Looks like 17.3 from the package name. Today it might not be "way" behind, but it will be in a year or two. Or three.
I can see the point of having a "stable" kernel, but these freezes are mostly random. Back in its days, Squeeze shipped with R14A (not B). That's not stable, it's just a random cutoff. It means that whoever did the package did not even know what A and B used to mean in Erlang releases.
This is what backports is all about. More up to date packages from sid, built for the current stable release.
If you're a heavy erlang user you could also consider helping to support the Debian packages for it, I'm sure they'd (Debian erlang team) appreciate any help offered.
I can see the point of having a "stable" kernel, but these freezes are mostly random. Back in its days, Squeeze shipped with R14A (not B). That's not stable, it's just a random cutoff. It means that whoever did the package did not even know what A and B used to mean in Erlang releases.
That's not something you can put in production.