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Re: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] The Art of Project Release Naming

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:04 AM, John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I can across an anecdote recently that illustrated the value of release version numbers. I was shopping for a cordless phone to replace my old 5.8 Ghz phone.  When I last bought a phone, the choice was between DECT 2.4 GHz and DECT 5.8 GHz, with the larger number generally being a better technology. This time around, there was a new option: DECT 6.0. After doing some research, I discovered that this new phone should actually be DECT 1.9 GHz, since that is the spectrum it operates on. However, the marketing guys thought that a smaller number would indicate an inferior product to customers, so they pulled the "6.0" number out of thin air. As a customer I confess I did immediately assume the higher number was the better technology. Although the conventions are slightly different, I think this is a perfect example of why a release "marketing number" can and sometimes should differ from an "engineering number". It also illustrates the value of a number over simple names (if they were DECT "zebra" and DECT "camel", a customer standing in the store wouldn't know which one to pick). All this to say that I think it would be valuable for us to describe some recommendations on release naming for projects. Some consistency across projects would be great.

I think the Planning Council will name Eclipse releases monotonically now. What I mean by this is that this year it was Galileo, next year it will be Helios and the following year it will be something that starts with an "I" 

There's order implied there so it's easy to talk about things and understand when they came out.

Cheers, 

--
Chris Aniszczyk | EclipseSource Austin | +1 860 839 2465
http://twitter.com/eclipsesource | http://twitter.com/caniszczyk

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