4 ms·

>Imagine if gun vendors did public betas where random police officers just get a beta testing gun. This is a thing. They give marketing samples to organizatio

>Imagine if gun vendors did public betas where random police officers just get a beta testing gun. This is a thing. They give marketing samples to organizations they want to sell to on a "try 'em out and let us know if you want to buy more" basis.

b112 5y ago
Marketing samples are not public betas. They are marketing samples of tested product.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  If your complaint is that a very conservative manufacturing industry doesn't have 1:1 analogues with software development then I guess it's valid. Giving organizations stuff you haven't 100% nailed down yet expecting them to come back with stuff they want changed in order to buy is pretty par for the course in the firearms industry. That's as close to a public beta as you're gonna get.
  - everforward 5y ago
    The big difference is that marketing firearms are still safe, or as safe as firearms tend to get. It's a fully functional firearm; they want feedback on whether the ergonomics are good, whether the weight is good, how it handles recoil, etc. It would be more akin to handing out prototype weapons to police departments, which doesn't happen specifically because they might fire themselves or blow up or fail in some annoying but not spectacular way like failing to feed new rounds.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      The key mechanical features always "work" but little stuff like "gun fails to cycle 500% more often with the particular spec of ammo a particular force uses". A rifle spec'd out for sale to Cambodia probably is going to have a lot of teething issues if you try and sell it to the Swedes unchanged. Are these things "safe"? IDK. But no force is going to put in an order for tens of thousands of guns unless correctable issues like those are proven fixed. Infantry arms are a battle of margins. Everything "works" but a marginally more finicky gun to use is going to mean the people using it are marginally less effective which extrapolates pretty directly to "safety". At the end of the day the analogy isn't great and we're building a castle in a swamp here.

b112 5y ago

Marketing samples are not public betas. They are marketing samples of tested product.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
If your complaint is that a very conservative manufacturing industry doesn't have 1:1 analogues with software development then I guess it's valid. Giving organizations stuff you haven't 100% nailed down yet expecting them to come back with stuff they want changed in order to buy is pretty par for the course in the firearms industry. That's as close to a public beta as you're gonna get.
- everforward 5y ago
  The big difference is that marketing firearms are still safe, or as safe as firearms tend to get. It's a fully functional firearm; they want feedback on whether the ergonomics are good, whether the weight is good, how it handles recoil, etc. It would be more akin to handing out prototype weapons to police departments, which doesn't happen specifically because they might fire themselves or blow up or fail in some annoying but not spectacular way like failing to feed new rounds.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    The key mechanical features always "work" but little stuff like "gun fails to cycle 500% more often with the particular spec of ammo a particular force uses". A rifle spec'd out for sale to Cambodia probably is going to have a lot of teething issues if you try and sell it to the Swedes unchanged. Are these things "safe"? IDK. But no force is going to put in an order for tens of thousands of guns unless correctable issues like those are proven fixed. Infantry arms are a battle of margins. Everything "works" but a marginally more finicky gun to use is going to mean the people using it are marginally less effective which extrapolates pretty directly to "safety". At the end of the day the analogy isn't great and we're building a castle in a swamp here.