diff --git a/drupalorg_project/plugins/release_packager/DrupalorgProjectPackageRelease.class.php b/drupalorg_project/plugins/release_packager/DrupalorgProjectPackageRelease.class.php
index ead6bd8..4d7f445 100644
--- a/drupalorg_project/plugins/release_packager/DrupalorgProjectPackageRelease.class.php
+++ b/drupalorg_project/plugins/release_packager/DrupalorgProjectPackageRelease.class.php
@@ -213,7 +213,25 @@ class DrupalorgProjectPackageRelease implements ProjectReleasePackagerInterface
     $site_name = variable_get('site_name', 'Drupal.org');
 
     $info = "\n; Information added by $site_name packaging script on " . gmdate('Y-m-d') . "\n";
-    $info .= 'version = "' . $this->release_version . "\"\n";
+
+    if ($this->project_node->type == 'project_core') {
+      if (!$info_file = fopen($file, 'rb')) {
+        watchdog('package_error', "fopen(@file, 'rb') failed", array('@file' => $file), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
+        return FALSE;
+      }
+      if (!$info_file_contents = fread($info_file, filesize($info_file))) {
+        watchdog('package_error', "fread(@file) failed", array('@file' => $file), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
+        return FALSE;
+      }
+      if (preg_match('/^version =/', $info_file_contents)) {
+        // Allow core to override version strings.
+        $do_not_add_version_string = TRUE;
+      }
+    }
+    if (!isset($do_not_add_version_string)) {
+      $info .= 'version = "' . $this->release_version . "\"\n";
+    }
+
 
     // .info files started with 5.x, so we don't have to worry about version
     // strings like "4.7.x-1.0" in this regular expression. If we can't parse