> What you describe using many completely unnecessary mathematical terms

Unnecessary for you, surely.

> Believe it or not, but in the software industry, nobody is defining a new “version number” with “strictly defined algebra” when they want to add a new field to an communication protocol between two internal backend services.

Name a protocol that doesn't have a respective version number, or without the defined algebra in terms of the associated spec clarifications that accompany the new version. The word "strictly" in "strictly defined algebra" has to do with the fact that you cannot evolve a protocol without strictly publishing the changed spec, that is you're strictly obliged to publish a spec, even the loosely defined one, with lots of omissions and zero-values. That's the inferior algebra for protobuf, but you can think it is unnecessary and doesn't exist.

Instead of just handwaving about whether it's necessary or not, why not point to any protocol that relies on that attribute, and we can then evaluate how important that protocol is?