[dcminter]

The unofficial motto of the Linux kernel is "Don't break userspace" so semver wouldn't be useful.

[mort96]

And what's more, the second unofficial motto of the Linux kernel is "break kernel space"; they don't make any attempt at keeping in-kernel APIs stable. So if they followed semver for userspace, they'd be on 1.9000.0, if they followed semver for kernel space they'd be on 9000.0.0.

[OJFord]

There's value, albeit less in the minor vs patch distinction I think. So you could imagine a world in which SemVer came first, Linux uses it, and we're on 1.5.19 but usually drop the 1. because we've agreed there'll never be a v2.

[bonzini]

That's pretty much the state of the 3.x releases, but at some point numbers got big.

[umanwizard]

I’d say it was the stage of the 2.6.x series.

[bonzini]

In 2.6.x patch levels were the fourth number in the version, not the third.

[umanwizard]

What would be the point of that?