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New Terminology for GitHub Previews

As part of our commitment to improving your experience at GitHub, we’re simplifying the terminology we use to refer to products that are in testing and validation stages. Starting on October 18, 2024, you’ll start seeing the word “Preview” instead of “Alpha” or “Beta” to describe our features that are not yet generally available.

What’s Changing?

Our goal with this update is to create a more consistent, clear process that helps our customers understand the state of new features and how they fit into their development workflows.

  • As shown in the table below, we’re reducing the number of terms we’re using but keeping the same flexibility for giving early access and gathering customer feedback before a General Availability (GA) launch.
  • The key difference between “Private” and “Public” previews is whether the release is publicly announced.

What to Expect

These changes are now live in customer-facing documentation as of today.

Here’s an overview of the changes:

Previous Terminology New Terminology Details
Alpha Private Preview
  • Not publicly announced
  • Limited number of customers
Private Beta
Technical Preview Technical Preview
  • Used for experiments and research projects primarily from GitHub Next
  • Limited number of customers
Limited Public Beta Public Preview
  • Publicly announced on the GitHub Changelog and includes GitHub Docs
  • May be open to all, or limited to selected customers behind a waitlist
Public Beta
General Availability General Availability
Deprecation Closing Down
  • Signals that a product or service is being phased out
Sunset Retired
  • Marks the official end of a product or feature’s life
  • No longer available, supported, or maintained

Thanks for being part of the GitHub community! These updates are designed to provide clearer communication and a smoother experience as we roll out new features.

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As previously announced in August, starting today, you can no longer enable or disable GitHub security features from the organization-level security coverage view, which has been deprecated and replaced with code security configurations for managing these settings.

Learn more about code security configurations and send us your feedback.

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