Was Spinal Tap RIght?

Microsoft has a case of version number envy.

There is nothing funny about Version Number Envy, or "VNE". Many developers fall victim to this tyrannical disease every year. They suffer in silence with no one to listen. And there is no cure, not even a treatment.

From what I can tell, Microsoft believes that their products must have the highest version numbers. A given Microsoft product must have a higher version number than its competing products. I think this explains the odd version number skip of Internet Explorer (from 3 to 5) and Microsoft Office.

Contrast this with Microsoft products that have no immediate competition: they have simple, consistent version numbers. Microsoft Windows has advanced -- slowly -- from version 3.0 to 3.1 to 4.0 (Windows NT) to 5.0 (Windows 2000) to 6.0 (Windows XP) and now Windows 7. (Apparently even Microsoft wants to forget about Windows Vista.) Microsoft Internet Explorer, once it vanquished Netscape Navigator 4.0, has advanced linearly.

If you look at Microsoft Silverlight, you see an accelerated version numbering scheme. Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash, and Flash is at version 10. Introduced in 2007, Microsoft Silverlight has joined the party late, and is therefore "behind" with lame version numbers such as 1.0 and 2.0. Yet Microsoft has revved Silverlight to version 4.0 in less than four years. They even re-numbered version 1.1 to version 2.0.

If I'm right, Microsoft will continue to rev Silverlight, until it surpasses Adobe Flash.

Also, if I am right, Microsoft will start to rev the version numbers for Windows. The popular Linux distributions of Ubuntu and SuSE are all at higher version numbers (Ubuntu at 10.04 and SuSE at -- gasp -- 11.3!) which puts Windows at an obvious (from the marketing perspective) disadvantage.

While version number envy is adjacent to Spinal Tap's obsession with having the loudest amplifiers ("ours go to eleven"), I think that Microsoft has a legitimate concern. I think that there is a psychological factor at work, with the general perception that a product with a higher version number is somehow better than a competing product.

So get ready for more Silverlight. Be prepared for new versions, with new features (some possibly hard to explain), and possibly some version number omissions (say, from 4.0 to 7.0) as Microsoft attempts to achieve parity with Adobe.