There are several different definitions. One definition I like is that alpha testing is when you know there are still missing features, while beta testing is when the planned features exist and you're just trying to make sure that they all work properly -- in which case you could very easily have public alpha testing.
We have done lot of testing on our application using some external users as well and fixed close to 2k bugs to make it more stable. As you are suggesting, we are planning public Alpha.
How much code do you have? I've been writing code for my own startup for about 20 months, and after 25k lines of code I'd say I've fixed maybe 50 bugs in total.
There is lot of code.
Onista is amalgam of eBay, Priceline, LendingTree, Alibaba and LinkedIn. When I say that, what I'm trying to say is that site has lots and lots of features. We have done testing using different data set and lots of scenarios to find bugs.
We also redesigned lot of features.
It did take us to fix close to 2k bugs to get to stable state.
To find those more 1k bugs to fix I would need to open it to some users. We are testing it almost everyday and now are unable to uncover more bugs.
I mean bugs will always be there. Windows XP has lot of bugs.
As I am advised by others, at one point if you feel codes is stable enough, you need to open it to get more feedback.
