What's the story with the sys numbers?

[garyflynn]

The roms with sys numbers like 23041 and 23047 are starting to look really good, almost enough to make me upgrade from my current 21731 longhorn rom.


I thought I'd wait until the RTM sys came out but found out that it has already come up and is old now. Is that possible? Are shipping products going to be released with software that chefs xda and ppcgeeks.com had found unacceptably buggy a month before they were released?

Where are these sys coming from? Is there any pattern to how they're released?

I'd like to find a rom sys 101 course somewhere that explains who released which and when. Is that available anywhere?