[Flightgear-devel] Informal version number poll

[Curtis O. <cur...@gm...>]

How about a quick, friendly, positive, informal thread here to do a poll on
what what folks are thinking for the next version number.

I don't intend to slant the discussion, but here is what I'm thinking.

0.9.11 is the next in the logical sequence.  But I'd like to avoid possible
unintended connections that end users might interpret from such a version
number.  This has nothing to do with terrorism, they don't care what version
numbers we use or don't use.  There is no "fear" involved in wanting to
avoid using this number.  Try "respect".  It might have something to do with
showing respect to those that were affected by 9/11 and those many heros
that gave up their lives without hesitation to try to save the lives of
others.  I don't fault people who live outside of the USA or who have never
been to New York or were never near ground zero for not "getting it",
there's an awful lot of stuff outside my little sphere of vision that I will
never understand.  But give me a break, what's the problem with yielding a
small amount of leeway and respect to those that were affected by 9/11 or
had connections there?

We could skip over to 0.9.12, but then we are staring in the face of
0.9.13and are we going to run into problems if we pick a version # 13?
 I wore
number 13 in my soccer (err futbol) game the other evening and missed all my
shots.  I wore a different number last night and scored two goals.  These
facts cannot be ignored!

We could go with 0.10.0, but then all the odd/even version number proponents
are going to come out of the woodwork, and that is going to mire in it's own
set of politics.

We could go with v1.0 ... we've been at this 10 years, and averaging
0.1versions a year isn't so bad.  This is my preference.  FlightGear
is
developing at a rapid rate, but if we stick with 0.9.12, 0.9.13, 0.9.14 it
seems like we are bumping along with very minor increments every few (or
many) months.

Of course this all boils down to marketing.  Who cares what the actual
numbers are really, as long as they increment in a sensible way.  But what
image do we want to project to the world?

Are we a bunch of old cranky developers (it looks that way sometimes!) :-)
inching along at a snails pace, or are we a dynamic exciting group with fast
paced development continually adding new and exciting features and
aircraft?  We've been at this 10 years, have we really only managed a
0.9.xrelease in all that time?  Again, not that version number really
mean
anything, other than to project our image to the world.

I say it's "go time". :-)

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/
Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d