Is 3.0 worth breaking backward compatibility?

[Lie Ryan]

On Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:10:08 -0500, Albert Hopkins wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 20:56 +0000, Lie Ryan wrote:
>> Actually I noticed a tendency from open-source projects to have slow
>> increment of version number, while proprietary projects usually have
>> big
>> version numbers.
>> 
>> Linux 2.x: 1991 Python 3.x.x: 1991. Apache 2.0: 1995. OpenOffice.org
>> 3.0:
>> acquired by Sun at 1999. GIMP 2.x: 1995. Wine 1.x: 1993.
>> 
> One  exeption would be GNU Emacs 22: 1984, but according to Wikipedia:
> 
>         "Versions 2 to 12 never existed. Earlier versions of GNU Emacs
>         had been numbered "1.x.x", but sometime after version 1.12 the
>         decision was made to drop the "1", as it was thought the major
>         number would never change."
>         
> So you can think of Emacs 22 as being 1.22.

most odd is TeX an METAFONT:

TeX has an idiosyncratic version numbering system. Since version 3, 
updates have been indicated by adding an extra digit at the end, so that 
the version number asymptotically approaches π. The current version is 
3.1415926. This is a reflection of the fact that TeX is now very stable, 
and only minor updates are anticipated. TeX developer Donald Knuth has 
stated that the "absolutely final change (to be made after my death)" 
will be to change the version number to π, at which point all remaining 
bugs will become permanent features.

In a similar way, the version number of METAFONT asymptotically 
approaches e.