Succeeding GNOME 3.38 Will Be "GNOME 40" - Yes, GNOME Forty

[dragon321]

Nope, it was mostly technical, and it was due to installers and driver configurators in the past have been coded with crazy checks that made the microsoft compatibility testers go cry. The M$ compatibility group coders and testers had to deal with a huge load of bullshit back then to ensure backwards compatibility, according to an old colleague that around 8-10 years ago worked in M$.

Nowadays it appear as something ridiculous, but then again, it is a sign of the times.... remember the old times when people needed a punch card to use a computer??.... Probably in 20-30 years more people will wonder why humanity was so stoopid to use "C" or "Rust" when "Valgatron 2050" will be posed as the new popular language....

Read some of the anecdotes on The Old New Thing. The lengths Microsoft goes to in the name of backwards compatibility are insane.

That would be the technical reason. Anecdotally, that's supposed to be a problem with old, legacy software. With everything MS has done over the years, something like that actually being the case wouldn't surprise me.

If you want to get Windows version information from, for example, Windows 7 you won't get "Windows 7" but "Windows 6.1.something". Same goes for every other Windows. Marketing names like 7, 8, 10, Vista, XP, 2000 (and 2000 is older than 7) have nothing to do with version number. If I recall correctly every Windows from 9x series has version number 4.x. Also code like "version.startsWith('9')" wouldn't work with Windows ME which is also one of Windows 9x family. That's why I don't believe it was "true" reason for skipping 9. Marketing reason like "10 looks better for last Windows than 9" is making much more sense for me and Microsoft cares about marketing.

Beside from technical stuff - that came from some Reddit user saying he is Microsoft developer. Microsoft developers prefer to stay anonymous if they are talking about their job. Also how we can know for sure he is/was really Microsoft developer?

[ssokolow]

If you want to get Windows version information from, for example, Windows 7 you won't get "Windows 7" but "Windows 6.1.something". Same goes for every other Windows. Marketing names like 7, 8, 10, Vista, XP, 2000 (and 2000 is older than 7) have nothing to do with version number. If I recall correctly every Windows from 9x series has version number 4.x. Also code like "version.startsWith('9')" wouldn't work with Windows ME which is also one of Windows 9x family. That's why I don't believe it was "true" reason for skipping 9. Marketing reason like "10 looks better for last Windows than 9" is making much more sense for me and Microsoft cares about marketing.

Again, you'd be surprised at how often in-house applications do the wrong thing and then expect Microsoft to not break "the wrong thing"

For example, do you remember what a big thing ActiveX-incorporating web apps were for in-house intranet apps in the late 90s and early 2000s?

Here's an observed Internet Explorer User-Agent string from Windows 98:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)

I don't see the proper version number anywhere in there.

[DanL]

moron, 4.0 is result of your imagination. i gave you real world value 3.40
moron, what does 3 mean? what makes you think 40 doesn't qualify as major? what use have millions of gnome users of this meaning?

See Weasel's responses.

if you don't know which timelines are followed by project, maybe you shouldn't open your mouth in the first place?

If you can't understand simple semantic versioning, you shouldn't open your mouth about the issue. And you definitely shouldn't be calling people morons...

[Mez']

So having critical mind means using GNOME with some broken extensions preinstalled, right.

No, it means not saying "wow that's great" to everything Gnome does. Vanilla Gnome users have a tendancy to accept everything Gnome devs give them with the mouth wide open. They never say "ok, stripping down Gnome of such a feature is a really hard blow to my workflow, I don't like it".
They just accept it and change their perfectly working workflow for a less good solution. Then go on and defend Gnome as their life depended on it against people like me who are able to say when sometbing they changed sucks. Because Gnome devs have a real tendency to make idiotic changes.

[waxhead]

and how is this madness more meaningful to the average user than plain Version? average user doesn't need dot overdose. especially considering that gnome is umbrella project rather than a library

It is meaningful because the user then know if there is a VERSION change , a REVISION change or a BUGFIX typically speaking. This is not madness, it is easy to follow, structured and should give you a instant idea of the change.

For example if would you know if for example Firefox at version 97 had significant changes from 93? - would it be updates, bugfixes or entirely new feature. If you try to package stable software and you have V1.19.2 of something in your repo and you see V1.19.8 you can instantly assume that there is a couple of bugfixes that won't change the function of your program much. if iti s V1.20.1 you can almost instantly know that since it has been so many reivisions there is perhaps just a minor new feature added - and likely the thing is compatible. However if it is called V2.0.0 you know it is rewriten from Scratch and a update might not be such a good idea until the software prove to be stable or it has a couple of revisions/bugfixes added.

This is NOT possible to see on version numbering that uses year.month , a insanely huge number. Todays kids don't understand this because they believe a higher number is always better. Exactly why those same kids believe a software is outdated if it has a version number (year.month) from 07.01 and there is a new version called 20.10... There is ZIP ZERO indications of how many revisions/bugfixes that program was through. Maybe it was just something totally insignificant such as fixing a button that reads oK instead of OK. A simple patch bump would instantly indicate that the program has not changed much.

[Paradigm Shifter]

For example if would you know if for example Firefox at version 97 had significant changes from 93? - would it be updates, bugfixes or entirely new feature.

Frankly after the last few updates of Firefox it seems like it's more like pick any two of the following for each new version:
1) add new feature no one asked for or wants
2) remove a feature everyone was using
3) break something
4) shove cloud sync even harder down users throats

[waxhead]

Frankly after the last few updates of Firefox it seems like it's more like pick any two of the following for each new version:
1) add new feature no one asked for or wants
2) remove a feature everyone was using
3) break something
4) shove cloud sync even harder down users throats

Well, I don't use Firefox much if at all myself. I use SeaMonkey which is the good old Mozilla Suite. Regarding Firefox (and so many other programs) it seems like they increment the versionnumber and to stuff for the sole purpose of doing *something* regardless if it's useful or not. I have a friend that uses Firefox and his complaints seems to add a few things to your list:

5) Rearranging the GUI somewhat
6) Redesigning icons
7) Moving stuff around, adding empty space where there is no need for empty space
8) Making logical things less logical. An example from so many websites today seems to be that you have to first click a search button to open a textbox that they had free space for in the first place. Then you have to click the searchbox to write something and even at the end click the search button again to activate the search. In the good old days you wrote something and clicked the searchbox. So it is NOT an improvement.

and the list goes on and on and on and on....

[Paradigm Shifter]

Well, I don't use Firefox much if at all myself. I use SeaMonkey which is the good old Mozilla Suite.

Thanks for reminding me about SeaMonkey.

I think Mozilla started this integer version system because Google used it for Chrome, and people being people seem to assume high/big number equals older, better tested etc. I had this conversation with a non-technical family member, who flat out told me that Chrome was older and more supported than Firefox because it was already at version 30-something while Firefox was still single digits.

[Djhg2000]

Just one more thing in the pile of signs that GNOME have lost touch with what it once was. I gave GNOME 3 some slack in the beginning because as with every rewrite it takes time to reach feature parity, but over time it became clear that was never the objective.

I got fed up with it last year and switched back to KDE. So glad the KDE team still has enough self awareness fix the bad decisions from KDE 4.

[ssokolow]

I wonder how much it would piss trolls off if everyone successfully agreed to act as if shadowbanning existed on a forum that obviously lacks it.