If we go straight from 2.2 to 3.0, the Linux community has 2-3 years to make these changes. If we go from 2.2 to 2.4 and thence to 3.0, we have around 5 years for these changes. It's almost harder to justify not making these changes than making them, over such a long time frame. Finally, there's something to be said for having some rich symbolism in the criteria for 3.0. As an aside, many file systems distinuish between a file creation date and a logical creation date.
Some documents have LCDs with negative years.