Joel,
I like the idea but would change the implementation slightly so that the level # and description are encoded in different XML tags (or attributes). E.g.
<platform id="openacs-core" version="5.1">
<level descr="Mature">2</level>
</platform>
This encoding style removes the need for parsing the maturity level string in your example and de-couples the description from the level #.
/Bart
