A.P. Lawrence

version numbers origin of versions

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From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
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On Tue, 09 May 2000 10:26:05 +0100, Mike Kenyon <mkenyon@promtek.com> wrote:

>Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>> Actually, it's:
>>   "The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc., OpenServer Enterprise 3.2v5.0.5"
>
>I'm sure you've missed an "r4" in there somewhere...

Nope.  Sys V Release 4 probably sounded a bit like an AT&T product.  Since
Novell was selling Unixware as an AT&T product, this was deemed a bad thing.
There was also massive confusion when both AT&T and SCO released, Release
4.2 at approximately the same time.  Obviously, this was a coincidence.

>Is there any logic to version numbers nowadays?

Yes.  SCO is an equal opertunity version numberer.  Each department at SCO
gets to add its contribution to the version number.  "The Santa Cruz
Operation" was the original name of the company.  This is to placate the
traditionalists that refuse to acronymify the name.  The word "The" was
prepended to insure that SCO would be lost in alphabetic searches.  The
"Inc" was added by the legal department to protect the stockholders and to
give the impression of bigness.  The ".," was added by documentation, which
specializes in such detail work.

Control Spam and Viruses

Run your own mailserver

"OpenServer" as mutated from "Open Server" was the exemplary contribution of
the marketting department in order to differentiate the product from
previous versions that lacked 13,000 symlinks and actually worked somewhat
better.

The "3.2" is what remains of the original AT&T legal departments
contribution that required all AT&T licensees to adhere to a common version
numbering scheme while AT&T learned to abuse Roman numerals.  At the time,
to avoid litigation and to differentiate the SCO version of Unix from the
AT&T incantation, SCO began using the term "version" instead of "release"
thus initiating the use of the "v".  The 5.0.5 is the contribution of
product development which translates into:
        Version version 5
        Major Release   0
        Minor Release   5
Please note that only programmers count starting at zero instead of one.
Marketting is not infested with programmers so you are assured that we will
never see "Version 0" or any such abomination.  However, since programmers
are in control of the rest of the numbering, the major and minor release
numbers start at zero.

The actual version number is 3.2v5.0.5Eb as disgorged by various obscure
utilities.  The "Eb" is the contribution of the support department.  The
exact meaning is a bit obscure as support is apparently required to use
letters of the alphabet instead of numbers, which are the exclusive domain
of marketting and development.  I suspect it really stands for the initials
of someones name, but I cannot be certain.

Note how all the various departments at SCO, work harmoniously together to
produce an unworkable conglomeration.  However, this is considerably better
than if any one department were in control.  For example, if marketting
gained an upper hand, the product and possibly the company would derive it's
name from something something generated by the allegedly pronounceable
password generator and end in a vowel.  If engineering were in control, the
company name would be an acronym of other acronyms, and the version number
would look like an SNMP OID.  Were support in control, it would probably be
something like "Unix, 05/01/2000 edition".  While the current name and
numbers are a bit awkward, they are significantly better than the potential
alternatives.

-- 
Jeff Liebermann  150 Felker St #D  Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)421-6491 pgr (831)426-1240 fax (831)336-2558 home
http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl   WB6SSY
jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us   jeffl@cruzio.com

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