In a meeting w/ Bruce and Meredith, we concluded that the 3rd version number should be used for minor version changes.
After examining the code, I realized that the current version checking code already checks only the first 2 digits of the version. unless the check_for_point_releases argument is set to True. It defaults to false for the client code using the version_check() function
Excellent: So we can release, say, version 1.7.3, without our users being unduly notified to upgrade their installation. Thank you.