Date based [LWN.net]

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 5:08 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Date based by neilbrown
Parent article: 2.8.0?

name it based on when the merge window for that release opened. there's no ambiguity there.

to post comments

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 5:37 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (4 responses)

While I think that most reasonable people would prefer a date based versioning scheme I think the marketing departments of all the big LF members would hate it.

Just imagine:
That brand new HP phone ships with Linux 2009.12?
Super awesome Enerprise Linux 15.6 Could Edition uses a patched 2005.1 kernel?

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 5:57 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (2 responses)

> While I think that most reasonable people would prefer a date based versioning scheme

I would have thought so to, but at the kernel summit when Linus ran his "straw poll" (https://lwn.net/Articles/413061/) he didn't even ask for votes for that option as he assumed almost no-one would want it (and based on the votes he got for the other options, there is a fair chance he was right).

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:19 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

Hmm, that LWN article just states that kernel devs were against changing from 2.6 to something else. The way I read it it doesn't say that date based was less popular than anything else (besides staying with the current scheme)

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:35 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

The article glosses over the boring details.

The way I remember it, there where 3 options:
A - no change
B - next version 3.0
C - change to date format.

Vote went:
A - 42
B - 33
C - let's not bother, no-one wants that.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:16 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

just imagine,

wouldn't that be nice?