Release Canditate is a pretty much a final beta. No new features can be
added, only fixes to bugs. It is still technically a beta in that it is not
final code. It has all the features that the final will have,
Probably true, but if a severe-enough issue arose with some feature,
I'm sure they would feel free to remove that feature, if it otherwise
meant delaying the release significantly.
but there will
still be some bugs. Those will be worked out for the final release
(non-beta).
No! It is *never* true that any released piece of software has had all
the bugs worked out. Doing so is impossible for two reasons:
1. Developing any piece of software as big as an operating system, or
even an operating system service pack, is an enormous undertaking.
Windows has millions of lines of code in it, developed by many
different programmers. Any attempt to make such a beast "perfect"
would fail by the very nature of the process. With something this
large and this complex, the more you test, the more bugs you find. If
you wait to fix all the bugs, new ones will be found faster than you
can fix them, and no product will ever get released.
2. You can prove the presence of bugs if you find them, but you can
never prove their absence. Except for a trivial program of the "Hello
World" ilk, there is no such thing as bug-free software, and that's
more true of operating systems than any other kind of software.
What happens in practice is that every company release its products
knowing that there are remaining bugs. They make a business decision
that the remaining bugs are minor enough, occur infrequently enough,
or occur only in very unusual circumstances, and release the product.
They have no alternative, because to wait until all bugs are gone is
to wait forever.
I don't like that situation any more than the next person, but it's a
fact of life. There is no such thing as bug-free software.
