This paper presents a software release policy based on a two-person game of timing. Existing release policies depend solely on cost factors and ignore the element of competition between rival producers, whereas in our policy both of these factors are taken into consideration. Through a series of preliminary results, it is shown that an optimal release policy exists as a Nash equilibrium point in the space of mixed strategies. We also present numerical examples of this optimal policy applied to software reliability growth models which are based on the non-homogeneous Poisson process.
