LibreOffice: Version Numbers Gone Wild!

Now that LibreOffice 7.6 has been out for a few weeks and has seen its first maintenance update to 7.6.1, word is filtering out that its parent organization, the Document Foundation, is making a big change in version numbering for the free office productivity suite. Since beginning with version 3.3 back in 2010 (it started with the then-current version number of OpenOffice, from which it was forked), LibreOffice has been on a fixed release schedule with major version releases in February and August, and maintenance releases every five or six weeks see the release plan for details. But the next major version release, scheduled for February 2024, will be version 24.2! Wait! What? They're jumping ahead 17 version numbers and skipping the first two maintenance releases? No, not exactly.

The semi-annual version bumps, like the most recent one from 7.5x to 7.6x, are where new features are introduced. The smaller point releases, say from 7.6.0 to 7.6.1, include bug fixes and minor improvements, but not new features. Under the old numbering scheme, the February release would have been 7.7, with version 8.0 coming out in August, but the new numbering system changes all that. If you haven't guessed it yet, 24.2 refers to the year and month of the version's release. A final digit would sequential, indicating maintenance release versions, (e.g. 24.2.0, 24.2.1, 24.2.2, etc.); thus, next August's version release would be 24.8.0.

So, why do this? The Document Foundation apparently decided a date-based numbering system would be more in keeping with their scheduled release scheme than the traditional two-digit numbering system, especially since the February and August version releases are usually fairly subtle upgrades, rather than radical redesigns. Perhaps this also marks a further shift away from its parent software Apache OpenOffice, which only sees an occasional maintenance update and is presently at version 4.1.x for several years.

I am not expecting anything spectacular when the new version numbering makes its debut next February, but if you're curious about what it will include, check out the release notes at release notes for more information. They're very preliminary at this time, but will be fleshed out further as the release date draws nearer.