In hardware and software development, a golden master is the reference model from which copies are mass-produced. An analogy is made to the production of certain types of physical media. In that process, a mold is cast in gold, from which subsequent copies are derived.

The golden master is usually the release to manufacturing (RTM) version, and therefore the first public/commercial version. It represents the development stage

Development stage

A software release life cycle refers to the phases of development and maturity for a piece of computer software—ranging from its initial development, to its eventual release, and updated versions of the released version to help improve software or fix bugs still present in the software.- Pre-alpha...

 of "RTM" (Release To Manufacturing). Reaching this stage is said to be "going gold", or "gone golden."

History

Apple Inc. has used the term in a document, first written in April 1988, describing its software versioning system.

The term is often confused with "gold master

Master recording

A multitrack recording master tape, disk or computer files on which productions are developed for later mixing, is known as the multi-track master, while the tape, disk or computer files holding a mix is called a mixed master.It is standard practice to make a copy of a master recording, known as...

" which refers to a physical recording entity such as that sent to a manufacturing plant. Apple Inc. used the term in a press release written in March 2001 to describe the sending of a physical gold master disc to manufacturing.