As if an IT Drone will look at the kernel version numbers!
They are probably just going to install whatever RHEL or SuSE gives them.
It's irresponsible of anyone paid to know this kind of thing to not be aware of how a project handles version numbers.
Linus is the kind of guy that would go to 2.8 just "because it's time" in his mind rather than some big feature jump. Whether or not a person agrees, it would be good for people to at least inform themselves.
Not all of our customers live up to your standard, however.
(Y'all may be amused to hear that IBM never releases x.0 versions at all; they go straight to x.1.)