On 17 Dec 1999 15:24:42 -0800 
 cgd@netbsd.org (Chris G. Demetriou) wrote:

 > >   Why even have a major number?
 > 
 > Good question.  Once you come to understand the implications of
 > bumping the major number, it does seem fairly obvious to follow on and
 > ask that.  I've not come up with any good reason other than "in case,
 > because of some horrible catastrophic problem in the future, you
 > Really Really Really need to bump them."

Major number bumps are also a lot less catstrophic in cases of less-used
libraries, e.g. libutil, or whatever.

Yah, for libc, they're mostly useless.

        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>