“Anybody who spends time trying new free software applications
and distributions will soon notice that version numbering and
labeling is next to meaningless. These days, versioning rarely
gives an accurate idea of the state of development, except relative
to other builds of the same project. It is simply a label that
distinguishes one build from another. That’s too bad, because a
properly labeled release can give users a sense of how advanced the
build actually is.“The problem is not that several different versioning systems
exist. Once you realize there are variations, you should have no
trouble picking up on the fact that the odd-numbered GNOME releases
are development builds and even-numbered ones are official
releases…”