[libreoffice-marketing] Development will branch off of 7.6 on Jun 5. Please communicate the next version number

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 5/27/23 23:13, Italo Vignoli wrote:
> The next major release after LibreOffice 7.6 will be LibreOffice 24.2 
> (February), which will be followed by LibreOffice 24.8 (August)
> 
> * Given the current level of maturity of the LibreOffice Technology 
> development platform, it is increasingly difficult to provide a number 
> of significant new features for each major release based on the current 
> numbering scheme (while new features are key for media coverage, if we 
> maintain the current numbering scheme)
> 
> * By choosing a calendar based numbering scheme, we decouple the 
> expectation of significant new features from each new major release: if 
> we have significant new features they will be welcomed by the media, but 
> if we don't have them the media will not be disappointed (and will write 
> about LibreOffice)
> 
> * We have already started to adapt our communication strategy to the new 
> numbering scheme by meeting journalists independently from announcements
> 
> * At LibreOffice Conference we will provide additional information about 
> the communication strategy, and how this will help increasing the update 
> frequency by users (which is now rather low, apart from a very small 
> percentage of users)

This raises two questions:

* How does the new versioning scheme fit with the current setup of 
having two parallel streams of "fresh" (currently LO 7.5.3) and "still" 
(currently LO 7.4.7) versions?

* Some places in the code rely on version numbers being strictly 
monotonically increasing based on a lexicographical ordering of their 
dotted version number segments.  (For example, 7.4.6 < 7.4.7 < 7.5.3 < 
8.0.)  Switching to a 24.2/24.8/... versioning scheme would initially 
fit that requirement (as 7.6 < 24.2).  But the two-digit year component 
of that scheme has the disturbing (to pedants, at least) issue of 
wrap-around.  Can we instead use a full-year versioning scheme, 
2024.2/2024.8/...?