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I've felt for quite a while that we could have had a 4 octet semver that allows for a first octet romantic version while the others are proper semver.

For example: io.js version 1.2.0.0 instead of 1.3.0.

It would still be machine readable, but allows a human component (romantic version) to precede.

Thoughts?

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First, why? Semver is for humans -- it puts a defined meaning to version numbers so that humans can gain useful information from them (this also is useful for automation, because once there is a clear unambiguous meaning, workflows, automated or not, can use that meaning as input.)

The "romantic" version is pure noise that adds no information, for humans or machines.

Second, why octets specifically instead of numbers (or, more precisely, non-negative integers) more generally? Is there any value in restricting the range of components of a version number to 0-255?

I think that is a wonderful idea. It could happily become a de-facto standard with people publishing a 4-octet version in READMEs and simply truncating it in the package.json.

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