[Koha-devel] Version numbering, starting a discussion

[MJ Ray]

Paul Poulain <paul.poulain at biblibre.com>
> === DB update numbering === [...]
> What do you think of this idea ? Why should we keep the previous
> numbering scheme ? Any other suggestion ?

It doesn't really matter, so go with whatever's easiest to manage,
but if you go back to plain numbers, I suggest starting from 4 so
that it is still bigger than 3.7.whatever in one sense.

> === Koha version numbering === [...]
> This question arise because some of our libraries have problem
> understanding what will be the next version number. It will be 3.8. And
> the next one ? 3.10 or 4.0, depending on Solr or any other major change
> being applied. And maybe, in april, Solr will be pushed, in this case it
> would be called 4.0 (I don't think it will, but it's just for the example)
> That's quite unclear for external people.

All versioning numbers are hard for some people to understand.
At least the current one has the advantage that Linux uses a similar
one so there are already some education materials out there.

> That's why I was wondering : why not use another, totally new numbering
> schema.

Because they're all less well-understood than our current one.
You wouldn't believe the confusion the YY.MM Ubuntu-ish pattern
seems to cause in new users.

> There's also another interest with this idea: if we change completly our
> numbering, we would not seem to be "late" against another software that
> is currently numbered 4.8 (i've been in Greece recently, for a talk in
> academic libraries. I saw that there is a big confusion here, and
> changing the numbering would also help I think).

Screw them.  If that's the only reason, let's skip to 5.8 for the
next release, or append ".not-a-LibLime-fake" to ours.  But do we
want to let them interfere with the real project in yet another way?

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and LMS developer, statistician.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha