And 100% 2.4* free? Or could it be used side be side for a few things in the beginning ?
I won’t even mind postponing the release of 2.5 after BMesh is solid enough to be included. I feel that 2.5 should attract as many new users as possible, and amongst those are a lot of people waiting for proper NGons.
For what it’s worth, I agree entirely. I don’t mind waiting.
What’s the point of a release? you can always use SVN, right? 
We’ll be using only the 2.5 code base, as far as I know.
True! Hey, who knows, maybe 2.5 will be production-ready by October. The devs definitely seem to progress pretty quickly.
+1 on waiting, I’m all for calling it a public beta. We waited this long we can hold off a little more. It’s certainly not my decision but my gut tells me any version calling itself the official 2.50 should come out the same time as Durian. This will maximize all the excitement and anticipation, that’ll be out there. There’s a lot of new eyes waiting for 2.50 and I feel the community should put it’s best foot forward. There are a lot of people who are not happy with their current software and are looking for an alternative. After people see how awesome Durian looks, modeling, animation, fx, rendering, they are going to break their necks to download Blender.
2.50 already has a lot of great features like animato, smoke, etc. but from what I’ve been hearing from my friends, who are professional animators, and reading on CGTalk and other sites, potential users would like to see basic things like n-gons and improvements in the layer manager. It’s not my intention to upset anyone but I believe that 2.50 would be a good time to give users the option to make Y up, also. These with the changes already made to the UI and under the hood will cancel a good portion of the familiar complaints, from potential users, usually heard every time a new version comes out. I feel that this could be the version to finally convert a lot of the naysayers.
+1 here. agree on everything.
+1 for the public beta name tag
It seems that most of us in here actually agrees on the public beta naming thing. It would really be interesting to hear the devs opinions on this. Or the big guy himself.
Again, nobody would want to relive the whole KDE4.0 thing with Blender. It got bashed hard and lost many potential users. That’s what you get when you hype something up and the first release falls short of expectations. (And yes I know KDE4 != KDE4.0, but most people didn’t)
Apologies if I ruffled some feathers. I did try KDE 4.0 at some point so I can guess what that might have been about.
+1 for public beta. Calling it the official release sounds like “Everything is working just super duper fine”. And I’m sure this won’t be the case. People (especially Blender sceptics who give Blender another try) would be disappointed.
From my POV, NGons are at last 5 in the list of most important things for a good production environment. Blender imposes some serious limitations for scene organization and that’s a huge problem. Names have a low character limit, there is no proper layer management (with names, no count limit, properties by layer, etc.), no copy/paste for modifiers, no multiple object editing, etc. I don’t know about the gaming industry, but I worked in a 3D shortmovie and now I’m on the television field and can’t imagine myself in both cases without such basic funcionality. Especially where I am now that people change all the time, very often it’s needed to finish someone else’s job, change old files and so on. Tools for better scene organization are on my most wanted list.
And +1 for public beta…
Regards,
Jr.
How about trying to actually read what people are saying instead of just making fun of us?
Are we saying that Blender 2.5 should be called Blender 3.0? Or Blender 2009? Or some other useless crap? No. Blender 2.5 should of course be called Blender 2.5.
But what we are saying is that if Blender 2.5 is filled with bugs and falls short of all the hype, it would NOT be a good idea to release it as gods gift to man.
Whenever someone from outside the community have complained about the lack of something (to them) basic like Ngons, they have been told to try out Blender 2.5. And even though no promises have been made that Blender 2.5 is going to fix everything, that is still the perception many people have. And you can be sure that many will just walk away and not look back when they get disappointed.
Now I don’t know if the devs will be able to have someting stable ready for the planed release date, but if not, it would be a very bad idea to just release it as “Blender 2.5” without any indications that it isn’t really ready for prime time use. However if they mannage (they are gods after all so they might!), Blender 2.5 without the public beta part is of course the right name to give it.
Also, it really is a shame you don’t seem to know about the whole KDE4.0 thing, else you would look at this in a very different light.
Whoof whoof!.
easy boy…
Back to topic.
Siggraph is fun so far, it was great to meet many of you people on monday.
Also I am quite surprised about the amount of people running around in Blender T-Shirts. It looks like the software is received very positively among the Siggraph attendees.
I’m kind of busy as a Student Volunteer, but I will try to stop by one more time at the Blender booth. After all I will have to ask Bassam the magic words: “Is it finished yet?” 
MD
How about a blender meetup at siggraph. After the animation festival. Like at 10 pm here. Bourbon St. is fun, but there are probably other great places to go at night.
yeah, a few pictures arrived 
eugenio jr., I agree with you. I wasn’t trying to imply that those 3 things listed were the only lacks, just three of the most delayed. Everything you said needs to be there and I’m sure it’ll all find it’s way in soon.
another +1 for public beta
From my POV, they would be in the top 5 most important things. 
Tools for better scene organization are on my most wanted list.
I agree 100% with this.