Okay, thanks. Thinking about it a little more I think I get it.
1. We want a single truly universal namespace.
2. We want to have different methods of generating IDs, since there are a lot of different people in the whole universe and they may have different needs.
3. Each single method is designed to not generate collisions.
4. But there could be collisions between different methods. So some bits are added to show what method was used to generate the ID to guarantee IDs generated by different methods don't collide. This is also why we need a spec that defines what each method is, the versions are like a scare global namespace that needs to be allocated carefully.
I think the reason I found this difficult is most of the times I see UUIDs, (1) and (2) aren't actually needed (this article being representative).
1. We want a single truly universal namespace.
2. We want to have different methods of generating IDs, since there are a lot of different people in the whole universe and they may have different needs.
3. Each single method is designed to not generate collisions.
4. But there could be collisions between different methods. So some bits are added to show what method was used to generate the ID to guarantee IDs generated by different methods don't collide. This is also why we need a spec that defines what each method is, the versions are like a scare global namespace that needs to be allocated carefully.
I think the reason I found this difficult is most of the times I see UUIDs, (1) and (2) aren't actually needed (this article being representative).