> I believe that's by design: applications are encouraged to upgrade often.

I'm not sure what's your thought process here. I'm not saying they should have a release every 2 years instead of every half a year, but that their numbering scheme is bad.

It makes upgrading harder. If they'd just put the date in the version field, people would know how old the software is (this applies to every software btw not just Java and Ubuntu).

Their current versioning system doesn't help anyone in any imaginale circumstance.

> If they'd just put the date in the version field, people would know how old the software is

Does it tell you anything? If this "software" just bumps the date and never provides anything meaningful it is useful to you? It's about the substance.