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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] About PHP6 ...
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 03/04/2014 11:22, Arvids Godjuks wrote:
> Versioning conventions are universal, after
> version 5 comes version 6. And that's it.

Actually, they're pretty varied. For instance, there's the "odd is 
experimental, even is stable" system followed until recently by the 
Linux kernel, and by GNOME and related projects; there's Ubuntu's 
"version numbers" which are actually Year.Month, but expressed in a way 
that they sort numerically, and other projects which simply use a full 
YMD date string, sometimes followed by a patch number or letter.

Then there are the myriad projects which use some form of x.y, or x.y.z, 
or x.y.z.a numbering, but without any notion of "Semantic Versioning", 
often changing their policy over time (see e.g. Mozilla Firefox). PHP 
itself may be trying to follow the "Semantic Versioning" concept closer 
with 5.5 and 5.6, but since 5.3 and 5.4 were, between them, a large part 
of PHP 6, it's hardly a shining example of internal consistency.

> P.S. About the MariaDB 5 -> MariaDB 10 - their situation is unique and they
> decided that they need the distinction, because MariaDB is not backwards
> compatible in some cases with MySQL 5.6 anymore if you use some specific
> functionality.

You mean, unique apart from the dozens of other well-known projects 
which have made similar decisions over the years, for various reasons? 
SWuch as:

- Word for Windows - from 2.0 to 6.0, in a later-abandoned effort to 
unify it with Word for Mac
- Windows NT - started at 3.5
- Netscape - version 5 skipped
- Java - version 1.4 was followed by 5.0, and thence 6 and 7
- ECMAScript - 4th Edition drafts were abandoned, and the number 
skipped; the 5th Edition was a much less ambitious successor to the 3rd 
Edition
- Winamp - version 3 followed by 5, marketed as "2 + 3"
- Slackware Linux - jumped from 4 to 7

These are just a few example that came to my mind, or were mentioned on 
a Wikipedia page I glanced at. They all had their reasons, often to do 
with marketing, but if nothing else, I hope they counter any claim that 
PHP would be in any way unusual if it were to skip a version number.

Personally, I don't have any problem with the version skip being "just 
marketing", if that's what some people's objections come down to. It's 
not like we're going to completely invent a number without any 
explanation, like "Windows 7" :P

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]