> Several readers used the same term for what they think the industry has made them become: gamma testers.
> "Gamma testing is just like beta testing in that you get a product that's too buggy for prime time and you help the vendor iron out the problems," explained one. "The only difference is that now we're bug testing what's supposed to be a shipping product that we paid for. And likely as not, these days they'll try to charge us for the privilege of reporting the bugs we find."
> Plus, WORDVISION is designed to be "support-free" after the sale, and our unique Pioneer's Club of "gamma testers" is helping insure we live up to that goal.
> ... at least a decade since I started calling myself an unpaid gamma tester, for example. But people thought that one meant I specialized in displays and monitors...
Here's InfoWorld from 1994 - https://books.google.com/books?id=gzgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&dq=%2...
> Several readers used the same term for what they think the industry has made them become: gamma testers.
> "Gamma testing is just like beta testing in that you get a product that's too buggy for prime time and you help the vendor iron out the problems," explained one. "The only difference is that now we're bug testing what's supposed to be a shipping product that we paid for. And likely as not, these days they'll try to charge us for the privilege of reporting the bugs we find."
Oldest use I could find was from 1983, at https://archive.org/details/sim_micro-marketworld_1983-03-07... :
> Plus, WORDVISION is designed to be "support-free" after the sale, and our unique Pioneer's Club of "gamma testers" is helping insure we live up to that goal.
Here's a 2007 use describing a problem with the phrase, from https://archive.org/details/sdtimes184/page/n43/mode/2up?q=%...
> ... at least a decade since I started calling myself an unpaid gamma tester, for example. But people thought that one meant I specialized in displays and monitors...