[Dovecot] About Released 1.0 alpha5 version

[Leeman Strout]

Gisella Linares wrote:
> Hi,
>  I'm woking with dovecot at my work and I would want to upgrade the actual
> version to Released 1.0 alpha5 version, but when I saw the download section
> at dovecot home page, I noticed that you have only beta versions available.
>  Because of this, I would want to ask you if since now you only put
> available beta versions or those of them will be replace for the next alpha
> version.
> 
>  Thanks for beforehand your gentility in the attention to the present.
> 
>  Regards,
>  Gisella Linares
> 
> 

There is no 1.0 alpha 5 version, as beta versions supersede alpha there 
will be no 1.0 alpha 5.

Quick explanation:  alpha is unstable API, unstable code.  beta is 
stable API, unstable code.  final release is stable API, stable code.

Timo has been good enough to get the code very stable in his beta 
releases in regard to functionality that is not newly implemented.  Many 
people are using his beta releases in production but most are testing it 
for their specific needs before deploying.

The move from alpha releases to beta releases was meant to signify this 
basic stability while still letting people know that it's under active 
development.

I'm running 1.0 beta 3 and have been for over a month with only 1 issue 
that has no negative affect other than user confusion.  (the phantom new 
mail issue over IMAP).  Testing proved to me that it was worth having 
dovecot and this small issue rather than dealing with the other packages 
I was looking at.


Hope that helped.

Leeman