I work in the Rails world, and perhaps my perception is colored by the big changes they tend to make, but this seems like more of a minor than a major version release? Or is this relatively big for Django?
Django releases are now based on a schedule, so the 5.0 label wouldn't have been chosen because of significant changes.
But, I have observed that releases often look like this:
- X.0 Newer shinier features
- X.1 More refinement and minor features
- X.2 [LTS] More refinement and minor features
Which means if you stick to the point 2 releases you get longer support and subjectively more stability since the shiny new features have been polished over a couple of point releases.
But in reality these days, I think it's just whatever features are ready to ship for the scheduled release date.