I tend to leave previous downloads of the viewers on my computer. If the new install is bad, I can revert back to the previously downloaded version. Every so often I clean out the folder. I thought it would be interesting to see how fast things were happening in viewer development. I put the version build ID, which advances numerically, and download date in a spreadsheet. It may not be significant or particularly accurate, but it is interesting.
The information doesn’t directly say anything about features being added, bug fix rates, or much of anything other than some Linden felt another iteration of the viewer was ready to test.
With Third Party Viewers (TPV) t is possible to chart a similar graph. HOWEVER, comparing those to the SL graph is misleading. A large part of TPV Developers’ work is integrating the SL code into their version of the viewer. Also, Linden Lab has over 100 employees and a major portion of those are involved in software development. TPV Teams are only 1 to a few people working part time on their viewer versions.
KirstenLee now has some help developing the S21 viewer. It appears that has made a difference. The steep trend probably due to the release of RC (release candidate) versions and quick fix releases (ogg sound exploit fix). On average we see a new S21 release every 10 days.
This next chart is here just to point out the fallacy of believing just numbers.
Imprudence is releasing an Experimental version about every 14 days. But, those numbers say nothing about the team working on Kokua.
All the information I see shows a faster pace of development in Second Life, both by the Lab and third parties.