Subject: Re: Topic: Versioning scheme and 1.0
From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed May 02 2001 - 22:25:40 CDT
On Wed, 2 May 2001, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> Hi Jesper,
>
> >I just wanted to have an "official" poll on my suggestion for the
> >alternative versioning scheme. Go read my posting on that:
> >http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/April/1264.html
> >
> >But substitute the next version with 2 instead of 42 as in the mail.
> >
> >I really think it'll make a moot point of the current discussions of
> >what features are critical for a 1.0 release - and in particular, help
> >our users to think of AbiWord as something that evolves one step at a
> >time, not something that has to be judged and tried on on major
> >revision releases.
>
> Well, I'm just not sure what our users will think of this. We might have the
> unwanted effect of confusing them, which would be bad.
>
> But in general, I'm in favor of this. Except that I'd like the next release
> to be "15" instead of "2". 2 seems too larval. My perception of Abi is that
> it "came of age" in the 0.7 series and has really blossomed very recently
> (but by no means is it perfect or finished, only better). So if this
> versioning scheme passes, I'd like it to start at what what I consider to be
> a significant milestone.
>
I'm not in favour of 0.15 ala gnumeric. The reason? It makes it hard to
break the application which is neccessary sometimes. While 1.0 is an
important milestone, I don't think it will be the death of the project of
we release a really stable 1.0 with no table support.
I think we will want to have a long time to get a redeisgned abi 1.2 with
tables in place.
I also think Abi can do lots and lots of things that Word Pad can't. We
won't take over the desktop market with 1.0. We will make a useful product
that ordinary folks (especially those with Palm Pilots and Psions) can
use.
There is a natural break in the evolution of the Abi project coming
up. When we do tables it will happen. Why not make a stable release series
with nothing but bug fixes and do major surgury to abi in the 1.1 series.
rms argues that no one will be interested in 1.0. That is clearly not
true. People are interested already! He also argues that we will lose
respect and interest for ever more by releasing 1.0 w/o tables. I also
disagree.
1.0 won't take over the world but it will gain us more users. More users
== GOOD!
On the other hand Kword has lost repect by releasing a product that
proports to do tables but is really fundamentally flawed.
Martin
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