I guess it's beta in that Frontier are acknowledging it requires large scale testing and that there will likely be some tweaking to numbers, etc during and/or at the end of the "beta" phase.So, a test in the live servers, that anyone can take part in, with permanent results.
Doesn't sound like a beta to me. A beta to me is a testing phase on a separate server either with a select group (a closed beta) or anyone who wants to (an open beta). Doing it live (yes, I am referencing the meme), sounds more like a soft rollout.
I think it's absolutely the right thing to make it so that colonisation efforts during the beta phase don't get wiped. I speculated on Lave Radio about how perhaps PowerPlay 2.0 could have perhaps done with a beta test (although in fact I feel like they managed to resolve a lot of the issues there pretty quickly). The problem I saw with it tho' is that, by its very nature, testing of something like PowerPlay (or Colonisation) requires people to properly invest time in doing it and nobody (aside from perhaps a very dedicated few) would do that if they thought their efforts were going to be wiped or lost at the end.