Question: Adding distributor version numbers to Open Source software?

I had an idea recently and was wondering what other people think.

ChiliProject has a standard version identifier (major.minor.path, like 2.0.1 or 3.3.5). I’ve been thinking about adding an optional fourth optional value to it for distributors. That way it’s still easy to recognize the main version but differentiate between the different distributors (and any custom code they might have added).

For example

  • 1.2.0 – Normal 1.2.0 release
  • 1.2.0.debian – Debian’s version of 1.2.0
  • 1.2.0.debian4 – Something like the 4th packaging of the 1.2.0 version for Debian
  • 1.2.0.littlestreamsoftware – A customized version of ChiliProject from LittleStreamSoftware
  • 1.2.0.aws-ec2 – AWS EC2 package

What do you think? Would this be useful as part of the ChiliProject core?