An untested beta version of NetBeans 6.5 is available for download here at
http://bits.netbeans.org/download/6.5/beta_hard_to_guess_dir/
This is NOT the official beta. Interesting directory name, that and with a purpose as well 
August 12, 2008: The link is no more available. Hence, this post is rendered somewhat null, but I will keep it on for some reason
From where did you get this link? I can't see it anywhere on NB.org, except the link you provided!
Posted by Varun on August 11, 2008 at 05:31 PM IST #
Chance discovery :-)
Posted by Amit on August 11, 2008 at 05:33 PM IST #
I'd like to say that it is not OFFICIAL BETA, yet. There is a reason for the "hard to guess" part of the link. As you probably expect we need to build the Beta build, test it, approve it etc. It takes time but the beta candidates are deployed to the server to be ready for easy publishing.
Congratulation to your guess BUT PLEASE update the blog post. NB 6.5 Beta is not OUT YET. It might be published soon but not YET.
thank you for understanding
Lukas Hasik
NetBeans Platform & Core QA team lead
http://blogs.sun.com/lukas
http://blogs.sun.com/coreqa
Posted by Lukas on August 11, 2008 at 05:55 PM IST #
Lukas,
I have modified my post! Hope it did not cause any grief :-)
Posted by Amit on August 11, 2008 at 06:03 PM IST #
Grief? Not at all. However I'm always surprised that there are people out there without a professional etiquette. The most significant problem here is that you are intern. I mean somebody from SUN. Therefore your access to informations is much better than in case of an ordinary user.
If I could give you an advice then I'd say don't publish links to releases that are not official. And with an obscure words in the link. IF the link would be official and they would like to publish it then they would do it on an official pages of the project, wouldn't they?
Anyway, thank you for updating the post. It was definitely mistake that the link appeared. Your post allowed us to fix it (it is gone now ;) )
Posted by Lukas on August 11, 2008 at 09:13 PM IST #
Thanks, Lukas!
Posted by Varun on August 11, 2008 at 09:21 PM IST #
@Lukas
I am NOT an intern. I am an employee of Sun India. As far as professional etiquette is concerned, I am sure I *did not* divulge any such *confidential* information which will attract any losses in any form for Sun or the NetBeans project.
I just bumped upon the link and did *not* know that I needed to _verify_ it from someone that it was an official release. Also, I thought that since the release was coming soon, may be the main project pages are going to be updated soon, as well!
Posted by Amit on August 12, 2008 at 08:59 AM IST #
@Amit: I agree completely with Lukas. It's common sense. NetBeans is a product, not just another open source part time project. There are dedicated teams which manage the lifecycle of NetBeans. Such journalistic activism has happened earlier too (earlier too a Sun India guy had done it). It does not do any good to NetBeans image when people download and use untested beta versions. Worse, it creates a headache for QA and Dev when spurious bug reports come in. That's a definite loss IMO. And remember, you are a SUN employee. What you say on the blog will be taken as official. It's a double edged sword.
@Lukas: Don't get me wrong, but NetBeans is pretty popular and has a kind of cult following. So people fall head over heels for things like this. And this is the second time this is happening (in my experience). Isn't it time things were a little bit tighter on not making testable links public?
Posted by Rohan Ranade on August 12, 2008 at 09:40 AM IST #
@Rohan,
If those were test links, I should have found it somewhere.
Anyways, blame the _scoop_ finder in me, I thought I would be the first one to report NetBeans 6.5 Beta release once I had stumbled upon those links.
Posted by Amit on August 12, 2008 at 09:49 AM IST #
Well, if the links aren't officially published, they are not official, isn't it? When people work on NetBeans in their day job, we should let them announce it :)
Posted by Rohan Ranade on August 12, 2008 at 10:46 AM IST #
Yes. True.
Not to be repeated :-)
Posted by Amit on August 12, 2008 at 10:49 AM IST #
It's official now :)
Posted by Angad Singh on August 13, 2008 at 11:36 PM IST #
2Amit: I agree with Rohan that as SUN employee you should think twice before you announce a product. I can understand that people are looking for the bits and they want to be the first who spread the word about new version. However you have to think about consequences...
2Rohan: yes, it's human factor what failed second time. Again they forgot to set up the correct rights to the folder :( I'll push on the responsible team to fix it for next times.
Posted by Lukas on August 14, 2008 at 03:10 PM IST #
@Lukas, I understand. I am still in the transition period from a NetBeans community guy to a Sun guy. Hope I hop the steps soon.
Posted by Amit on August 14, 2008 at 03:18 PM IST #
I tested Netbeans 6.5 Beta, unfortunately, I discovered too many bugs that I couldn`t deploy any BPEL/Composite project.
Posted by Alexandre on August 15, 2008 at 07:43 PM IST #
@Alexandre
That is unfortunate. Please file bug reports. I also hope you are trying the bits available at http://dlc.sun.com.edgesuite.net/netbeans/6.5/beta/ ?
Thanks,
Amit
Posted by Amit on August 16, 2008 at 03:00 PM IST #