decades
30ish years ago, software versions would have gone from 99.x to 00.x
Versioning scheme choice is arbitrary, as long as it’s consistent in that larger numbers are released after smaller numbers. My favorite example of this is TeX which just adds a digit of Pi with each release.
Semantic versioning probably has the mindshare, so it’s a common default scheme. It’s practical and can be applied to any release scenario. From the change in versions, you can intuit why there was a new release.
Date based versioning works fine for software that releases infrequently, but on a schedule, so you can intuit the age of the software and when to expect a new version.
z1d0v@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think part of the reason is because devs didn’t want to have a version that didn’t look “fresh”, when competitors would launch an update. The version wars happens in all kinds of software, including Linux Distros :)