[discussion] Expiration of subscription license.

[Robert Brenstein]

>on 6/22/03 2:06, Robert Brenstein at rjb at rz.uni-potsdam.de wrote:
>
>>  Ruslan, comparing Valentina to operating systems is wrong. It seems
>>  that you do not understand fully what I am saying. You seem to think
>>  I am asking to keep updating old versions for ever. I gave you a
>>  specific example of what I meant:
>>
>>>>  It means that if I am using version 2.1 and you are now at 2.2b4
>>>>  and a bug affecting 2.1 is found, you release a bug fix for 2.1
>>>>  besides fixing it for 2.2b5. This way, if I want to participate in
>>>>  beta testing, I can get the new beta, but if I don't or my license
>>>>  expired, I simply get the bug fix.
>>
>  > I should have added that once 2.2 is released, 2.1 is frozen -- no
>>  more bug fixes. You start working on 2.3 and now 2.2 is subject to
>>  bug fixes in parallel to development of 2.3.
>
>Robet,
>
>But what the number will get FIXED 2.1 ?
>
>
>I have understand what you want.
>This is why we will work in next way in future.
>
>-- we ship 2.0.
>     then we ship few 2.1,.2.2, FIX releases.
>
>-- during that we develop 3.0
>

Sounds you are talking about switching to CodeWarrior-like versioning 
where each feature release gets a new big number and the decimals 
design a fix release. Personally, I do not like it. I believe some 
marketing guy thought that advancing main number faster looks better. 
I doubt and they had already to wrap the numbering (after CW11 they 
went to CWP1 then later dropped "P") creating a bit confusion in the 
process.

At the same time, your current numbering is incrementing too slow -- 
going from 1.9.7 to 1.9.8 adds new features not bug fixes only.

Why not adopt the middle ground and the scheme most commonly used by 
various software vendors? I mean to have 2.0, 2.1, 2.5 etc as 
technology releases whereas 2.0.1, 2.1.3, 2.5.1 as bug fix releases 
for those (numbers shown are just examples of form).

Robert