Editing Software versioning (section)

===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}}