Not sure why you think Anthropic has not the same problems? Their version numbers across different model lines jump around too... for Opus we have 4.6, 4.5, 4.1 then we have Sonnet at 4.6, 4.5, and 4.1? No version 4.1 here, and there is Haiku, no 4.6, but 4.5 and no 4.1, no 4 but then we only have old 3.5...
Also their pricing based on 5m/1h cache hits, cash read hits, additional charges for US inference (but only for Opus 4.6 I guess) and optional features such as more context and faster speed for some random multiplier is also complex and actually quiet similar to OpenAI's pricing scheme.
To me it looks like everybody has similar problems and solutions for the same kinds of problems and they just try their best to offer different products and services to their customers.
With Anthropic you always have 3 models to choose from: Opus-latest, Sonnet-latest, and Haiku-latest, from the best/slowest to the worst/fastest.
The version numbers are mostly irrelevant as afaik price per token doesn't change between versions.
Three random names isn't ideal. I'm often need to double check which is which. This is why we use numbers
They aren't random. Opus's are very long poems, haikus are very short ones (3 lines), sonnets are in between (~14 lines)
How are the names random?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku
They dropped the magnum from opus but you could still easily deduce the order of the models just from their names if you know the words.
It's much more consistent. Only 3 lines, numbered 4.6, 4.6, and 4.5, and it's clear they're tiers and not alternate product lines. It wasn't until recently that GPT seems to have any kind of naming convention at all and it's not intuitive if every version number is a whole different class of tool.
The pricing is more complex but also easy, Opus > Sonnet > Haiku no matter how you tweak those variables.