Based on today's discussions, I've been thinking if there is any merit in dumping the notion of Module Version altogether? I am beginning to think it's completely irrelevant to the Module System.
Versions are important during builds and for interacting with artifact repositories, but once artifacts are resolved and installed into the JDK as modules, versioning has no more utility. You don't even need Versions to link modules together. The only thing that is actually needed is the Module Name. It looks like to me versions are metadata that belong outside the JDK and classfile format. I think a whole host of problems go away when the Version goes away. The JDK isn't an artifact manager so it doesn't need versions. What do you think?