I have worked on SVG Filters and SVG Fonts because I was willing to see Inkscape reach 1.0! Because I knew 1.0 meant full SVG compliance. If we are concerned about 0.49 psicologically conveying a different meaning to the users, something like "49th release but not there yet!", then maybe we should reconsider what 1.0 means. Several years with 0.something++ releases creates a strong expectation of "when is 1.0 gonna be reached?!". So, if we reinterpret 1.0 as meaning "ready for professional usage", then maybe we are closer to reaching that, and maybe our next release can be "Inkscape 1.0". Or maybe it can still be Inkscape 0.49 and then keep "Inkscape 1.0" for one of the next ones in the future. At least that way we both stop sending the wrong message ("Inkscape is not ready") and give a positive message to users: "Inkscape 1.0 is there! It is ready!"

Simply changing the versioning scheme to something "neutral" like "Inkscape 2011.October" does not send that positive, encouragement message to our potential new users.

So I suggest we change the focus of the discussion to a debate on the following question:
Ignoring the previous SVG compliance criteria, what does Inkscape still need feature-wise to be ready for professional graphic design work so that we can finally release it as Inkscape 1.0 ?

Felipe Sanches