Re: Naming of new 2.0 release

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

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> [ Please don't Cc: public replies to me. ]
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> Philip Hands:
> > There seem to be only two positions on this subject:
> > 
> >   1)  There is no useful difference between 2.0.1 and 2.0 r1
> >   2)  It would be better to have 2.0 r? for marketing reasons
> 
> I have failed to communicate clearly. I have third opinion:
> 
>     3)  The CD must be clearly labeled as to which release it contains.
>         If two CD's are both labeled as 2.0 and both contain different
> 	versions, then the customer is being screwed.

It depends how ``clearly'' you mean.

If you mean that you don't like the idea of not being able to tell which 
version it is at all, then I agree with you.

The sort of thing some commercial software vendors do, where they quietly
change the software without making any change to the version number, and then 
pretend the bugs they fixed were not there in the first place, is despicable.

On the other hand, I don't think we, or the CD vendors need to bring too much
attention to the fact that there is another version of the CD being produced.

I think we should encourage them not to differentiate between the old and the 
new (i.e. call them both 2.0 in adverts) because people that receive the old 
version really are not going to suffer any real hardship.

If, on the other hand, we act in a way that leaves CD vendors with dead stock,
they will eventually get fed up with us, and our users will loose out in the
end.

Of course, if someone actually knows the difference between 2.0 and 2.0 r1, 
and specifically orders 2.0 r1, then they should get it.  Otherwise, I don't 
see too much harm in getting ANY version of 2.0, if you order 2.0, and if that 
means that the vendors get to shift their old stock, and are therefore more
inclined to burn the next version, then that's great, because it really causes 
no harm, and will result in more people getting Debian in the long run.

If we announce it with a fanfare, it will make the old CDs worthless (whereas 
in reality there's hardly anything wrong with them), and it will encourage 
much pointless re-downloading of the CD images by people who really would be 
better of doing a quick dselect/apt.

Cheers, Phil.