Martin Brown writes about Linux:
>     <major>.<minor>.<subminor><stage><release>
>              ^^^^^
>                |
>                |
>
>If this number is odd, it is a developer release (unstable), and if this
>number is even, it is a user release (stable).


Seems a little "hacky" and somewhat arbitrary, don't you think?  After all,
the <stage> (developer, alpha, beta, final) is intended to encode this
information directly.  The odd/even thing is obscure, and I doubt many
people on this list even knew about or even suspected such a scheme.

-- Duane