On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Bryen M Yunashko
From a marketing/press standpoint, there's definitely an implied "major/minor" with our current versioning standard.
I hadn't realized that this was so much the case, but on reflection it makes a lot of sense, particularly in light of your following comments
The same problem goes for press reviews. Unless they take the time to understand that 11.3 is a new version rather than an updated version, they seem less inclined to write about us.
We want each new release to be viewed objectively by
all parties, not with baggage. <snip>
It adds overhead for us to
dispel misperceptions and myths
This is valid. Word counts are increasingly short, and readers are
increasingly impatient. The version number is part of the distribution
name and does need to be clear and relevant.
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Jim Henderson
It's pretty rare for there to be a major change (such as the change in look from KDE 3.5 to 4.0 or from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 - both of which IMHO are major changes that immediately come to mind) within the product itself.
The evolutionary nature of the Linux platform itself does tend to raise the kinds of questions that have been raised (now repeatedly) about how to version the openSUSE product. That's one strong argument for not continuing the current scheme, because every release ends up with a discussion around "so what version will we be releasing next?".
That's also a big point in favour of using a YYYY-MM or YYYY-XX style convention rather than a sequential convention.
<snip>
This is one case where I think tradition probably is not a very strong argument - "we've always done it this way" isn't a good enough reason if it means we have this kind of discussion every release cycle.
Jim
Agreed, and I think now is a good time to establish clear naming and branding across the distribution. I hadn't been particularly keen on the year-numbering system until I'd read your comments. I still have a few reservations (mainly because of SEO) but otherwise, this approach does seem the least arbitrary while remaining relatively uncluttered. Thanks for your input; I know sometimes this kind of discussion is seen as superfluous ('lets just vote!') - but I value the opportunity to look at all angles of the issue and make a properly considered decision. cheers Helen -- IRC: helen_au helen.south@opensuse.org helensouth.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org