Is the party feature gonna be beta forever?

Gmail was in beta for five years.

Functionally, all that beta status means is that there's the word 'BETA' in the header after PARTY.

Practically, what it means is that Niantic can change it or remove it at will, which makes me a little nervous, because I really like it, but also not nervous, because it seems that almost everyone likes it and it's not a lot of trouble for them to maintain, so they will keep it to make players happy (and keep them spending money).

Personally I hope they let us have more parties - if there's more than one legendary available in raids, I don't have near enough room for a team for every raid combination, let alone for other raids I like (Tyranitar, Machamp, etc.) Tier 1 and 2 raids I can solo easily and build a party on the fly, but I get tired of tracking down the key six pokemon for Machamp when I don't have room to keep that party assembled because I have five (or more) other teams I need for legendary raids. Hope Niantic reads this and ups the number to 12.

It would also be nice to have a second wave as part of the team - first six go in, and when they are all fainted, the second wave is the default to go in. Many of the legendary pokemon raid bosses we raid against can easily take out six good attackers, especially when the raid boss is weather buffed, and having the second six ready to go for each individual case would be very helpful.