GNOME alone: FOSS desktop folk to start counting in whole numbers again
- Reference: 1600758193
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/22/gnome_naming_scheme/
- Source link:
A [1]post by Emmanuele Bassi, a GTK Core Developer at GNOME Foundation, explains that the project has reached version 3.38 and that “After nearly 10 years of 3.x releases, the minor version number is getting unwieldy.”
“It is also exceedingly clear that we’re not going to bump the major version because of technological changes in the core platform, like we did for GNOME 2 and 3, and then piling on a major UX change on top of that. Radical technological and design changes are too disruptive for maintainers, users, and developers; we have become pretty good at iterating design and technologies, to the point that the current GNOME platform, UI, and UX are fairly different from what was released with GNOME 3.0, while still following the same design tenets.”
Linus Torvalds decides world isn’t ready for Linux 5.0 [2]READ MORE
So for the sake of simplicity, now and into the future, the next version of GNOME will be version 40.0.
Why jump from 3.38 to 40.0?
Because, Bassi explained, “… the next version would be 3.40, and it’s a nice, round number.”
“The 3.38 release was the 40th release of GNOME, but this discussion came too late in the cycle to effectively switch, so we can say that, if you start counting at zero, the next cycle would be the 40th release of GNOME. By using 40 as the base, we acknowledge what came before, and we don’t introduce a large discontinuity in the number progression, which is somewhat the point of this change.”
So why not go with version 4.0? After all, Linus Torvalds has decide that Linux kernel editions can reach x.19 before tipping over to a full x.0 release.
Calling the next version of GNOME ‘4.0’ would have unfortunate/unintended implications about the platform
Bassi worries that a full .0 release sends the wrong message.
“With GTK 4.0 being released during the next development cycle, calling the next version of GNOME ‘4.0’ would have unfortunate/unintended implications about the platform, especially from an engagement and marketing perspective,” he said.
“We want to decouple GNOME from deep changes in the application development platform, so that GTK can be released more often, and provide “long term support” major versions, instead of delaying development cycles that inevitably end up into “rewrite the world” events. GNOME is not just a technological platform, but also a set of design guidelines and an ethos, and bumping the major version along with GTK does not reflect that.”
Full numbers it is from now on, then, starting with GNOME 40 in March 2021. The project will issue and Alpha, Beta and release candidate before issuing a new edition, rinsing, repeating and moving on to version 41.0. And beyond. ®
Get our [3]Tech Resources
[1] https://discourse.gnome.org/t/new-gnome-versioning-scheme/4235
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/04/linux_4_17_released/
[3] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Translation....
Chrome? A mere upstart newcomer, who would care about their numbering?
No, I'm assuming that they're following in the footstep of Solaris, who did that in 1998. Fiddling with version numbers was already a tradition for them.
Re: Translation....
Slackware jumped from 4.0 to 7.0 in '99 just to demonstrate how meaningless distro version numbers are :-)
Downvote...
"... start counting in whole numbers..."
... and there was me thinking that the headline referred to percentage market share...
(C'mon folks, let's see if I can break that downvote record!)
Re: Downvote...
Well you can kinda use whole numbers if you use scientific/E notation: e.g. 10E-3
Re: Downvote...
"(C'mon folks, let's see if I can break that downvote record!)"
Don't wake the giants! @amanfrommars1 and @bombasticbob have been getting decent upvotes and not many downvotes recently, so don't provoke them by trying to displace them
Re: Downvote...
Well, I certainly know what I prefer to believe if considering whether the change is due to their dumbing things down a tier or two for everyone or else more folk being enabled to understand so much more of what is happening all around them elsewhere in the deep webs and dark shadows of future shady virtual enterprise, and upping their game a level or three in order to be better able to engage.
Some would tell you the eternal optimist is both fated and destined to be constantly disappointed .... but that surely identifies the eternal pessimist who appears to have simply lost all hope of fundamental/radical/existential change being possible. That's a hellish space place for sure. You can keep it, for it is bound to rotten and rotting in such a pond of stagnation and petrification.
Re: Downvote...
You probably won't get too many downvotes for that here ... ElReg commentards tend to be a fairly realistic lot. (With exceptions. Of course.)
"especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
These people know things I don't. What exactly is the downside of 4.0 ? Who cares if it's 4.0 or 40.0 ?
I don't think the users do. The only thing they care about is it is the next version. Those faithful to Gnome will continue using it whatever the number is.
So what's the negative in going with 4.0 ? I'd really like someone to explain that to me.
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
The marketers are in charge, not the techies. It's as simple as that.
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
The marketers are in charge, not the techies. It's as simple as that. .... jake
Don't be betting any money you cannot afford to lose on that opinion being perfectly true or not entirely incorrect, jake. :-)
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
Its in the article, GTK 4.0 is about to be released, they both have Gnome in the name so distgiushing the two in a search engine (never mind stack overflow) will be tricky. "There's a bug in Gnome blah blah 4.0" will cause confusion.
It makes sense to me, also the entire premise of the article is that sub numbers get confusing, so they don't want a 4.1, or to confuse that Gnome 2, Gnome 3 are *really* different, but the difference between 4 and 5 is trivial.
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
What difference does it make? Search Engines don't work anymore anyway. (Obvious, really, as you rightly point out that search engines have difficulties with the difference between GTK 4.0 and Gnome 4.0 ... Shirley THAT should be a no-brainer!)
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
"sub numbers get confusing"
To whom?
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
"the entire premise of the article is that sub numbers get confusing"
And that's the problem. They aren't. A major release should indicate a change sufficient as to not be backwards compatible and minor numbers should reflect minor changes. We've lived with 3-part numbers - 3.8.2 and the like - for a long time. We've come to understand what the increments are likely to mean.
It's throwing all that away that is confusing. Will a change from 137 to 138 be equivalent to 4.11.2 to 4.11.3 or 4.11.2 to 5.0 in old money? Will it signal a change of underlying GTK version?
I think Jake's put his finger on it - marketing's in charge.
Re: "especially from an engagement and marketing perspective"
Numbers are arbitrary. I've seen open source projects which have been usable and have a version like from 0.03.
I think the main thing conveyed from going from 3.38 to 40 is that the desktop has become a more iterative experience, a continuously developing thing which isn't necessarily bound by maintaining backwards compatibility. That said, it's not like GNOME is going to say there is a new update available for it, instead you'll get whatever version is out when the distributions go out. So I doubt it means much in practice really.
The gnome developers killed their product with version 3/gnome shell anyway, so who cares.
Nigel Tufnel
"Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
Translation....
Because Chrome did it, why not us?