On 29/12/2008, at 9:18 PM, Noah Slater wrote:
I understand the concepts about being able to break backwards
incompatibility
before the legendary 1.0 release of a free software project, but
categorically
denying there is nothing to consider is wildly misleading!
I think a 1.0 release is not especially significant to free software
projects compared to non-free projects.
Even with commercial software and internal releases there are issues
related to change management and consequent costs of compatibility
breaking, so I don't think there's nothing to consider, but
Christopher was commenting about 'substantial client code out there',
which to me sounds like an argument I believe is only significant for
'released' versions. Without some distinction between 'released' and
'no-guarantees-work-in-progress', you can't experiment with changes.
Surely 1.0 means something - I assert that there are very strong
expectations about backwards compatibility within major point
releases, and the pre/post-1.0 transition is very significant in that
respect.
Antony Blakey
-------------
CTO, Linkuistics Pty Ltd
Ph: 0438 840 787
Some defeats are instalments to victory.
-- Jacob Riis
