[Python-Dev] Re: Stability and change (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Mon, 08 Apr 2002 12:30:10 -0400

That tide's only the linux users, and the linux users who care what kernel they're running. I'm an ex-sysadmin, pretty solid unix geek, and I nowadays run whatever my distro comes with - as long as it supports what I want to do, I don't care. I don't think that saying "it's what linux does" is enough to carry the day by itself. I suspect that if you want to go with the flow, we should follow the approach that Microsoft uses to mark their unstable releases. (And I'm not going to use any one of the many, many cheap shots about unstable MS releases that I have in my head here - feel free to substitute your own. :)

Cheap shots aside, another possibility would be to simply start every minor (2.x) release off as unstable, releasing frequent experimental micro (2.x.y) releases as a substitute for alpha/beta releases, and then at some point declare it stable. At that point, the previous stable release (2.(x-1)) becomes deprecated and largely unmaintained (except for backporting some killer bugs -- the mode we seem to be in for 2.1.3 already), 2.x starts issueing micro releases that mostly fix bugs or add very non-controversial features, and 2.(x+1) is started for new development.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)