I have noticed that in app-office/openoffice there is a series of "silent" version bumps. IMHO this should change to something which distinguishes the versions on the users side. For example current version is app-office/openoffice-2.4.0 whereas it should be something like app-office/openoffice-2.4.0-r7 or something similar. The only reason I noticed this version update was because last update changed used flags. I understand that this package is huge and frequent updates are exhausting but is it not better to leave the users choice to unmask these as required? Bugs like 218835 (only an example) could be traced easier this way. I file this as enhancement as it is not a qualified bug.
Not going to happen. Revision bumping OOo for each and every ooo-build-release would force the users into constant and lengthy rebuilds for the sake of minor bugfixes (mostly). In some special cases I might do a revision bump (and I've done that in the past), but definately not for every ooo-build-update. Unless we want to actively drive users away from using the source-based OOo. Those who want to always have the latest patch-release can still check the ChangeLogs and do a manual rebuild. Btw: The new ooo-build release had nothing to do with any changed use flags. Also you can still find out the ooo-build-release you are using through the about screen of OOo, so that's quite easy to track for bugs (and in the mentioned case wouldn't help too much anyway)