At 08:42 PM 20/04/2005 +0000, Paul Ruizendahl wrote:

>--- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Beach" <pbeach@i...>
>wrote:
> > We are not going to jump version numbers, the next major release of
> > Firebird will be Fb2, with Fb3 the result of the merge between Fb2 and
> > Vulcan.
> >
> > Paul B
>
>I agree with your point. Firebird is trying to build visibility and
>changing things like this midstream is not going to help with
>communicating a clear message about the benefits of Firebird.
>
>At the same time, I would have preferred to see the same point
>formulated as: "This has been discussed in the foundation committee and
>there was a decision that we are not going ... etc. Please see the
>foundation website for details on how this decision was arrived at."

Let's correct your interpretation, Paul R. The Firebird[SQL] Foundation
makes NO policy decisions on behalf of the project. P. Beach had his
Firebird Admin Release Director hat on.

Furthermore, there was no "decision that we are not going...etc." The
decision to launch Firebird from v.1 goes right back to the project's
beginnings and belongs to the technical core of the project. The Firebird
2 tree - with the C++ conversion, goes back almost as far. The project
made the decision to release the first C++ release builds as v.1.5 to
signal clearly that that release was but a landmark on the route to
Firebird 2. That decision in fact predated both the existence of the
Foundation and Paul Beach's current role as Release Director.

The arrival of Vulcan on the scene at the end of 2003, and Jim's decision
to build Vulcan over the top of an early alpha snaphot of the Firebird 2
code tree and not to sync with the Firebird 2 development, have complicated
the roadmap considerably. The revision of the path, the synchronisation of
the Vulcan and Firebird 2 codebases and the landmarks for Firebird 3 are
still under (considerably heated) discussion by the Firebird Admin group.

For all that the details have to be reviewed to take account of the welcome
though unpredicted injection of Vulcan, the overall objective of a v.3 that
will blast the pants off the others hasn't changed. I'm sure that you, at
least, can see how ill-advised it would be to suddenly start talking about
"Firebird 2005" or "Firebird n+ x" as a way to add sparkle to Firebird's
public image.

In short, what the Release Director is telling you is that changing the
version numbering is not up for consideration. The versioning scheme
belongs to the Firebird project. It is as it is for solid, non-cosmetic
reasons that supersede any marketing imperative -- and it will stay.

Helen