Seriously, do I have to get downvoted 5x (by >750 karma users) for not understanding something that is apparently obvious to everyone else? I'm genuinely not getting it.

This is the first time Vim's patch level has gone over 999; matter of fact, Bram expressed some concern about it. The patch level has hitherto been expressed as three digits (e.g. 7.3.052).

Some information is available in the "Plans for Vim 7.4" thread in the vim_dev group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/vim_dev/Z...

Ah okay, thanks for explaining :)