Upgrade version and pricing [was] Re: Fix it before moving ahead [OT]

[Brian Yennie]

> The industry practice and RunRev policy of three-part changes 
> (bug/minor/major) and associated pricing policies (none/small/large) 
> is well established and of minor interest unless someone has a unique 
> and commercially viable proposal which they should then put straight 
> to Kevin Miller anyway. If a major upgrade emerges then new bug-fix 
> work will cease on all previous versions, although you can continue to 
> use the prior version at its last fix level as you please. What else 
> do you reasonably expect from a software vendor?

Again, disclaimer: I support RunRev and applaud their work, and it's 
still my favorite tool. Ahem.

With that said, halting all bug fixes as soon as you release a "point" 
release does happen, but it's not THE industry practice. I'm aghast at 
the idea that the 2.1 branch is already done.

In fact, it's not the approach of MY software company, and we are 
smaller than RunRev. After a major release, we branch the code (this is 
one of THE major features of revision control systems) and continue to 
release bug fixes to the previous release. Any other practice could and 
probably would put us out of business.

There's a lot of gray area here, I admit. I don't think RunRev is 
guilty of any more than making some of us a little nervous thus far. 
But the following things are plainly false:

* That RunRev isn't working hard on bugs, and aiming to please
* That RunRev just follows good industry practice and is a model of it

Pick your point in between, but I say let's look at 2.2 and see what we 
find!!

- Brian