About Web Reference

Reference is inspired by diataxis.

Reference material is like a map. A map tells you what you need to know about the territory, without having to go out and check the territory for yourself; a reference guide serves the same purpose for the product and its internal machinery.

This site acts as a publishing index of sorts – an organized map of useful links.

Timeline dates

Timeline dates come from

• Wikipedia dates
• Announcement post dates
• Code repository dates
  • date of creation
  • date of v1.0

Many timeline dates are likely inaccurate. It is unclear how to balance the progressive nature of software.

• One project may be publicly released when it hits version 1
• another project may be publicly released but not hit version 1 for a decade.

The path towards general availability is not singular and many projects change so much they could be considered a new thing after a version. However, the goal is to provide a general sense of history.