Bakes on Mesh was in beta on the Second Life test servers for 18 months. There are many now that are saying Bakes on Mesh (BoM)  is NOW in beta.

That is simply an ignorant point of view.

Having tested software professionally for many years I feel this might be of some use.

There is a software quality assurance life cycle of development. SDLC (software development life cycle) that goes loosely along the lines of the following:

1. Some one has a great idea, or not so great as the case may be.
2. The idea is put forth to the group of developers and those in charge of development, often in a “SCRUM” meeting, though it can be presented in whatever method the Dev team prefers.
3. IF the idea is approved then plans and resources are devoted to the idea.
4. Code is created and tested “in house” or by other means.  Functional specifications of what the software should be able to do, and how it does what it does are an integral part of the early phase of development.
5. For the piece of software to pass Alpha testing, certain things have to occur during the process, all KNOWN severity one (read crashes your system at the binary level of the core code) have to be resolved before a software product can proceed to the Beta phase.
6. During the beta phase of development the product is often released to a much wider audience to help find issues to be resolved by the development team. Once all of the severity 1, severity 2 and severity 3 issues are BELIEVED to be resolved…
7. Release candidates are created, Often times several release candidates are reviewed before one stands out as the clear choice for release.
8. The product is ready for release and hopefully as issue free as possible. Time, resources and funds play a factor in this process.   Microsoft did not follow their own best practices policies and procedures for Windows Vista in this regard.

9. Final QA approval of the selected candidate is given and the product goes to release.

Currently Second Life servers have Bakes on Mesh server side code in the production environment. (RELEASED CODE) The Second Life Viewer supports Bakes on Mesh as well. (RELEASED CODE) There are other Second Life approved 3rd party viewers that also support Bakes on Mesh. What was once imprudence is now renamed Kokua and has Bakes on Mesh support.  Cool Viewer has Bakes on Mesh support. (Yep you got it, MORE RELEASED CODE)   Firestorm is currently in the process of testing release candidates.  Bakes on Mesh is not in any form or fashion in beta at any level at this juncture.  With a bit of luck and magic it will be released for everyone to enjoy SOON!