You hear it in the games community as often as that, but I never understood where the phrase came from. Anyone knows?
My understanding, supported by the results of a few minutes on google is that the master CD from which others would be copied during the mass production of your product is made of gold (probably only a thin film of it, but gold none the less).
Thus, by ‘going gold’ you have produced a version of the product worthy of being mass produced and sold in stores. After the many months and years a modern computer game now takes to produce, I would imagine this is a big deal for the team.
Not sure about games, but in the music industry a recording has “gone gold” when it sells 500,000 copies.
I think another meaning of “gone gold” refers to the re-release of popular games, in a new “Gold” edition, which typically includes the latest (hopefully bug free) version of the game, and may include add-ons originally sold separately. Do a search at Amazon on “gold edition games” and you’ll see: Ghost Recon: Gold Edition, Dark Age of Camelot: Gold Edition, Age of Empires: Gold Edition, and so on.
I believe that while all 3 answers above are correct, counsel wolf has it right.
I don’t know if it’s still done (sriting to a gold CD) or is an old practise but the term ‘gone gold’ refers to the release date of something, normally associated with the software industry I imagine.
www.gonegold.wom for example will give you a list of dates for the current game releases.
Of course my .wom address was just for the Oz members on the board 
Sorry for the spam fest but…
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/092/092296p1.html
As others have noted, it referred to the game being “complete” and commited to a master copy from which all the other copies would be pressed. Now, however, it’s commonly used for ANY program which is ready for public distribution, regardless of whether or not a CD is actually made.
Nowadays you generally see the following stages in the software life cycle (I know this isn’t very consistent, but this is the most common you’ll see):
Alpha - first build of the program - usually characterized by being very, very buggy with most features incomplete or missing. Usually not released to the general public, but to a very select (and brave ) group of testers.
Beta - Most of the features are complete and (hopefully) most critical bugs are squashed. Some new features may creep in at this point. Usually released to a larger group of people to try to track down bugs that may not be seen by the Alpha group. Sometimes you will see “public beta” which usually indicates that anyone and his brother can download it and run it, with the understanding that there is no warranty or support, the software could possibly destroy a system (and the developer takes no responsibility if a system is screwed up by a beta…), and that any new bugs found should be reported to the developer. If you’ve REALLY got a pair of brass ones, you can even charge money for the Beta version (re: Windows 98 )!
Release Candidate (RC): Almost all bugs (hopefully) have been squashed. Usually features are frozen, and if no critical issues are discovered during the RC period, that build will become the “Gold” version. If bugs are discovered, another Release Candidate is put together and released (hence RC1, RC2, etc). This one can vary wildly in its distribution, just like during the Beta stage - released only to the beta group, released to the general public, only released in-house, etc.
Gold - The final RC usually is the version that goes “Gold” - the RC is put on a master CD and sent to the duplicators - for software that will only be transmitted electronically this can also refer to the build that is put out for actual sale.
Oh, and if you’re Microsoft, there are a couple of other stages:
Service Pack 1 - fixes the critical errors that weren’t fixed (but should have been) during the RC period, features that were promised at initial released but had to be cut to make the release date are put back in, and new features that were talked about, but never in an “official capacity” are introduced.
Service Pack 2 - Fixes all the new critical errors introduced by Service Pack 1, removes the still-buggy features that were added by Service Pack 1 and “improves” previously-working-just-fine features to the point where sysadmins become completely bald from the hair-pulling.
(repeat the last two steps ad nauseum until the next version comes out 3 or 4 years after it was initially promised)
critter42