When does the beta phase end for new software?

Question

I am developing a python library, and I’m not sure when I should move the version status out of beta. I understand that, for example in game dev, alpha is testing to make sure maps can load and characters can move, and beta is once the game has a complete story from beginning to end. But where does full release version start? I honestly don’t know if I’ll be making any more major changes or not, though I like where it is at current.

Answer 1

The beta phase of software development typically ends when the software is:

Feature-complete

Stable

Thoroughly tested

Well-documented

Validated by users/beta testers

When you've achieved these milestones, you can consider your library ready for a full release.

Answer 2

A very insightful talk by Rich Hickey: Spec-ulation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk

The guy is the creator of the Clojure language, and the talk is about managing change in software. He talks about breaking changes, the fallacies of the software industry with semantic versioning. Highly recommended.

As a general rule, I think you should judge the readiness of your library, based on the stated goals and roadmap. If you think it's stable enough that major changes are no longer necessary, bump it to stable.
Some software is being kept in perpetual beta, but I think it's a bad message to those who would like to use your software, telling them that eventually it might break at any time with a future version.