Comment 1 for bug 1452436

So, yes, we're not following PEP-396. That said, we've had the current version layout for a long time, and there may well be code depending on it out there.

I'm at best ambivalent about changing this without a major version bump.

Many many packages do not have PEP-396 comaptible version attributes, because it requires opt-in. The distutils database is a much more reliable way to extract version data - everything that is installable is present there. Have you considered using that?