Re: potato late, goals for woody (IMHO)

[Mike Bilow <mikebw@colossus.bilow.com>]

On 2000-05-02 at 12:59 -0700, Kenneth Scharf wrote:

> >I have found personally that debian Patoto being
> >branded a unstable version is
> >a politcal problem and i agree entirely with Mike.
> 
> Maybe the word 'unstable' should be changed to
> 'under-development', 'next-release',
> 'watch-this-space', 'in-flux' or something else.
> 
> Unstable really means 'moving-target' not necessary
> 'crashes-every-5-minutes', but politicaly that's what
> it implies. (how about 'radio-active'?)
> 
> 'Frozen' implies 'almost-ready-for-prime-time' and I
> think more people are comfortable running something
> called 'frozen' than 'unstable'.    

I would suggest something more along the lines of the following:

"stable" -> "final"
"frozen" -> "candidate"
"unstable" -> "development"

Lots of software organizations have their own jargon, commonly:

"stable" -> "release"
"frozen" -> "gamma"
"unstable" -> "beta"
"experimental" -> "alpha"

Also common is:

"stable" -> "gold"
"frozen" -> "white"
"unstable" -> "grey"
"experimental" -> "black"

IBMspeak uses this series:

"stable" -> "general availability"
"frozen" -> "limited availability"
"unstable" -> "restricted availability"

I would really, really, really like to get rid of the word "unstable."

-- Mike