On May 24, 2004, at 11:04 AM, Kirk Haines wrote:
> One thing that I'm trying to figure out right now, though, is when to 
> make a
> jump from 0.y.z to 1.0.0.  When is a piece of software stable enough 
> to no
> longer be a 0.y.z version?

I would say it's not a stability issue, it's a (stable) feature issue.

0.9 is "I haven't yet added all the features I think should exist for 
the initial 'done' release."

1.0 is "Sure, there are more features that would be nice to add, but 
all the core features are in there, and I have 1.1 and 1.2 for those, 
and 2.0 for the really big rewrites or major changes."

This determination (which I'm sure is not my own) is why all the 0.x 
versions baffle me...products that have been (or certainly appear to 
have been) feature-complete for months (or years) shouldn't be 0.x. If 
it's taking forever to reach 1.0, perhaps the feature list needs to be 
re-examined. 1.0 isn't the penultimate world-dominating final release, 
it's the initial major release. Just because you thought of a neat 
feature during initial development doesn't mean that it needs to be 
implemented for 1.0.


--
"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only 
think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the 
solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- R. Buckminster Fuller