Since we're at 19.07 release, is there a plan to transition to a YY.MM date format for the naming of releases? eg. 21.03.
I've been around the forums quite a bit, but I'm not a developer, so maybe this has been discussed. If so, apologies up front. That said, it seems like this is the trend and a good idea since it is a very easy and intuitive method to know if your OS is current, or not.
This has always been the case with the release numbers corresponding to the branching dates:
Makes sense from a developer perspective.
From an end-user perspective, and the individuals responsible for maintaining their devices, it was only available as a stable release on 20 Feb 2021.
So is the release name more important for the developer work, or the end user / maintainer? I can't answer for the former, but I can for the latter.
How are end users affected by release names?
So how is a user supposed to operate with that:
Browse to https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/ and pick the release with the highest branching date.
I guess the underlaying issue might be that it is 2021 now and a branch/release date in 2019 seems a bit out of date. But just look at e.g. Ubuntu, there releases are also named after the release/branch date, and the LTS version are "good" for 3 years maintenance and more.
It is a visual notification of the the timeliness of the OS running on their system, that is all. As an example, if I am a sys admin taking over a new position, unfamiliar with OpenWRT, and I saw that my router was running on version 19.07, I might think that my router is running software almost 2 years old. That would be alarming, especially for router software.
Of course, from a technical standpoint, end users are not affected at all.
Well, in a sense 19.07 is 1.5 years old, that is true, but there have been 7 interim updates (mostly security) in between hence we moved from 19.07 to 19.07.7...
Well, if that alarm leads to the user getting acquainted with OpenWrt versioning and how to read it, something good would come out of it 
In the world where Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is still supported with the security updates and pretty much outside of OpenWrt there's no regularity of updates for SOHO routers at all, I don't think it's that alarming. 
However, we also live in a world where at least some phones get monthly security updates, so ideally, yes, I agree it would have been better to have something like 19.07.7 (Security Update Feb 16th 2021) somewhere.
What about 19.07.20210216
I would pay to see the face of that admin, when he discovers everybody in the office is using the 11 years old Windows 10... time to an urgent upgrade to the future-proof Fedora 32!
That's very confusing, in my humble opinion.
I guess the date in the table is too subtle?
And what about the text on www.openwrt.org's front psge:
Current stable series: OpenWrt 19.07
The OpenWrt Community is proud to present the OpenWrt 19.07 stable version series. It is the successor of the previous 18.06 stable major release.
The OpenWrt 19.07 series focuses on bringing all supported targets to Linux kernel version 4.14 and introducing initial device tree based ath79 support.
Current Stable Release - OpenWrt 19.07.7
The current stable version series of OpenWrt is 19.07, with v19.07.7 being the latest release of the series. It was released on 18 February 2021.
I humbly propose we assume that OpenWrt users are willing to read the information supplied.