At its Ignite conference last week, a Microsoft developer evangelist, Jerry Nixon, was quoted as saying, "Right now we're releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all still working on Windows 10."

This is one of those statements that seems tremendously meaningful right up until the point that it isn't.

Meaningful, because, as we've discussed before, Microsoft is pushing "Windows as a service." Windows 10 will receive a steady stream of both security and feature updates. Unlike prior versions of Windows, it seems that these feature updates won't necessarily be rolled into infrequent service packs or other major updates, instead delivered as they become ready. With the Inside Program, those who care will be able to get early access to these new features. Most importantly of all: they'll all retain the same "Windows 10" brand name.

The underlying goal is to ensure that everybody is on the same version of the operating system, and that Windows' fragmentation—the division of its userbase between several supported versions, and the conservative attitude towards new features that developers are forced to take—is ended.

As such, Microsoft is likely to keep people using "Windows 10" for quite a while, even if it undergoes transformations that might previously have warranted a new version number.

But it's only meaningful to a point. The branding that Microsoft, or any other company, uses for its software is not tied to any fundamental truth; it's simply an arbitrary label. So much is abundantly clear from Microsoft's decision to skip Windows 9. Or, indeed, the history of Windows naming: the NT family of operating systems started at version 3.1, followed by 3.5, 3.51, 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1. Certainly, the name is sometimes meant to convey some sense of a relationship to other versions, but exactly which words or numbers are used is something chosen by a marketing department, not any intrinsic characteristic of the software itself.

If Microsoft decides that "Windows 11" would be a fine label to apply to a range of new features, a foundation around which to build a marketing campaign, the company remains entirely free to do so.

These branding choices will likely have no impact on "Windows as a service." OS X is a fine demonstration of this; Apple dropped paid updates to its operating system some years ago, but it still has different brandings and labels for different releases. Microsoft could readily do the same; perhaps one day a couple of years from now you'll reboot your PC to install Windows Updates and in so doing change the branding from Windows 10 to Windows 11, or Windows 2017, or Windows Ocelot, or whatever other set of branding Microsoft picks.

It wouldn't tremendously surprise us if it did exactly that at some point in the future. If Windows gets a major visual overhaul, for example, that'd be a pretty good time to slap a name on the thing so that it can be talked about and promoted. Similarly, if opinion turns against Windows 10 and perception of the brand becomes tainted, it'll be dropped, just as the Vista brand was unceremoniously discarded.

None of this has any impact on internal version numbers, either; they're sure to continue to change, because identifying exactly what software someone is using will remain essential for support, especially when Long Term Servicing builds become available. There's nothing preventing Windows 10 from calling itself version 11.0 on the inside, if it becomes convenient to do so.

Conversely, as users become more comfortable with "Windows as a service," we could even see the branding switch the other way, ditching the "10" entirely. Internal version numbers will still remain, of course, but a world in which the next version of Windows is labelled simply "Windows" isn't hard to imagine.

For the time being, of course, Microsoft is sticking with Windows 10. It'll be the last version of Windows, right up until the marketers think it's time for a new version.