In Jetty we have the following approach to things:
X.Y.Z.M# releases as milestone releases, they can be done whenever
X.Y.Z.RC# are release candidates and we try and use these leading up to final releases, if it is a minor (X.Y) version bump we'll use these releases leading up to a release review and update IP log if we have changes, it gets binaries in the hands of people that might need them in the community while we are working to comply with eclipse process
X.Y.Z.v20160601 is a final (formal) Release and subject to having completed release review processes, etc.
There is some talk of switching back to a more traditional X.Y.Z release approach come Jetty 10 but nothing in stone yet, we have periods of intense confusion among users on this versioning approach which we started using when we moved to eclipse under the advice of our mentor at the time. It was supposed to be more for complying with osgi versioning best practices.
Long story short, IMO you should be able to release whatever you need to to your community regardless of Eclipse Process, it is simply a matter of if it is considered a formal 'Release' in the Eclipse Ecosystem or not. For Jetty, for now, anything with a 'v20160601' version identifier is a big R 'Release' and should be available for download from an
eclipse.org site. Anything else is just published in maven central and generally available for our community for feedback and the like, generally leading up to these more formal Eclipse 'Releases'.
cheers,
Jesse
