Hi All!
Occasionally, in various discussions, waiting for the next major release
is described as "maybe another 10 years", but I think that's a very
pessimistic prediction. It's more reasonable to expect it in half that
time, around 2020, and that is what we should base our decisions on.
The 10 year figure for gap between major releases comes from a single
data point - the fact that 5.0 came out in 2004, and 7.0 will succeed it
in 2015.
This leads to a worst case scenario, with annual releases, of 7.10 in
2025, and 8.0 in 2026. If you count releases, not years, the current
process already shrinks that to end with 7.6 in 2021, 8.0 in 2022.
But the very fact that 5.x is being superseded by 7.x should remind you
that that is not really a "normal" data point. While it's not impossible
that something similar will happen again, I think enough lessons have
been learned that 8.0 won't have to be abandoned the way 6.0 was.
I think it's not unreasonable to argue that 5.3 was a major release in
all but name; it came out when 6.0 should have, and contained many
features originally targetted for it. So according to the table on
Wikipedia, you have roughly the following timeline of release series:
- 1995: 1.0 (1 release, 2 years)
- 1997: 2.0 (1 release, 1 year)
- 1998: 3.0 (1 release, 2 years)
- 2000: 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 (5 releases, 4 years)
- 2004: 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 (3 releases, 5 years)
- 2009: 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 (4 releases, 6 years)
- 2015: 7.0 ...
If we ignore the "pre-historic" releases of 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, we have 3
data points, averaging out at 4 releases in 5 years. So it seems fairly
reasonable to predict, and indeed aim for:
- 2015: 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 (5 releases, 5 years, due to the annual
release policy)
- 2020: 8.0 ...
So when deciding between rushing to add/remove something for 7.0 vs
waiting all the way until 8.0, remember to think in fives, not tens.
Regards,
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]
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