Who is not a programmer here? It seems you are a programmer. Modjo, Korog, Shiftz are programmers. I am a programmer too. lol
But I don't care about standards.
I'm a programmer. And it's funny to hear people who have just a little bit of general knowledge that they picked up along the way or in school and think they know how software industry works, or how major development projects go.
I may of only been in the software industry a few years now since graduating but I can tell you there is no real standard on versioning. Even back in college several of my professors who have also worked at several major software development studios said as much, that doesn't mean there hasn't been attempts to standardize but it's hard to get people to agree on them.
We did cover the version model mentioned earlier in the thread as a good template to follow. But it was covered as more of model that many developers were trying to get standardized but has not happen yet. Mostly due to various reasons, such as older systems with established versioning rules. Though in the end each company does whatever the heck wants to with versioning numbers, and some even use them simply as a marketing tool to make customers think there has been a big improvement so they will buy the new version.