"Open source projects frequently use a "release early, release often" model. This means that although a software project may not yet be "done", it is still usable for many people initially. Without making the software be useful to people from the get go, it is incredibly hard to get people to test or contribute code to your project, making completing it nearly impossible for any problem of significant size. 1.0 in this sense is reserved for meeting the original goal of the project, or becoming fully featured enough to compare well with other programs in the same niche, which can take months or years depending on the problem being solved. In the case of VLC, if they had used the numbering schemes that commercial software projects do their 1.0 release might be a 3.0 or 4.0 release. You can read more about how open source software development works in [The Cathedral and the Bazaar](http://catb.org/esr...)." - Sam Levine