&gt; the new version number is using iojs instead of nodejs&#x27;s existing version scheme, which is interesting too.<p>Well, its a follow-on to both pre-merge iojs and pre-merge nodejs, and has breaking changes to both, so the most SEMVER consistent version number is the first major version greater than the greater of pre-merge iojs&#x27;s last version number and pre-merge node&#x27;s last version number -- which is exactly what they chose.