Should Blender 2.8 be Blender 3?
Pablo writes:
A short detour from our regular programme to discuss Blender weird versioning convention. Blender updates Monday/Tuesday as usual!
Swiss Chalet / Breakfast Time
Pablo writes:
A short detour from our regular programme to discuss Blender weird versioning convention. Blender updates Monday/Tuesday as usual!
Happy birthday
Wise words on Blender 3.0 :) Totally agree… And of course: “Happy birthday”
Happy birthday. Version numbers are a “neverending story”. Some, such as Chrome, increase it by one every time a new release is out. Pablo says Blender guys are too modest and it should be 3.0 Actually it IS packed with new features, judging by Pablo’s weekly reports, but we haven’t seen the final, stable 2.8 yet. Numbers don’t affect work. And Merry Christmas everybody!
A major increment would be so superficial anyways, there’s no need to, except to strut; but Blender is a doer, not a sayer – it’s hype and marketing has always been its output from the users and upcoming features that were always preview-able. It’s not trying to do superficial telegraphing things to convince payers to continue their subscriptions and pay for new versions.
These days when XBox can go from 360 to One, NVidia cards can go from 1000 to 100, and operating systems are being named after confections – you’re not comparing the version number to anything else besides past version names, so what does it matter? There are no versioning rules to follow except whatever the Blender organization decides and has been doing for a decade+. I doubt 3.0 is going to be the final version, it’s just going to be the version that’s out when the version counter gets there. It will probably be a big deal with big changes, but nothing that in-of-itself makes it deserving of being “THE TRUE 3.0” release; OR, with Pablo’s logic, 3.0 would be the most boring update anyways, just bug fixes to keep people from complaining.
Besides, who was around back then that could say the 2.0 major version increment was bigger than the 2.5 subversion increment?
Happy birthday Pablo!
If Blender 3.0 = 2.79UI + Eeeve, I am total agree. that’s perfect.
I believe, if you want to rename the versioning to 3.0, the reason to do that should be about backward compability, major updates, critical decision etc.
But when the argument to do is because of the ‘hype’ for upcoming blender 2.8 or simply becaue marketing strategies, then I am definetelly agreeing with Ton. Projects such as Blender definetely don’t need advertisement or martketing efforts at all. It is growing as fast as it should. This is the naturaly growth of an open source project.
From a software development perspective, making major changes in python API or removing long standing render engines or game engines could have been a reason to rename the versioning to 3.0. However in the case of Blender, the semantic versioning does not really apply, since the arguments of semvar.org rather gives a solution to the ‘dependency hell’ problems, allowing us to understand the size of the software updates solely on its version numbering.
But I believe no such semantic versioning is required for the case of Blender, since its development team has long proven themselves to be quite talented not to fall into pitfalls like dependency hell or alike.
Cheers.
Blender 2.8 IS backwards incompatible with 2.7x: UI different shortcuts and left mouse click selection (!!!) make it impossible to start working with 2.8 without change in habits and a bit of research, especially if you are experienced in 2.7x.
It’s not about “we don’t need marketing to make Blender popular” it’s about “we want to make clear this is conceptually new software” on so many levels!
Make menues and mouse buttons custmizable, make installations of 3D- puck devices easier, so that they can run xyz- directions in the way desired, make selection tools that can switch modes like endpoint picking, midpoint picking, etc, and at last make a CAD- part inside Blender adopting and eporting Dimensioning. Open up import for Rhino native format and ger a scanning bridge to asus or kinect- camera devi es directly.. so that I can use Blender as new only tool.
It should not be 3.0. It should be 4.0.
2.6 (the other major overhaul) should have been 3.0.
I don’t care much about marketing either, but it would be so much more satisfying to have a number change when the software changes so much. It would feel like a new beginning :)
What I meant was 2.5, for that was when the whole interface changed, although 2.6 packed more features.
Bart makes a good point, however you are missing an important piece of the puzzle, how software development has evolved. Software development process has been moved from waterfall to agile methodology and some mix in between. This has produced a remarkable change on software. The most tangible Results are delivery of more complete features, faster, less bugs which accelerates versioning deployments.
I may be wrong but if what Bart says is true and what we have seen in the past 10 years in Blender, When itcomes to software development, Blender is still behind. Great powerful features stil being developed in a very old way.
Many many happy returns of the day. Happy birthday
Downloaded 2.8 beta does not contain äny .exe- file.. Please tell how to install beta?
Is it just to unzip and stor conten in 2.7 stabile folder?
Happy Birthday. We have the same Birthday I think Dec 17?
It should be called “Blender 2019”
This email thread is getting out of the topic of the article. Guys have manners and address your comments where they belong. Don’t turn this awesome site into another troll forest
This release feels more like a major overall upgrade so 3.0 fits better, it somehow may unleash the speed of further improvements while keeping 2.8x would still be like slow snail whathever effort is put into the project. The only alert I feel is to not fall into naming race like some web browsers have now. But surely it somehow encourages more people to focus or participate in developing the software when things are updated even in name numbering.