[kbenson]

I think the reason "final" is used is because you'll often have releases like

Foo 2.0 alpha release

Foo 2.0 RC1

Foo 2.0 RC2

etc, and if you just have "Foo 2.0" as a release it can be somewhat ambiguous as to whether someone named something wrong when downloading or describing it and left of that portion of the name, or if it's actually the full release, so they want a word to distinguish it as the actual full and final release of that version and not "the 2.0 branch"

"Final" may not be the best word choice for that, but it does at least accomplish the task of distinguishing the actual final product of that version from any other types of releases or the branch that will eventually become that.

[oneplane]

Final has a finality to it as you somewhat pointed out ;-)

Perhaps, the best option would have been to omit any wording:

release 4.0.0 would be the real version

release 4.0.0-beta would be the beta version

release 4.0.0-rc1 would be the first release candidate

Then again, words like 'final' and 'release' have too many meanings. Release doesn't mean version or 'no longer secret' but mostly 'available for people that just want to use it'. It's probably (like GM) mostly originated from the times where software versions required distribution management with physical aspects which makes 'release' have more of a meaning.