On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 20:05, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 keks@kibla.org wrote:

Just to pop in quickly...

> We choose to use numbers, as opposed to names, so that we can also convey
> an ordering. We use a time-increasing sequence. We can thus know that
> version 1.6Q is higher (newer) than 1.5Y or 1.4G. We also know that 1.6.1
> is higher than 1.6 and 1.5.3 and 1.4.2.

If "higher" == "newer", you can't say that 1.5.x is higher than 1.6.x.
It's quite possible for, say, 1.5.4 be newer (as a release) than 1.6.1.
This is very similar to the -current vs. -release numbering issue
(as you said: versions on different branches are incomparable).

And people do get confused with things like this, too. When reading
OS News, I see lots of people wondering why FreeBSD just released 5.0,
and then soon afterwards 4.8. People simply don't get the idea of
branches, and as someone else pointed, it needs to be understood.

And while I'm here, I could just as well say my opinion on this: I think
bumbing -current's version to "just_released + 1" is a good idea. So,
we'd be now at 1.7R. And I don't think it's a problem if it is not known
beforehand what the actual release will be called. If there won't be
1.7, fine. 1.7ZZZA just becomes 2.0 then (and -current 2.1A).