Update.1 Clarifications and Resulting Opportunities

[C. Scott Ananian]

A few additional details:

Broad consensus is forming on the <year>.<major>.<minor> release
naming scheme.  You will probably see "Update.1", which is core build
703, referred to as "8.1" increasingly often in the future.

The 708ish builds which Michael is working on are official "8.1.1",
that is, the first minor release of the 8.1 series.  You will
occasionally see this referred to as "Update 1.1" because old ways are
hard to change.

In August, we will have a release which will look more like joyride
does now.  Old dogs call this "Update 2", but the new hotness is 8.2.
If we are very cool, we'll manage to put out an 8.3 in December, but
it's more likely the next major release after 8.2 will be 9.1 in early
2009.

Michael's description of the process is geared towards "G1G1" users,
for whom 703 is inadequate, but my understanding is that we *did*
officially release 8.1/Update.1/core build 703, but *only as a clean
install*, targetted at Peru and Mexico.  I moved build 703 from
candidate to official to reflect this.

The 8.1.1 release is a minor bug fix release, primarily for the
purpose of updating keyboards for Haiti and Ethiopia, as documented
at:
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SW-ECO_5

I was not aware that we were claiming that this would be "one-step"
upgradable from 656; my understanding was that the 8.2 release was the
first one for which we were going to promise a smooth upgrade path
from 656, since that feature involved a significant amount of
development and testing.  But 8.1.1 seems to have kept growing to fill
all of Michael's available free time, partially defeating the purpose
of having a minor release in the first place.  Ce la vie.
 --scott

-- 
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