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Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 21:27:19 +0000
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Subject: 8.0 is not 10 years away
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

Hi All!

Occasionally, in various discussions, waiting for the next major release 
is described as "maybe another 10 years", but I think that's a very 
pessimistic prediction. It's more reasonable to expect it in half that 
time, around 2020, and that is what we should base our decisions on.

The 10 year figure for gap between major releases comes from a single 
data point - the fact that 5.0 came out in 2004, and 7.0 will succeed it 
in 2015.

This leads to a worst case scenario, with annual releases, of 7.10 in 
2025, and 8.0 in 2026. If you count releases, not years, the current 
process already shrinks that to end with 7.6 in 2021, 8.0 in 2022.

But the very fact that 5.x is being superseded by 7.x should remind you 
that that is not really a "normal" data point. While it's not impossible 
that something similar will happen again, I think enough lessons have 
been learned that 8.0 won't have to be abandoned the way 6.0 was.

I think it's not unreasonable to argue that 5.3 was a major release in 
all but name; it came out when 6.0 should have, and contained many 
features originally targetted for it. So according to the table on 
Wikipedia, you have roughly the following timeline of release series:

- 1995: 1.0 (1 release, 2 years)
- 1997: 2.0 (1 release, 1 year)
- 1998: 3.0 (1 release, 2 years)
- 2000: 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 (5 releases, 4 years)
- 2004: 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 (3 releases, 5 years)
- 2009: 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 (4 releases, 6 years)
- 2015: 7.0 ...

If we ignore the "pre-historic" releases of 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, we have 3 
data points, averaging out at 4 releases in 5 years. So it seems fairly 
reasonable to predict, and indeed aim for:

- 2015: 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 (5 releases, 5 years, due to the annual 
release policy)
- 2020: 8.0 ...

So when deciding between rushing to add/remove something for 7.0 vs 
waiting all the way until 8.0, remember to think in fives, not tens.

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]