-This is a LyX development release
----------------------------------
-
-The LyX Team has adopted a new development model and
-tries to keep the development version stable as far
-as possible, but since the program is changing, the
-development version will be less stable than the
-stable releases.
-
-So, don't use this development version on your production
-documents without testing everything in depth first.
-
+Preamble: LyX version scheme
+
+ In September of 1999 the LyX Team decided that we could no
+ longer successfully use the two strand development process
+ like the Linux kernel. The idea was to to switch to a
+ development model similar to that used by Fetchmail where
+ we would make only small stable changes between releases
+ and release more often. This lead to the 1.1.x series of LyX
+ releases during which the inhards of the program were rewritten
+ to make use of the C++ Standard Library features, establish
+ the foundations of GUI/system independence, and generally
+ clean up the data structures used in the core of LyX.
+
+ As of April 2002, this transition phase is completed and we
+ feel it is time to switch to (yet) another version scheme.
+ This new series will be in a state of continual advancement.
+ Note the word "advancement" and not "development." Development
+ will be occurring in branches of CVS and once the
+ feature/modification has proved stable it will be merged into
+ the main releases.
+
+ LyX still uses a continuous numbering scheme in which odd or
+ even numbering is not significant. Instead a number '1.x.y'
+ indicates stable release '1.x', fix level 'y'. Prereleases
+ are labeled with a "pre" suffix. Thus there are three possible
+ file names:
+
+ lyx-1.2.0.tar.gz -- stable release
+ lyx-1.2.2.tar.gz -- second maintenance release of the
+ 1.2.0 stable release
+ lyx-1.2.0pre1.tar.gz -- potentially unstable test release
+
+ The maintenance releases are designed primarily to fix bugs. The
+ goal here is not to have parallel development as for the linux
+ kernel (the team is too small to afford that), but rather to
+ include all the simple (so that the maintenance burden on us
+ is not too high) and safe (so that system administrators can
+ install them without fear) bug fixes. Experience shows that
+ these releases will contain a few new features, and that the
+ bulk of the patches will be documentation updates.