I'm very confused. Go literally uses refs as versions. However to allow for situations where you'll need to update a module because of a bug fix or something like that, Go allows you to safely automatically update to the latest minor version, on the assumption that there are no API breaking changes. If there is such a change, Go wants the module owner to increment the major version so you don't get bugs just from updating.

I will agree that the ergonomics of this method aren't perfect by any means. But what it does accomplish, is that it forces you to declare your dependency explicitly (which seems to be one of Go's underlying principles).