A more practical reason why we’d want to keep the .dist-info directory as is, is that pip can support failing to install a wheel that is made with a newer version with a meaningful error (the WHEEL file inside of the .dist-info directory lets us version the wheel format). The other options would be a weird, hard to debug error for older versions of clients OR making a .whl2 or something that pip wouldn’t see as a valid old style wheel.