RISC OS version numbers

Apologies if this topic has already been discussed before, but I’ve had a quick search through the forum and it doesn’t seem to have been covered so here goes…

It is looking very likely that a good amount of newbies are going to flock to our plaform in the coming months thanks to the Raspberry Pi. The RISC OS Blog, which I maintain, has already seen a pretty significant increase in not only readership but in article comments, so we’re already seeing a pretty big increase in interest.

Although it is by far and away not the biggest concern we have when it comes to developing RISC OS further, but the current numbering situation with RISC OS can be very confusing for newcomers. A lot of people seem to have the impression that RISC OS Six is the newest version of our OS, which is by far and away not true, especially seeing as development of ROL’s OS seems to have dried up completely.

This could potentially drive away a lot of users, as they might not want to use RISC OS 5 when it seemingly isn’t the latest version of RISC OS, even though RO Six only supports legacy hardware.

Is there a case for coming up with a new version number in order to avoid further confusion?

The only thing I can think of is ‘RISC OS Open’ as the headline banner but underneath it would still say 5.18. Or perhaps ‘RISC OS 2012’ again with version 5.18 underneath?

This is an issue that is worth discussing.
I’ve encountered this confusion at RISC OS shows and am aware that in trying to explain the situation I just make the whole thing sound muddled and a bit of a mess.
I’m not sure what constraints exist on what ROOL can call the OS so this may be impractical but I’d have thought that we need to be brutal and promote the version of RISC OS that is for Raspberry Pi as,
“RISC OS for Raspberry Pi” (Big Font)
Version 5.20, © whatever, July 2012 (small font)
OK, we’d know that it’s also for Iyonix, BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, etc but that’s irrelevant from the newcomers point of view.
The clutter needs to be removed from the initial point of contact as we focus on where the new users are likely to come from.

In a similar vein of making things simple,
the £10 USB pen drive sticks are a brilliant step in the right direction.
RISC OS already on an SD card for Raspberry Pi would be another.
(can the two be combined in some way)

It is very simple – RISC OS Open.

After all the Open bit could also be linked to just how many platforms this version of RISC OS runs on…

Quick list:

Beagleboard
Pandaboard
Iyonix
Rasberry Pi
RiscPC
A7000
RPCemu
VirtualAcorn
Red Squirrel

in no particular order…

“RISC OS for Raspberry Pi” (Big Font)
Version 5.20, © whatever, July 2012 (small font)

Sensible.

OK, we’d know that it’s also for Iyonix, BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, etc but that’s irrelevant from the newcomers point of view

Actually it wouldn’t be for the other machines. (The drive image would be, but the “ROM” wouldn’t be.)

You’d just also have for Iyonix, for Acorn, for OMAP etc.