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The Amazing World of Software Version Numbers

Posted by timothy on from the remember-the-slackware-incident dept.

Harry writes "In theory, software version numbers should be incredibly mundane. In reality, companies have long twisted them for marketing purposes, avoided ones they didn't like, and even replaced them with things other than numbers. I've prepared a tribute to them with some facts and ruminations, but there's a lot I don't know, and I'd appreciate help on the historical side of things. (Anyone know when the standard decimal point-based system came into use?)"

1 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What now? by diskis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1.1.1 -> 1.1.2 - bugfix only, no change in what the end-user sees.
    1.1.1 -> 1.2.0 - new features, perhaps a button in the UI has moved. Still fully compatible with the previous version. Documents should be stored identically, network protocols unchanged.
    1.1.1 -> 2.0.0 - major release, might very well break functionality, documents may have to be converted from previous versions, UI can change drastically.