I agree with Katie here. I think it's important we have *some* name beyond milestone numbering like 0.7m5 to describe these key points in the product life-cycle.

I am ok with using "Dogfood" and "Preview". We have been using the "Dogfood" term for a while now internally although for 0.6 we described the release as our "Experimentally Usable" Calendar. Pieter was never crazy about describing it as "Dogfood" externally. Also, just because we are using the term "Alpha" for our release milestone numbering, it doesn't imply that at a product perspective, all features are in the "Alpha" phase. For example, the dashboard for Alpha4 is actually only "Plausible" since there are a couple of key features that prevent it from earning the "Dogfood" label.

Sheila

On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:06 PM, Katie Capps Parlante wrote:

I think it is important to have names for two key points in the lifecycle of the project:

- Getting people inside of OSAF to use the product
- Getting people outside of OSAF to use the product

These phases are important for setting goals, lining up the roadmap, and making tough choices to hit the goals. I don't think of these as external "marketing" terms -- to be honest I am at the moment way more concerned with us as a team having the same shared focus and goals.

It is not important to me that the terms be embedded in the milestone numbering. It is important to me that we use these terms consistently when triaging bugs, making decisions about features, etc.

I hear from Ted and Phillip that "Alpha" and "Beta" are confusing terms for these concepts. Phillip has suggested a few constructive alternatives for "Beta".

A proposal, which I admint I'm not super happy with:

- "Dogfood" (used inside OSAF)
- "Preview" (used outside OSAF)

For Chandler desktop, this would mean that 0.7 is the "preview" release that we are shooting for. Similarly, Cosmo features would need to hit "dogfood" and then "preview" stages, and releases would be noted and discussed accordingly. Perhaps both Cosmo and Chandler could use the "m" notation for milestones between releases?

Alternatives? Constructive proposals?

Cheers,
Katie

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
At 05:07 PM 8/29/2006 -0700, Ted Leung wrote:
On Aug 29, 2006, at 4:49 PM, Katie Capps Parlante wrote:

Hmmm. Ok, so Ted has been making this same argument.

The term is less important to me than the concept. Of the terms you
suggested Phillip, "Preview" sounds most appealing.

Thoughts?

If we have to have a label, then I would be fine with Preview, but
I'm not convinced that we need to attach the label directly to the
release.   We can talk about a Preview release in announcements and
blog posts, but that's different from having artifacts labeled
something like  Chandler_iosx_0.7Preview.dmg.
Right, I should've been more explicit that this is what I meant. "Preview" and the like would be *marketing* labels, not technical ones. The version number used on development artifacts should be just plain old "0.7" for the final release of 0.7.
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