Having both MINOR and PATCH to mean non-breaking changes really seems excessive and based on very large waterfall-based software projects, because for most open

Having both MINOR and PATCH to mean non-breaking changes really seems excessive and based on very large waterfall-based software projects, because for most open source development it's completely arbitrary whether to bump patch or minor. I think it would be far more useful to have both MAJOR and MINOR to signify breaking changes (with MAJOR being close to the romantic versioning that Jeremy alludes to, where the software effectively enters a new phase.) And a number like 1.7.247 is more intelligible than 170.2.5, and really, if you're the rare monolithic long release-cycle software project, just use an extra number after PATCH. It's not like there'd be an acute concern over the verboseness of that version number internally compared to all the other highly bureaucratic processes going on in the organization.