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[Feature Request]: Consider bumping major version number to 1.x.y #2897

Closed Joao-O-Santos closed 2 weeks ago

Joao-O-Santos commented 2 weeks ago

Description

Please consider bumping the major version number to 1

Purpose

Communicate the maturity of JASP and better adhere to a semantic versioning scheme

Use-case

Clearly communicating incompatible versions of JASP through major version bumps and having easier to understand version numbers.

Is your feature request related to a problem?

No

Is your feature request related to a JASP module?

Unrelated

Describe the solution you would like

Bumping the major version to 1.0.0 in the next release.

Describe alternatives that you have considered

I considered you may be trying to communicate JASP is still in active development, and that there are many features you still want to add, or changes you want to make for it to meet your vision, but I believe you're being too humble.

Additional context

JASP is already used in many universities, likely in the industry as well (usage may be hard to track), it is also validated to meet to the results obtained in other statistical programs.

Keeping software at major version zero is somewhat of a common practice in software development but is a practice that is criticized for communicating that a project is more immature than it really is (see 0ver.org.

JASP licensing (AGPL, GPL, etc...) already make clear there is no warranty claim, protecting copyright holders from liability.

I reckon the semantic versioning scheme is a good practice to follow. Major versions numbers communicate to incompatible versions, minor versions new backward compatible features, and patch versions communicate small bugfixes (see semver.org). I believe JASP is mostly compliant with this versioning scheme, but probably what can be taken as JASP's public API is stable enough at this point. Bumping the major version would allow to better communicate to users which versions are incompatible with each other, and which ones are not. It could also communicate more confidence to institutions that JASP is a mature credible project.

For instance, I had a student with an x86 mac that could not install the latest version at the time (0.18.3). The version available to her was not capable of opening the .JASP datasets her colleagues could open. If the major version of her install and her colleagues were different in their major version this incompatibility would be communicated more clearly. I admit non-technical users would probably not be aware of semantic versioning, but at least more technical users would be able to better to understand when to expect incompatibilities.

EJWagenmakers commented 2 weeks ago

We are working hard to complete full R syntax integration, and this will result in JASP 1.0. So you are correct, but we are really close and that's why this issue can be closed.