Ever since we moved Blueprint to Github, the version number has been a bit of a problem. Git uses hashes to represent versions, which makes absolutely no sense to me but seems to be one of those features you aren't supposed to question. Actual version numbers like 0.8 are added as "tags," and the one time I made it a point to update Blueprint to version 0.8, I had to enlist the help of Joshua Clayton because I didn't know what I was doing. If it isn't obvious, I'm not very comfortable with command lines or version control.
Since Blueprint reached version 0.8, however, most of the work from the core team has been on community management, support, tools, bug fixing, and code generators like the compress scripts. I can't speak for everyone, so I'm going to take the first person for the rest of this post – it's not that I don't want to work on the Blueprint core, it's that personally, I can't think of anything that needs to be done. So you can imagine my slight amusement when this past week, someone asked via the mailing list, (and I paraphrase)
When are we getting a 1.0 release of Blueprint? Is the latest version still 0.8?
It's amusing because I don't have an answer. The way I see it, Blueprint aims to offer a reset, a grid, a typography basis, and pretty forms, and currently, it does that just fine. It also has a few plugins, including my tabs plugin, but a CSS framework is not like an actual code framework; it doesn't need plugins. You can put any CSS files you want on your site alongside Blueprint without having to call them actual plugins, and you'll get a perfectly good result. When it comes time to move on to CSS3, about 15 years from now, then Blueprint will need a massive overhaul, but as long as we are speaking CSS2.1, I'm happy with what we have. I've been using Blueprint on just about every site I've done in the past year & a half, and I've never had any trouble getting from the first phase to writing my custom CSS.
Plus, since I've been very busy with trying to get my own company off the ground for the past couple months, I haven't had much time to really dig into the Blueprint code. Redesigning the homepage, staying on the mailing list, and promoting new tools like Boks has been the most I can do. I'm not saying that I've been overwhelmed, rather, I've just assumed the role of community manager & promoter at this point. I really like the role. My point in saying this, is that if Blueprint is going to make the jump to version 0.9, and possibly even 1.0, it won't be from me. Blueprint is an open-source project on Github, currently the 4th most popular watched and 7th most popular forked repository. If there is a lot still lacking in the core files, I can't tell; it seems like at least a thousand people are very happy with where it currently stands. If there are new ideas that deserve to be expressed in Blueprint, then I'll be the first one to say: fork it, write it, push it, pull-request it. Until then, Blueprint will remain at version 0.8… a version number that doesn't mean anything other than "the current version, which works just fine."
With that being said, I'm off to review my first pull-request, which includes a couple new plugins for Blueprint. Not a significant change to the core, but a welcome breath of fresh air nonetheless.