On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 18:12, Per Jessen wrote:
The most disruptive changes we did were just before SLE where openSUSE gained all the funny new features... So perhaps the .1 releases should better be .0s ;)
Yes, they should. In my experience, a .0 release is generally risky, whereas a .1 is a lot safer. (not just for openSUSE).
A .0 release number has almost zero to do with any real "risk" with openSUSE. openSUSE .0 releases have really just been an arbitrary number.. and that's what this whole discussion is all about. Look at the confusion regarding the next openSUSE release... is it 12.0 or 11.4? No one knows... why? Because the criteria for a release of openSUSE version number is... what.. just the next number... and the release goes up to the next major number based on... what? I don't know... I haven't seen any measurable pattern other than that openSUSE never goes to x.5, and rarely to x.4.... so we had 11.0 instead of 10.4. Why wasn't it 10.4? Why not 10.5? I have worked in software development for years... new products are never released in a 0.x version. The 1.x version is a "demo" version for the customers, and the first full commercial release to the customer is 2.x or higher. Why? Because of the perception around the 0.x and 1.x release numbers. People are conditioned to believe that the dot zero release is a bad one full of bugs. Is the released software any different though? Nope, but the customer perceives it to be "better' because it's not a 0.x or 1.x release number. I honestly believe that this exact same self fulfilling prophecy applies to openSUSE releases. People see 10.0 or 11.0 and think.. oh no, it's a dot zero release, it's going to be bad... but.. it's no worse than any other random release of openSUSE. openSUSE has never, to my knowledge, really honestly released a true (to the definition) dot zero release. We've had absolute train wrecks for releases that weren't dot zero releases (although, they probably should have been dot zeros considering the new concepts and software they introduced that made them all wobbly).... so anyone that thinks a dot zero release of openSUSE is "bad" purely on the dot zero number is just buying into the whole myth surrounding it. A release is a release... it could be good.. it could be bad. If we were to call the next release 11.4... and it had serious issues... would anyone be jumping up and down yelling it's a dot four release and it's crap (well some might.. but). But.. if we called it 12.0 and released the exact same builds... and had the exact same issues... people would be hollering it's a dot zero... see we told you so etc etc. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org