History: FLOSS Web Applications with the fastest release cycles
Preview of version: 12
Tiki is the Free/Libre/Open Source Software Web Application with the fastest release cycle
- FLOSS -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software
- Web Application -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application (This includes Wiki, CMS, Groupwares or any application comparable to Tiki)
- fastest release cycle: If you want to upgrade quickly and get the latest and greatest features in an official release.
| When | Version number (click to see what's new in this version) |
| 2002-10 | 0.9 (first public release) |
| 2002-10 | Changelog 1.0 |
| 2002-11 | Changelog 1.1 |
| 2002-11 | Changelog 1.2 |
| 2002-12 | Changelog 1.3 |
| 2002-12 | Changelog 1.4 |
| 2003-02 | Changelog 1.5 |
| 2003-05 | Changelog 1.6 This was the 8th release and the printed version of the manual for 1.6 was 350 pages! |
| 2003-08 | Changelog 1.7 |
| 2004-02 | Changelog 1.8 |
| 2005-04 | Changelog 1.9 The printed version was at 960 pages, so we stopped the habit of printing it all 😊 |
| 2008-08 | 2.0 |
| 2009-05 | 3.0 |
| 2009-11 | 4.0 |
| 2010-06 | 5.0 |
| 2010-11 | 6.0 |
| 2011-06 | 7.0 |
| 2011-11 | 8.0 |
| 2012-06 | 9.0 |
| 2012-12 | 10.0 |
| 2013-07 | 11.0 |
| 2013-11 | 12.0 |
| 2014-08 | 13.0 |
| 2015-05 | 14.0 |
| 2016-04 | 15.0 |
Thus, 22 releases in 11 years! and this doesn't count minor releases. The total of major and minor releases is approximately 100, which you can see at: All Releases
Some history: Tiki started out with an all-in-one model with a very rapid release cycle. Then, in late 2004, a mods system (An extensions system which is common in web apps) was introduced for branch 1.9. While this had some benefits, it also added a lot of complexity (versioning of mods, making sure mods are in sync with main code base, etc), and this was a contributing factor to the 3 year delay between 1.9 and 2.0. In 2008, at TikiFestStrasbourg, community members decided to move to a rapid and predictable release cycle, with Long Term Support (LTS) versions. The numbering system was changed to be more representative of reality. How can a software application with a manual of nearly 1000 pages be at only version 1.9?
About extensions (aka plugins)
More recently than Tiki, Typo3 and Joomla! have moved to a 6-month release cycle with LTS, but in all these cases, with their extension-based model, not all features are ready at the same time. And too often, extensions are never ported to the next version. Thanks to the Tiki model, (http://tiki.org/Model) we have inherent synchronized releases and easy upgrades.
WordPress
To be fair, WordPress has the approximate same overall release cycle frequency-> 20 releases in 10 years, and 10 releases in the last 5 years, and thus 2 releases per year throughout the life of the project. Depending on your reference dates and if your extensions are fast or slow to update, WordPress can be a tad faster, or Tiki can be a tad faster (In Tiki, all features are released at the same time). But globally, it's a tie and thus, Tiki and WordPress share the title of "Free/Libre/Open Source Software Web Application with the fastest release cycle" 😊 To see real differences between the projects, please see: Tiki vs WordPress.
See also: Version Lifecycle and FLOSS Web Application with the most built-in features