1. I probably missed something but I didn't get it how "alpha"s made their way into release numbers again. This was discussed on several occasions and I thought the common perception was to use just three level numbers for release versioning and avoid branding them. It is particularly confusing to have 3.0.0-alpha1 and 3.0.0-alpha2. What is alphaX - fourth level? I think releasing 3.0.0 and setting trunk to 3.1.0 would be perfectly in line with our current release practices.
2. I do not see any confusions with releasing 2.8.0 after 3.0.0. The release number is not intended to reflect historical release sequence, but rather the point in the source tree, which it was branched off. So one can release 2.8, 2.9, etc. after or before 3.0. 3. I agree that current 3.0.0 branch can be dropped and re-cut. We may think of another rule that if a release branch is not released in 3 month it should be abandoned. Which is applicable to branch 2.8.0 and it is too much work syncing it with branch-2. Thanks, --Konstantin
