OSYL Versions

Alpha, beta, gaga? Which version is it?

How to understand the meaning of an Opensyllabus version

The OpenSyllabus project is now getting bigger and it is not "just" a Course Outline Editor(OSYLEditor).

Other components are being developed to complement the editor. OSYLManager will for instance allow a teacher to export his course-outline, or transform a "standard" course-outline into a shareable one.  OSYLAdmin will allow OpernSyllabus administrators to perform administrative tasks. This is just an example, and many more features in this area will be developed in the coming months.

The direct consequence is that OpenSyllabus is made of different components which are not at the same level of maturity. In April of 2009, we are about to start a BETA testing of OSYLEditor whose development started more than a year ago, and at the same time, OSYLManager and OSYLAdmin whose features are not yet fully specified are clearly at alpha-level (for the features which have been released).

This is why we can't call OpenSyllabus a Beta version or an Alpha version, etc. We think it would not really be helpful neither to start giving different version numbers or names to different components.

From now, OpenSyllabus will use version numbers based on date of release. Consequently a release made in April 2009 will bear the version 9.4. In May 2009 the version will be 9.5, and so on.

This way of giving a version number based on the date is used by Ubuntu.
Details on Ubuntu Releases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases