On Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:48:46 +0000, Tim Rowe wrote: > 2008/12/7 walterbyrd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> IMO: breaking backward compatibility is a big deal, and should only be >> done when it is seriously needed. >> >> Also, IMO, most of, if not all, of the changes being made in 3.0 are >> debatable, at best. I can not think of anything that is being changed >> that was really a "show stopper" anyway. > > > But that's what a major release number does for you. Modula2 was quite a > break from Modula. Think of Python3.0 it as a new language, if you like, > that's inspired by Python2. You can stay with Python2 or you can adopt > the new language. That way you won't have to think of it in terms of > breaking any sort of backwards compatibility because there is no > backwards ;-) > > -- > Tim Rowe
Actually I noticed a tendency from open-source projects to have slow increment of version number, while proprietary projects usually have big version numbers. Linux 2.x: 1991 Python 3.x.x: 1991. Apache 2.0: 1995. OpenOffice.org 3.0: acquired by Sun at 1999. GIMP 2.x: 1995. Wine 1.x: 1993. Compare with Windows: NT 3.1-NT 6.x: 1993. Visual Studio 97, 6.0, .NET, .NET 2003, .NET 2005, 2008: 1997. Photoshop (11 versions to CS4): 1987. Microsoft Office 3, 4, 95, 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007: 1990. Flash MX, 9, CS 1-4. iTunes 8: 2001. RealPlayer 4-11: 1995. Macintosh 1.0-9: 1984-2001, X.5: 2001. Winzip 12.0: early 1990s. Interestingly, many linux _distro_ also inhibit this quick version number change. Fedora 10, Ubuntu is 2 years old, version 8 (they start from version 6 not 1). Probably having higher version numbers sells better and looks more attractive (since it'd make it seem like the software is not a new product), having quick changing version number also makes users doesn't mind compatibility breaks. Also a pattern is that prop software often change how they version their product, (extreme example: visual studio: from using years, version number, .NET, .NET + Year, back to year). Changing how you version your product would make it "looks" like it's a fresh new product (boring ol' photoshop 9 looks fresh with the new CS- tag). By having quick changing version number and often changing how product is versioned, vendors could also say: "its two/three major version away, we don't support that feature anymore since a veeery long time". -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list