eating one's own dog food. The practice of running Beta—or test—software throughout the company that created it for everyday purposes.

Wikipedia offers a charming story about the origins: “The idea originated in television commercials for Alpo brand dog food; actor Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it's so good that he feeds it to his own dogs. In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled ‘Eating our own Dogfood,’ which challenged him to increase internal usage of the product...” The book Inside Out: Microsoft—In Our Own Words is given as the source, though no page number is indicated. The article had been nominated to be checked for its neutrality.