Floating tags such as v1 or v1.5 are supposed to only move forward: when a release on an older line would point them at a lower version, FerrFlow stops the release, and only --force lets the alias move backward, with a warning. That check read the version from the alias tag's message, which git hands back with a trailing newline, so parsing it failed and the check concluded there was nothing to protect.

In practice, cutting a hotfix on a maintenance branch moved the major alias back to the hotfix, and anyone pinned to v1 got the older code. The check now works as documented, which changes what a hotfix pipeline sees: a job that used to succeed on a maintenance line now fails at ferrflow release with "Floating tag v1 would move backward", before anything is pushed. If you do want the alias to follow the hotfix, add --force to that job.