> But you're thinking like a developer. The point is that we have a lot of
> users who don't, and who get confused by how we are doing things. I think
> we really need to make _A_ change in how we do things, though I'm not 100%
> sure if this numbering is it.


Developers we are. And NetBSD is for developers and people who are willing
to learn the rules if they'll make their life easier afterwards. 
We do have rules (about numbering) that _I_ believe are logical. We have
RELEASES, STABLE and CURRENT branches which is great. Furthermore 
release and stable are named in the same manner (which again is absolutely
normal since stable is improvement of release) maybe we could just add
something like FreeBSD's stable tag to it to differenciate it from release.
But the CURRENT branch is something special. It should actually exist only
one CURRENT (and in reality that's the case) but it is much easier to talk
about current development if we introduce some sort of _internal_ naming.
===> that's exactly what we have with the number part of the name
the first (numeric) part shows you when was the last time the release was
branched, and the alpha part shows you where we are in the current development.

It's kindda neat ;)


> I think it's important since the folks who get the most confused are
> usually just checking NetBSD out; the kind of folks who are trying to
> learn if they shoul care about NetBSD.

That shouldn't be the problem since they shouldn't care about current stuff.


> > i personally find the current scheme fine and the odd/even version
> > naming is actually *more* confusing, imho.
> 
> The problem isn't if it makes sense to you, or to me. It's what makes the
> most sense to everyone, both current and future users.

Making most sense to everyone does not necessary mean making most sense the
first time they encounter the _thing_. In NetBSD terminology we could say
that it makes most sense when you get acquainted with it.


jj