Observed confusion over the release version numbering system

While looking to help support users on the Wine mailing list, today I
got this email:

"I installed wine 0.9 in Ubuntu linux 5.1, it works, I notice that those
native programs running under Ubuntu has a nice font, is it possible to
change the font of those programs running under Wine too? thanks."

Now, it took me a while to figure out that this user was running Breezy,
and he was misinterpreting 5.10 as 5.1, which actually sounds like a
rather reasonable mistake now that I think about it.  Worse, 5.1 or
5.1.0, as 5.10 may be mistaken for, is actually a newer version than
5.4, and this will likely lead to further confusion again in the future,
particularly as we get new users completely unfamiliar with the
intricacies of software version numbering.

Not that I enjoy opening a can of worms, but might I suggest that we
consider using a more intuitive version numbering system?

One idea comes to mind, and from what I can see this is the least
different yet still intuitive approach we could do.  Simply keep the
major version number as the year, but instead give the minor version
number as the ordered release number for that year.  So, our first
release in 2006 would be 6.1, our second 6.2, and so forth.

Alternatively, we could stop releasing in the months of October through
December ;)

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie