After having discussed this here and in several IRC discussions, there appears to still be enough cases warranting keeping two cycle-tied models (one with RCs and a round version number, the other strictly following semver). The simplification gains may not be worth disrupting long-established habits and tweaking all our validation toolchain.
Instead, I'll work on improving documentation to guide new deliverables in this choice, and reduce corner cases and exceptions.
Thanks for entertaining the idea and reaching out. Periodically reconsidering why we do things the way we do them is healthy, and avoids cargo-culting processes forever.
Thanks for bringing up the idea Thierry. I agree, it's worth looking at what we're doing and why occasionally to make sure we're not doing things just because "that's what we do." I think some good feedback came out of all of this at least, so maybe we can still simplify some things, even if we can't fully collapse our release models. Sean