Yes, projects can use their own version scheme.
The Linux kernel has been using this version scheme for over a decade. If you think it's inconsistent then that's a you problem.
So decades of work to make it finally real-time safe is not worth it. This shows his precedences. It's not latencies. The industry will recognize
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history :
> Each major version – identified by the first two numbers of a release version
For the last decade, the first number gets bumped once the second number reaches 19 or 20. This has been consistent since 3.x.
> So decades of work to make it finally real-time safe is not worth it.
Haha you can't actually be serious? Thomas Gleixner's goal was to get Real-Time patches merged, not to get an aesthetic version bump, because nobody cares about the version number.