This is a very fair question and one we've discussed internally quite a bit. The Lightroom products (Classic or CC) on desktop no longer include branding based on version number or year. It's just Lightroom CC or Lightroom Classic. This is not a new standard in modern software development. If you need to know the version number it's available in the About Box. You might need that to check camera support compatibility or if you call tech support to find out if a bug fix is available in version N.X.Y. From my perspective the most important number for our desktop products is the one to the right of the decimal place. ACR, LrCC and LrClassic will keep the decimal place in sync in order to give guidance on equivalent camera support. For example, 2.1 for LrCC, 11.1 for ACR and 8.1 for LrClassic will all have equivalent camera support. We could just keep moving the decimal up to .9 then roll the integer but rolling the integer once a year seems to make it more consistent and predictable. We've clearly moved away from the prior model of big version number updates that require an incremental upgrade payment to a model where we try to deliver value in every release. So that integer is merely "housekeeping" at this point.
Regards,
Tom Hogarty
Adobe Inc.
Dear Tom Hogarty,
First, I was really surprised to see that you replied to my comment, many thanks for that
I still think it is quite important for the user to know which version is running. It is easier to understand why you have a functionality or not, but more important, to know if a version is going to have problems with some hardware, OS, printing process and report back to you (and by you I mean Adobe) or to discuss it here in the forums. After all, I'm quite sure you always try not to have new bugs or regression bugs in your software, but as a software developer myself, I know how difficult it can be.
Anyway, I get your point. You (Adobe) will release several versions of Lightroom Classic per year, some of them will have more "important", "more visual", "more eye attraction" updates, and other will be just minor new things (I suppose that depends in each user), bugfixes and camera and lens support. Not to expect because you increase the first number to have lots of new features like in the past.
Regards,
David