Comment by humanrebar

The point of making backwards compatibility the first number is because the subtle changes need attention drawn to them. There's little risk of people accidentally using things in a broken way when projects are renamed. It's about clarity of technical communication. There are lots of ways to communicate big direction changes, including changing the look and feel of something, adding code words (WD Caviar Green), putting out a big publicity push (v32 is a whole new game!), and so on.