Mostly when a application or project reaches the "gold" stage it is off to the production time to burn copies of the software.
Normal phase of developement is
Alpha : works on your desk and maybe one others, those involved in testing are aware of fixes yet to be made and work to make it stable enough to reach the next stage
Beta : now the bugs are gone form your inner circle of testing, its time to find out if real people can use it, here you hunt down user bugs and make minor improvements based upon feedback
Release Candidate : Now that beta is over and the beta testers have signed off on it, you prepare for the end of your road with an RC build. The idea here is does it all still work, clean installations are a must during this phase to weed out any last minute bugs.
Gold : All "major" issues with the code or application are done, it is then handed to the production staff or posted as the final product.
Even though it may reach "Gold" work is never finished as bugs are always going to happen, course that is why you have patches, revision updates and new versions, and the cycle of software starts over again.
