Except.


Years ago, we were able to identify the extent to which software upgrades were significant deviations from previous versions by their number. The first "official" release was 1.0, and slight improvements, small bug fixes, usually merited a hundredths' designation: 1.01, 1.02 and the like. More significant changes, but changes that still maintained the basic feel of the main release earned tenths: 1.1, 1.2 and so on. A new version might jump from 1.1 to 1.5, but if it did so, we understood that a number of improvements had been added to the program, but that it was still basically the same program. Changes before the decimal were reserved from make-overs. When version 2.0 was released we understood that this was almost a brand new program.

Somewhere along the line new releases with even minimal improvements started to earn changes in the ones column, and then - I think that Microsoft was responsible for the change, but I really don't know - the entire numbering process became a victim of marketing, and even minor changes in a program earned a brand new name, almost like a "new formula, extra-strength" laundry detergent. From there, the next step, to a naming process that was totally divorced from any identifiable continuity, was inevitable. Thus, Windows 3.0 was easily understood as a significant improvement over Windows 2.0, while Windows 3.1 bore only minor changes to Windows 3.0. But with the arrival of Windows 95 this logic was broken. Instead of version names and numbers actually carrying important information, it seemed that each new release wanted to convince us that it had somehow emerged sui generis.

But strangely (there's a word there someplace) using 2.0 as a means of describing the quantum leap that the web is supposedly making is rather out of place. O'Reilly tells us that one of the defining aspects of Web 2.0 is the "end of the software release cycle". In other words, if in this new framework version numbers have lost their significance, and instead we're in the age of the perpetual beta, why do we use an outdated term to describe this new phenomenon?



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