version numbers and new features

On another front ... Automake's HACKING file says that "micro releases",
e.g., 1.17.1, should not add any new features. Does anyone know if there
is a technical reason for this?

I just added Jose's Algol 68 support, but our next release feels a lot
more like 1.17.1 to me than 1.18. I think the rule should be more like
micro releases should not have new features that interfere existing
behavior. Otherwise virtually every release would be a minor release,
and/or new releases would be less useful than they could be.

I certainly made several 1.16.x releases that had new features
(sometimes too many), and I'm not aware of any particular resulting
problems. A couple of the x.y.z releases made before me also had new
features, if interpreted strictly, though clearly Stefano et al. were a
lot more careful about this than me.

What version is your bike shed :)? -k