Consider changing version numbering scheme

[Mike Kaganski]

Hi!

I just came across another post mentioning the usual user's confusion 
around LibreOffice versioning scheme [1], and I thought I share my thoughts.

When we have Major+Minor version numbers, minor changing every 
half-a-year, and major changing at some random points, then every such 
major number change does *not* look like "Look! We did something 
extremely cool!": rather, it looks like "Stop and think! We did 
something so large, that it scares ourselves; it could change the game, 
so are you sure you want the game changed this way?". The change will 
*never* attract more attention than it would scare people away. People 
that readily upgrade across major version changes, would also upgrade 
across minors as well; but the opposite is not necessarily true.

It could in theory be reasonable to send such a message, when we really 
did such a change. But so far, we never did anything that was worth such 
a precaution.

A suggestion: either keep 7.X (7.43, 7.124, ...) until we really want to 
scare people away, or switch to a more sensible versioning scheme.

[1] https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/86809/2

-- 
Best regards,
Mike Kaganski