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Re: [tor-talk] What would Tor v1.0 look like?



Thus spake Nick Mathewson (nickm@xxxxxxxxxxxx):

> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 6:12 PM, georgeofthejungle
> <george_of_the_jungle@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've been using Tor for many years now (when Tor was hosted by EFF), and
> > I love how fast and far Tor is progressing, as well as other Tor Project
> > projects (e.g., TorBrowser and TorButton). I've always wondered what it
> > would take for Tor to be called v1.0, e.g., how different would that Tor
> > be vs. the current Tor?
> 
> Personally, I've been thinking we should just drop the leading "0" for
> the first release to become stable after this fall, in honor of the
> tenth anniversary of our first public release.  (Assuming I'm counting
> right)

Hrm.. I don't really like the "drop the 0" idea. I really think it was a
bad idea for TBB. I don't feel like TBB is 2.x software, but I wasn't
paying attention when that decision was made (I was still in delusion
about being able to maintain a secure, usable browser addon to pay much
attention to TBB at that point) :/.

Recently however, I actually was thinking it might be a good idea to
revision TBB lower as soon as it stops being a "bundle" and just becomes
"Tor Browser" (ie it loses Vidalia and gains an updater). I think at
that point it would be much closer to what a 1.0 software release should
be.

Of course, TBB is already sort of trapped by the current versioning,
which is why I think it's important to caution tor-core against making
the same mistake.

> Once I thought there was such a thing as being "done" with all this
> stuff, and that kind of "done" would be called "1.0".  Now I think
> there's always more challenges and opportunities, and so on.

Obviously not my decision, but if we want to start bumping major
tor-core version numbers, these are the milestones I would use:

1.0 - Anonymity: Cryptographic protection against tagging attacks

2.0 - Performance: Datagram transport/other performance improvements

3.0 - Scalability: The network can support tens of millions of users


If 1.0 is instead "Damnit, it's been 10 years!" (which seems OK to me;
there are certainly worse milestones), then I think that list just moves
back a version number, but dropping the 0 still doesn't strike me as the
right move.

We do have quite a bit more work to do before this stuff is actually
usable by most of the population, and I think that is what a 3.x version
number represents to most people (or at least it used to).

After all, we are attempting to do what is more or less perceived as
impossible by many, and I think being somewhat conservative about
version numbers is still the right decision...


Your eternal optimist,

-- 
Mike Perry

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