It certainly wasn't called that back then, but it has probably been re-discovered, (and variously), re-invented many times under many names by many people down the years. As those that ignore the past have a habit of doing :)

It, and minor variations of it, where pretty much universal across the industry when I started out. It was only once the marketeers started trying to steal a march on their competitors, but upping the major version in the (mostly) vain hope that purchasing depts would believe that version PQRv12 (previously v2.3.1) must be significantly better than XYZv10 (previously v2.4), that things started getting screwed up.

That codification of the rules certainly fits with my understanding of 3-level versioning. And I agree with the writer that unless the rules are clearly defined and rigorously applied, it does devalue the purpose.