Alrighty, where to start... First of all, both of you guys are internet assholes and need to step back and look at what you're posting. Second of all, as someone who has worked for more than 10 years in software development on projects with millions of lines of code, I would like to point out that someone with the title 'Software Test Engineer' is not a 'tester' and actually does write code for the testing of a product, and is a 'real technical person'. Also, anyone in Quality Assurance is required to have a complete knowledge of SDLC as they are an integral part of it. I think both of you are being complete dicks to each other, but there were some inaccuracies to clear up here. At any rate, back to the original argument, it is up to the development team to decide when something is out of alpha, not the community. This is still pre-release software using willing community resources to test/refine/balance.