[zzo38computer]

It is sensible; it is better to ship released versions in the package manager, instead of unreleased versions, at least by default. (If the package manager does not have the capability to distinguish in this way, then a user who wishes to use unreleased versions could compile it by themself instead.)

Unfortunately, some projects do not have any tagged releases (or, at least, doesn't have any yet), and might still be stable. I intend to add tagged releases to my "Free Hero Mesh" project eventually, in order to avoid this problem, that you can clearly have a released and tagged, with version numbers.

A distribution may need to patch bugs or other things in the software, to work with the distribution. This is OK, but they should probably mark this in some way, such as a nonstandard version number (e.g. "1.5.2.debian.1") or a different name. Possibly such nonstandard version numbers should also be included in the software itself if it has the capability to display its own version number, and not limited to the package manager. Sometimes there is a separate list of patches applied than the version number; this might also be usable (instead of or in addition to the version number).