Editing Software versioning (section)

==Political and cultural significance of version numbers==
===Version 1.0 as a milestone===
The [[Free software|free-software]] and [[Open-source software|open source]] communities tend to release software [[release early, release often|early and often]]. Initial versions are numbers less than 1, with these 0.x version used to convey that the software is incomplete and not reliable enough for general release or usable in its current state. Backward-incompatible changes are common with 0.x versions.
Version 1.0 is used as a major [[Milestone (project management)|milestone]], indicating that the software has at least all major features plus functions the developers wanted to get into that version, and is considered reliable enough for general release.<ref name=toaru/><ref name=wine/> A good example of this is the Linux kernel, which was first released as version 0.01 in 1991,<ref name="Linux001">Torvalds, Linus: ''[https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01 Notes for linux release 0.01]'' kernel.org, 1991.</ref> and took until 1994 to reach version 1.0.0.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Calore|first1=Michael|title=Aug. 25, 1991: Kid From Helsinki Foments Linux Revolution|url=https://www.wired.com/2009/08/0825-torvalds-starts-linux/|date=August 25, 2009|access-date=February 8, 2018|publisher=WIRED}}</ref>

The developers of the [[arcade game]] emulator [[MAME]] do not ever intend to release a version 1.0 of the program because there will always be more [[arcade game]]s to emulate and thus the project can never be truly completed. Accordingly, version 0.99 was followed by version 0.100.<ref name="mythTV">{{cite book|last1=Still|first1=Michael|last2=Smith|first2=Stewart|title=Practical MythTV: Building a PVR and Media Center PC|date=December 15, 2007|publisher=Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.|location=New York|isbn=978-1-59059-779-8|page=9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E5uAAw8l2C8C&q=there+will+never+be+a+version+1.0+of+mame&pg=PA9|access-date=April 15, 2018|ref=mythTV}}</ref>

Since the internet has become widespread, most commercial software vendors no longer follow the maxim that a major version should be "complete" and instead rely on [[Patch (computing)|patches]] with bugfixes to sort out the known issues which a solution has been found for and could be fixed.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

===Version numbers as marketing===
A relatively common practice is to make major jumps in version numbers for marketing reasons. Sometimes software vendors just bypass the 1.0 release or quickly release a release with a subsequent version number because 1.0 software is considered by many customers too immature to trust with production deployments.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} For example, as in the case of [[dBase II]], a product is launched with a version number that implies that it is more mature than it is.

Other times version numbers are increased to match those of competitors. This can be seen in many examples of product version numbering by Microsoft, [[America Online]], Sun [[Solaris (operating system)|Solaris]], [[Java Virtual Machine]], SCO Unix, [[WordPerfect]]. [[Microsoft Access]] jumped from version 2.0 to version 7.0, to match the version number of [[Microsoft Word]].

Microsoft has also been the target of "catch-up" versioning, with the [[Netscape (web browser)|Netscape]] browsers skipping version 5 to 6, in line with Microsoft's [[Internet Explorer]], but also because the Mozilla application suite inherited version 5 in its [[user agent]] string during pre-1.0 development and Netscape 6.x was built upon Mozilla's code base.

Another example of keeping up with competitors is when [[Slackware]] Linux jumped from version 4 to version 7 in 1999.<ref>{{cite web|title=Slackware FAQ|url=http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general#0}}</ref>

===Superstition===
*The Office 2007 release of Microsoft Office had an internal version number of 12. The next version, Office 2010, has an internal version of 14, due to superstitions surrounding [[13 (number)|the number 13]].<ref name="Super Site for Windows">{{cite web|url=http://www.winsupersite.com/office/office2010_faq.asp|title=Office 2010 FAQ|author=Paul Thurrott|date=May 14, 2009|access-date=December 30, 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090419113856/http://www.winsupersite.com/office/office2010_faq.asp|archive-date=April 19, 2009}}</ref> Visual Studio 2013 is Version number 12.0 of the product, and the new version, Visual Studio 2015 has the Version number 14.0 for the same reasons.
*[[Roxio Toast]] went from version 12 to version 14, likely in an effort to skip the superstitions surrounding the number 13. 
*[[Corel]]'s [[WordPerfect Office]], version 13 is marketed as "X3" ([[Roman numerals|Roman number]] 10 and "3"). The procedure has continued into the next version, X4. The same has happened with Corel's Graphic Suite (i.e. [[CorelDRAW]], [[Corel Photo-Paint]]) as well as its [[video editing software]] "Video Studio".
*[[Sybase]] skipped major versions 13 ''and'' 14 in its Adaptive Server Enterprise relational database product, moving from 12.5 to 15.0.
* [[ABBYY FineReader|ABBYY]] Lingvo Dictionary uses numbering 12, x3 (14), x5 (15).
* SUSE Linux Enterprise skipped version 13 and 14 after version 12 and directly released SLES 15 in July 2018.

===Geek culture===
* The [[SUSE Linux]] distribution started at version 4.2, to reference [[42 (number)|42]], "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything" mentioned in [[Douglas Adams]]' ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''.
* A Slackware Linux distribution was versioned 13.37, referencing [[leet]].
* [[Finnix]] skipped from version 93.0 to 100, partly to fulfill the assertion, "There Will Be No Finnix '95", a reference to [[Windows 95]].<ref name="finnix">{{cite web|url=http://lists.colobox.com/pipermail/finnix/2010-October/000121.html|title=I'm sorry|last=Finnie|first=Ryan|date=October 23, 2010|access-date=February 9, 2012}}</ref>
* The [[Tagged Image File Format]] specification has used [[42 (number)|42]] as [[Tagged Image File Format#Byte order|internal version number]] since its inception, its designers not expecting to alter it anymore during their (or its) lifetime since it would conflict with its development directives.