We are starting to use semantic versioning for modules (e.g. the last REST release was 2.18.0, not 2.18.) Thanks to @teleivo for pushing on that in this thread. I will update that thread with my thoughts from this thread.
99% of the time there will be no maintenance release, so we will not usually be creating maintenance branches. If, after the fact, we realize that there’s a need for a maintenance release on some module version, we will create the maintenance branch at that time, based on the (old) release tag.