It looks like the discussion was not on pants-devel or pants-committers. Little details in old summit notes either. The summary though, as best I can represent the positive arguments for, was: Square in particular and Foursquare to a lesser degree wanted to be able to adopt a release N and then use that for a good long time while enjoying backport fixes as they or others found them. This desire was roundly accepted, the technical detail of early or late branching was decided as early. IIUC, you'd argue for late (aka lazy). IE... all the same semantics, but only branch when a backport/cherrypick, etc is proven to be needed.