*Major releases* that change one/both of the first two digits, which can break compatibility with previous versions
*Minor releases* that change the last digit, e.g. 1.1.0 vs. 1.1.1, can and are likely to contain new features, but in a way that does not break binary compatibility. This means that an application compiled and dynamically linked with 1.1.0 does not need to be recompiled when the shared library is updated to 1.1.1. It should be noted that some features are transparent to the application such as the maximum negotiated TLS version and cipher suites, performance improvements and so on. There is no need to recompile applications to benefit from these features.
*Letter releases,* such as 1.0.2a, exclusively contain bug and security fixes and no new features.
This is arguably the most important piece of software where people need to watch out for updates carefully, but its release version policy is a bit loony.
antoncohen · 3h ago
Oh, but what about Ruby's versioning policy, which they call "Semantic Versioning", but the semantics are:
> MINOR: increased every christmas, may be API incompatible
That's right, the semantic meaning behind minor versions is that they are released on Christmas Day. They may or may not be API compatible, who knows.
> This is arguably the most important piece of software where people need to watch out for updates carefully, but its release version policy is a bit loony.
How so? That seems pretty well defined to me. Just because it's not major/minor/patch, doesn't mean that it's bad
mbirth · 7h ago
I very much prefer Gregorian versioning. Also lets you instantly know whether that nice app you’ve just found mentioned somewhere is still being updated or abandoned for 5 years already.
eichin · 7h ago
Do you mean calendar-year-major version numbers? (ubuntu aspell-en is "2020.12.07-0-1") I like the name, but google only found this comment mentioning it :-)
chrismorgan · 6h ago
A more common name for it is calendar versioning.
One spec for such a thing is CalVer, but I flatly refuse to ever label anything as that, because they got their terminology horribly wrong, making MM be 1–12 and 0M 01–12 (and so on for each of Y, W and D too). YYYY.MM should obviously mean 2025.08, and 2025.8 should be YYYY.M.
mbb70 · 6h ago
Normally just called calendar versioning
shredprez · 8h ago
Finally, a versioning scheme that's rooted in reality
Spivak · 5h ago
They forgot the real first digit, the marketing version.
carterschonwald · 8h ago
This is kinda what we’ve all been doing all along!
blahgeek · 7h ago
This makes more sense than it looks. semver is a lie because every change is a breaking change (Hyrum’s law)
> MINOR: increased every christmas, may be API incompatible
That's right, the semantic meaning behind minor versions is that they are released on Christmas Day. They may or may not be API compatible, who knows.
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2013/12/21/ruby-version-po...
https://github.com/openssl/general-policies/blob/master/poli...
How so? That seems pretty well defined to me. Just because it's not major/minor/patch, doesn't mean that it's bad
One spec for such a thing is CalVer, but I flatly refuse to ever label anything as that, because they got their terminology horribly wrong, making MM be 1–12 and 0M 01–12 (and so on for each of Y, W and D too). YYYY.MM should obviously mean 2025.08, and 2025.8 should be YYYY.M.