POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : What I'm learning about open source : Re: What I'm learning about open source Server Time
5 Sep 2024 15:21:17 EDT (-0400)
  Re: What I'm learning about open source  
From: Darren New
Date: 25 Aug 2009 11:28:58
Message: <4a94033a$1@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> When a project, no matter how well known, is still at 0.xxx after six years, 
>> it's probably because it really does actually still suck to the point where 
>> you don't want to try to use it in a professional setting.
> 
>   Would you trust a software which version number is 1.0? Or would you wait
> for at least something like 1.0.5?

It's not so much the version numbers. I used to think it was a problem with 
commitment or a problem with not having any marketing reason to declare 
"this is good enough to ship". I'm discovering that no, the 0.x stuff in 
FOSS sucks as much as the 0.X stuff in commercial software, pretty much.

Would I use 1.0?  Sure. I've used commercial stuff that had no version 
number at all because the company licensing it to us never intended it to 
leave the company. Not without some support, mind, which is where most of
the problems come in.  For lots of this stuff, there's no good place to
ask, or people have moved on to a version three after yours and want you
to rip out everything that works to support their new choice of build 
platform or whatever.

Funny conversation remembered from graduate days:
"Darren, do you want us to upgrade your workstation to SunOS 4.0?"
"Sure, why not?"
"Because it's the only workstation licensed to run the code you need."
"And?"
"And it's 4.0."
"Oh. You mean, do you want my to upgrade to 4.0.0!  No, leave it."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.


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