Hacker News Reader

No, actually, I won't. Bytes aren't forward-facing -- if you aren't a propellor-head, you don't really need to know that there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte. Version numbers are forward-facing.

Besides -- for most software -- if you introducing so many new features that you are exceeding ten point releases without a new major release... then something else is wrong. Time to re-think the release management strategy.

View on HN

That might be accurate for shrink wrap software and maybe even shareware, but it's not for free (as in beer) software. I'll grant that it was never specified, but I got the impression this project was being freely distributed -- otherwise he probably wouldn't bother with bugfix releases.

In the free (as in speech) software world, major versions indicate major changes in the software (e.g. gtk+1 vs. gtk+2). A series of minor features, no matter how long, doesn't warrant a new major release number.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com