Take off!

I see a lot of discussions around v2 versus v3. My 2 cents, starting with V1....

In aviation, V1 is the maximum speed during takeoff at which a pilot can safely stop the aircraft without leaving the runway. V2 is the takeoff safety speed and V3 is the flap retraction speed.

In the ITIL World, V1 was not necessarily providing you all it takes to take off.
If V2 is a real framework you can fly with, it is only providing you tools to get to destination, you still need to have a map and define your itinerary.
Finally, V3 is a offering more structured and iterative approach.

As you know, physically, ITIL is a library.

V1 is a set of 31 books published between 1989 and 1995.
To me, at that stage, ITIL had no "core" and was not a best practices framework yet, just a set of recommendations.

V2, released between 2000 and 2004, is a more closely connected and consistant set of 7 books. I have always seen v2 as a CMDB centric framework. Most processes orbit around the configuration database.

V3 is a different bird. Even if you'll find pretty much all the V2 processes in V3, as well as your beloved CMDB, the framework itself is articulated differently, around services. Service lifecycle is the secret sauce that structure all the best practices together.

V3 tells you exactly where to look at, you won't leave the runway!