The following is a humorous comparison of the release numbering of the LONI Pipeline v3 against various organizations
LONI Pipeline  | Open source | Microsoft | Google | Apple |
|---|
| alpha | beta | 2.0 | beta | rumors with possibly some substance to them |
| beta | release candidate | 3.0 | beta | developer seeds |
| beta | 1.0 | various: 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP | beta | release |
| internal testing | alpha | 1.0 | shh... top secret | unsubstantiated rumors |
| release | 2.0 | SP1,2,3,... | beta | recall |
Starting with version 3, the Pipeline release numbers will be assigned by the following conventions:
v${version.major}.${version.minor}${release.branch}${branch.major}${branch.minor}
For example, v3.0beta2.1 specifies that this is major version 3, minor version 0, beta release, branch major 2, branch minor 1
