A point release is a minor release of a software project, especially one intended to fix bugs or do minor cleanups rather than add features. The term implies that such releases are relatively frequent, and is generally used with respect to open source projects being developed in the "bazaar model" as described in Eric S. Raymond's essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
With retail software, point releases are often, but not necessarily, free updates for users of the latest full version, as opposed to major releases that frequently come at some cost, albeit reduced, even for previous users.
The point refers to fact that the version number is only incremented after the decimal point, i.e. 7.0 to 7.1, or 2.3.1 to 2.3.2.
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