I can't speak for Galen but I inferred he was using it in the context of a increasing sequence (rather than say decreasing which would make no sense here) and monotonically means preserving the order for the members of a set of values. I.e., it keeps order for the increasing versioning numbers in a logical ways by the set rules rather than being random or arbitrary. There are a few more points for the calculus crowd in there but I was an English major so I don't know nuthing about that. :)
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Lori Bowen Ayre <[email protected]>wrote: > For those of us not up-to-date in our Order Theory studies, would Galen > care to explain what monotonically refers to in this discussion. > > Intrigued in Petaluma > > > On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Rogan Hamby <[email protected]>wrote: > >> I'm not sure I agree that version numbers aren't important to marketing >> Evergreen. Non-techie administrators have been trained to see large >> numbers before the dot meaning that there should be a lot of major features >> and that small numbers after it means that those features are mature and >> bug tested and that if they go to a new major dot release that they should >> be prepared to do a lot of training. I am continually marketing Evergreen >> upgrades to my existing Evergreen directors and would like to get them on a >> twice a year upgrade schedule with the new releases. So long as they are >> .x upgrades I think I can convince them of that. X.x releases where it's >> moving to 3.0 or 4.0 I know will invoke major concerns for the training and >> preparation time. This is a short hand used by people who don't understand >> the release notes sometimes to get an indication of how much effort their >> front line staff will have in adapting to it. >> >> If we move to a new versioning scheme I just want it to have enough of an >> advantage that it will be worth re-educating people who can't follow the >> discussion that's on this list. >> >> But I do want to give a +1 to Galen on general principle of using the >> work "monotonically" as I will anyone who uses a term from order theory. >> >> >> On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Galen Charlton <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> Hi, >>> >>> On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:07 AM, Bill Erickson <[email protected]>wrote: >>> >>>> If we decide to change, I would also vote for the Ubuntu-style naming >>>> scheme Thomas describes. (IIRC, Jason S. was also a proponent of this >>>> scheme). >>> >>> >>> All that I ask of a version number that it increase monotonically, not >>> be unreasonably long, and that if there are any semantics attached to the >>> version numbering scheme that set expectations for ease of upgrades [1], >>> that they be adhered to. >>> >>> I have no objection to switching to an Ubuntu-style scheme (so if we're >>> voting, consider this a 0), though I would also point out that doing so >>> means that we would lose the ability to increment the version number >>> significantly to signal a truly major new release. For example, without >>> reading the release notes, there would be nothing to indicate whether (say) >>> Evergreen 13.10 adds just a few nice features over 13.04 or if it adds two >>> new major functional modules. >>> >>> That said, I don't think that version numbers are of that much >>> consequence in marketing Evergreen -- the advent of major new >>> features (serials! acquisitions! robotic book returners!) matters rather >>> more to library staff who are anticipating an upgrade. >>> >>> [1] For example, the PostgreSQL project's policy at >>> http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/ specifies that minor >>> release upgrades will never require a dump/restore of the database. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Galen >>> -- >>> >>> Galen Charlton >>> Manager of Implementation >>> Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts >>> email: [email protected] >>> direct: +1 770-709-5581 >>> cell: +1 404-984-4366 >>> skype: gmcharlt >>> web: http://www.esilibrary.com/ >>> Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org & >>> http://evergreen-ils.org >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> ---------------------------- >> Rogan Hamby >> Headquarters Manager, York County Library System >> >> "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to >> suit me." >> -- C.S. Lewis <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis> >> > > -- ---------------------------- Rogan Hamby Headquarters Manager, York County Library System "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -- C.S. Lewis <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis>
