Decide whether to change Bio-Formats/OMERO version number coupling

[mlinkert]

Every release of Bio-Formats currently has a corresponding OMERO release, and vice versa. For major (and possibly minor) versions this probably still makes sense, but we may want to investigate decoupling patch versions. This would allow for hot-fix releases of either project without having to wait on (or do a trivial release for) the other project, as was the case in 4.4.8.

[crueden-x]

I respectfully disagree that the versions should be coupled, even for major releases. As things stand, major improvements to Bio-Formats have been made on the develop branch which have been "stranded" there for years while OMERO remains at 4.4.x for stability reasons. I would very much prefer to see Bio-Formats able to make forward progress beyond just bugfixes, on its own timeline. And OMERO could choose to adopt (or not) new versions of Bio-Formats according to its own needs and timeline. Otherwise, the reality is that Bio-Formats is primarily subservient to OMERO and its release schedule, and as such not optimally serving the greater life sciences community in general.

All of that said, I hope that does not come off as too harshly critical. I understand the stability-centric rationale for the current approach, and it is not a completely unworkable solution. I just personally have found it to be quite awkward from the perspective of non-OMERO downstream Bio-Formats consumption.

[sbesson]

Migrated to ​https://trello.com/c/Ndse6yOo/57-version-number-decision for future versioning discussion. AS of 5.1.3, OMERO and Bio-Formats version numbers are decoupled at the build level.