certain thing, and they don't care. It's theirs, they want fame, they leak. And a lot of the time, they don't leak so that everyone else can have/enjoy it. They leak for the pride of 'having leaked'.

Of course it's different if you get something directly from a first party and are "allowed" to leak it, that happens time and time again when the original source doesn't have blood on his hands and it doesn't matter to him/her if the build gets out or not.

For all the other times, a leak is usually the end of a long and painful process in which many people get into trouble, lose friends, etc.

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Post by grabberslasher »

I'll bring up the case of the original Longhorn 3683 leaker for you, since so many of you seem to be too young to know.

The guy, worked at Microsoft, was traced. He lost his job, was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, was almost jailed, and had his child taken off him, all because of the two kids he gave the build to who leaked it.

They've had to live with that guilt since. One of them remains collecting rare builds, but has kept out of the limelight because he/she knows the consequences. The other has had nothing to do with betas since; destroying someone's life isn't something you'd ever forget.

</nostalgia>

Edit: Sorry for double post. But it kinda works better as two posts.

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Post by F44 Control »

grabberslasher wrote:I'll bring up the case of the original Longhorn 3683 leaker for you, since so many of you seem to be too young to know.

The guy, worked at Microsoft, was traced. He lost his job, was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, was almost jailed, and had his child taken off him, all because of the two kids he gave the build to who leaked it.

They've had to live with that guilt since. One of them remains collecting rare builds, but has kept out of the limelight because he/she knows the consequences. The other has had nothing to do with betas since; destroying someone's life isn't something you'd ever forget.

</nostalgia>

Edit: Sorry for double post. But it kinda works better as two posts.
That's horrible.

If I were in someone's footsteps that could leak a build of software, I would probably keep it to myself and give it to close friends if they were interested. I was just watching the movie Untraceable, and I had no idea how big the Cyber Crimes department of the FBI was. It got me to think twice about downloading leaked things, because they can practically track anything.

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Post by SaT »

Usually is not the people (like me) is the people who got it first, and set rules to us .
Like say: “If you leak, you won’t have more “or if you leak don’t even dream to be on the beta program or something like that.
Those are the things that stop us for giving it out. At the end more reports to Microsoft will make better software however some rock heads don’t get that and well stop the process.
I mean can you imagine the feedback that some versions of longhorn that i know some guys have were made public?
Castel Service and WinFS could be on Vista if Microsoft had those reports.
But well the status of super star on this i guess is more important.
I remember talking to Aaron about it and he was one of the once that actually was on the same page, thanks to him some TAP builds got out and well more testers, more feedback , better results.
But some guys just want to keep it private or maybe they don’t, maybe they have the same rules.

Off topic:
BTW! I still want the WinHec Demo Build!!!! And i know you guys have two different builds from that so please share.
Back to topic:

Anyways thats why we cant share, even if we want to.
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Post by davehc »

It is understandable that the source (Microsoft for example) keep their Betas out of site (or try to!) They are normally buggy and give potential users a bad, and often wrong, impression of what the final product will look like.
It is, however, a futile exercise. Again, microsoft as the biggest example, with thousands of employees world wide,cannot possibly keep it under wraps for ever. All those employees are human. Whether with malicious intent or seeing no real harm, sooner or later they will deliver a copy to their best friends/relations and so the ever increasing circle begins.

Andy's OP is interesting enough and does not declare for or against. Of course, as all subscribers know, this site, for example, does keep the betas a secret as they are mostly behind a closed site. (I'm no flaming, just pointing out the obvious)

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Post by 0vermind »

I have thought this over myself plenty of times especially when it came down to stupid things like that different angle of the chery tree in redmond. You know that only a few people have that wallpaper and this was talked about over at JoeJoe a long time ago and it came down to people bragging "I have it and you don't so hahahaha".

I've come to realize it's all about greed, it's all about power and who has what no one else does. That way they can leak screenshots and stuff and say "oh hey look what I can do and experience that you can't". Selfishness and greed is what it seems to come down to.

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