> On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 08:55:59PM -0700,
david@lang.hm wrote:
>> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>>
>>>> Does it have to be even numbers only?
>>> No. But the even/odd thing is still so fresh in peoples memory (despite us
>>> not having used it for years), and I think some projects aped us on it, so
>>> if I didn't change the numbering setup, but just wanted to reset the minor
>>> number, I'd probably jump from 2.6 to 2.8 just for historical reasons.
>>>
>>> But I could also see the second number as being the "year", and 2008 would
>>> get 2.8, and then next year I'd make the first release of 2009 be 2.9.1
>>> (and probably avoid the ".0" just because it again has the connotations of
>>> a "big new untested release", which is not true in a date-based numbering
>>> scheme). And then 2010 would be 3.0.1 etc..
>> Ok, I'll jump in.
>>
>> I don't have strong feelings either, but I do have comments
>>
>> 1. for the historical reasons you allude to above going to a completely
>> different numbering system would be a nice thing
>>
>> 2. I do like involving the year, but I think 2008/2009/2010 are much
>> clearer then 2.8/2.9/3.0 let people shorten it verbally, but still realize
>> that it's a full year being referred to.
>>
>> 3. avoid using the month of the release (which ubuntu does), first you
>> aren't going to predict the month of relese ahead of time (so what will
>> the -rc's be called, the year is fairly clear and it's not _that_ bad if
>> 2008.4 happens to come out in Jan 2009). also too many people don't
>> understand that 8.10 is between 8.9 and 8.11, not between 8.0 and 8.2
>
> That's probably why openbsd jumps from 3.9 to 4.0. I like such a numbering
> too. It compacts 3 numbers into 2 (like we had before) but without any
> major/minor notion. You just bump each new version by 0.1 at a somewhat
> regular rate. Having the year and a sub-version is fine too, but I think
> it adds unnecessary digits. Or maybe jump to 8.X for 2008, then 9.X in
> 2009 and 10.X in 2010 ? That way, we have both the date and the simplicity.
> And it's not like we really care about version 1000 in year 3000.
