"Early Adopter", "Early Access" feels like a good direction.
I'm not sure I understand the problems with "beta". Wikipedia define beta releases as something that is feature complete and is put out to reduce impact on users and get usability testing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Beta) Is that not what we are looking for here?
Having said that, the simple fact that some have seen beta as not communicating the desired message is itself a reasonably clear message.
+1 from me for Ian's suggestion: Eclipse SDK 4.0 (Early Adopter Release)
I don't think it's realistic that we'll be able to accurately describe in the release name what our target audience is. By calling it "Early Adopter Release", we have an opportunity to explain what we mean by "early adopter". I agree with McQ that "beta" or "preview" makes it sound incomplete, which it isn't.
FWIW, I kind of like Eric's suggestion of 'Early Adopter Release', ie.
Eclipse SDK 4.0 (Early Adopter Release). It conveys that it is an
'early release' and ties in with the target audience, ie early adopters?
One negative is that it is a bit long.
On 4/28/2010 12:01 PM, John Arthorne wrote:
We had a discussion about this in
the
Eclipse project PMC call today. We agreed that in light of the
community
feedback, some sort of qualifier on the name is needed to help send the
right message about the release. We didn't come up with a good
candidate
for that name in the call, but will brainstorm on it. The message we
want
to send is that is a major new release of the platform, but this is
only
a small part of the Eclipse Foundation technology stack. A release is
needed
so that we can produce something sufficiently polished for the release
train and wider ecosystem of people building plugins on top of the
platform
to pick it up and start adopting it. We will then be in a position to
produce
a future simultaneous release that incorporates a 4.x release of the
platform.
Most of us liked the "Indigo/Isaac
Preview" direction but ultimately it will be up to the Planning Council
to make the call on whether a 4.x release will be the basis for the
Indigo
release. I also suggested something like "Eclipse 4.0 Developer
Release"
sets the right tone. It also just occurred to me that since only the
"Eclipse
Classic" package is part of this release, something like "Eclipse
Classic 4.0" would make sense (although this sounds odd that the
"classic"
package is ahead of the rest). In any case, everyone please send along
any concrete naming suggestions, and as Ian mentioned there will also
be
a regular "evangelism" call for those interested in participating
in the discussion as well.
I agree 100%. We are already seeing our commercial
customers starting
to ask (e.g., demand to know) when we will be supporting Eclipse 4.0
with all of our products. The perception is definitely out there that
4.0 is the next great release of Eclipse and that 3.6 is just an
(minor? maintenance?) update to the "old" 3.x version. Anyone
who
reads these lists or pays close attention to what is really going on
in Eclipse-land knows better, but that is a small minority compared
to the huge mass of Eclipse users out there who will simply assume
that 4.0 is the latest and greatest and the place they should be as
soon as it is released. Those folks will likely be very disappointed
if they try to immediately move to 4.0 and discover that only a
handful of Eclipse.org projects and 3rd party plugins actually
support it. Some sort of (strong) qualifier (Preview, Beta, Early
Availability, Early Adopter, etc. are all good) is definitely needed
to mitigate the possible damage to the Eclipse brand and ecosystem
and set the proper expectations in the minds of the early adopters
(and keep the number of those early adopters to a manageable level).
-Eric
>This is a great example of the problem we're facing, and this is
just
an
>early example. People are eagerly awaiting Eclipse 4.0, the next
>generation eclipse. You can message until you are blue in the face,
but
>that isn't going to stop the perception that if you call it 4.0,
it's
>that 4.0.
>
>So yes, please call this a Preview release or something along that
line.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: eclipse-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:eclipse-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeff McAffer
>Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 9:36 AM
>To: General development mailing list of the Eclipse project.
>Subject: Re: [eclipse-dev] Re: [e4-dev] Eclipse Project 4.0 Release
>
>There could of course be many nuances missed by Google translate
but
the
>article seemed mostly like a distillation of John's recent
e4/Eclipse
>4.0 clarification post. I don't think they particularly cast the
>situation differently (at least not by that translation).
>
>The problems with expectation that arise are inherent in the naming
>(Eclipse 4.0). As discussed that naming implicitly leads one to
believe
>that this is "the Eclipse 4.0 SDK" and it is the "logical
successor to
>3.6". If we are not comfortable with everyone downloading
and using
>it, then the naming should reflect that with some sort of qualifier
>(e.g., "Preview", "Beta", "Early Availability",
...). IMHO this sends a
>clear, representative and appropriate message to the community.
>
>Boris' interview article pointed out that we are targetting the 2011
>release train. This is nice positioning. It may be a little to
subtle
>however. That is, its not clear that people will say "hmm,
its not on
>the simultaneous release so it is not stable/bug-free/..."
(frankly,
we
>don;t want to promote that idea either). Perhaps we can combine the
>approaches and talk about the upcoming Eclipse 4.0 SDK as the
>"Indigo/Isaac preview"?
>
>Jeff
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